Chris Ware - C or D?

Surprised I didn't say more on this thread earlier, though I know I've praised Ware elsewhere on here in the past. Oddly enough I find myself thinking along the lines of Jess more now, though I'm still deeply impressed by his talents and by Jimmy Corrigan as a whole. I think, however, there's a willful disregard/disdain for the 'modern day' which ultimately grates on me. That Ware was able to capture a Chicago now beyond living memory in the World's Fair section was wonderful -- it made reading The Devil in the White City much more lively. But so much of his approach seems to rely on an ill-disguised (and often not disguised at all) feeling that anything made after 1940 is questionable -- I think it makes his older characters much more interesting than his younger ones, because he has a greater affinity for them, but playing the 'I am out of sync with my time' card becomes a crutch. God knows what he would do if you ever confronted him with an iPod filled with music created solely in the last five years.

I wish he did some other things too. Like a space adventure comic or something.

Well, there was Rocket Sam...sorta.

You wanna borrow my copy of Floyd Farland, Citizen of the Future? It's super rare! He had most of the run pulped.

Anyway, yeah, I can dig that. I hope that he isn't simply making all his stuff about people dissappointed in their lives because he thinks that's what will get him critical acclaim as serious literature. And let's face it, it's worked so far, so it's understandable that he's felt reinforcement to continue in that direction.

But from reading his work for decades now, and from the Rayburn book, and so forth, I think that he's actually more interested in being a formal innovator than anything else. Content may be a secondary consideration to form for him.

...and then there was ILC.

Well, there was Rocket Sam...sorta.

There was totally Rocket Sam! And also the long long Superman storyline in the new book, c'mon.

let's spread the love a little bit.

Plus the comics section in my Barnes & Noble is at least 50% manga; if you want to hate on someone, hate on the Japanese.

I guess one of these days I'll maybe learn to dig manga, but so much of what I see is all the same and boring.

His OTT packaging is so far from serious that it can't even see the light of serious! hundreds of jokes! COMIC STRIPS ON THE EDGE OF THE COVERS ffs.

Why did they make Jimmy Corrigan look like he was 80? He looked older than his dad.

I think this was one of the major things holding me back from enjoying Jimmy Corrigan.

http://m.assetbar.com/achewood/autaux?b=M%5ea11f09b8576e606bcb5038dfdb92fb821&u=http%3A%2F%2Fachewood.com%2Fcomic.php%3Fdate%3D01112008

i thought for sure this was why you revived

he's drawn to look real old because he's such an outcast and is not really a part of his generation, surely? He wears old man clothes also.

And yeah, i assumed you were reviving for achewood too.

But how am I supposed to know he's not real old if he looks real old? I was seriously confused on how old he was until he met his dad, basically, and that is a long way into the book.

I was going to ask, too, "And where the hell does he buy those Mr. Toad clothes?" but it's a comic so that would be a silly question.

there are clues here and there like he still has a mum, and there's a reference to him being middleaged near the start of the book. but honestly i think it was intentional, he's so crippingly awkward he's not good at being any age so why reveal it.

He's a child when he speaks to his mum, he's sort of an old man at work, his coworker colleague talks to him like a man in his sexual prime but he's none of those he just sort of exists.

I'm surprised that not knowing his age annoys people!

for some reason i just grabbed the acme novelty libary from my shelves and read it all. Rusty Brown and Chalky White just stunning stuff, heavy at times but had to keep reading to see where it would all end up.

And Jimmy Corrigan is great, I need to re-purchase this after giving it away as a gift.

Anyone see that Chris Ware mural or facade or whatever above that gallery in the Mission? If it's not his then it's obviously in tribute, with Quimby-type mouses and empty word balloons all over the thing.

Rusty Brown and Chalky White just stunning stuff, heavy at times but had to keep reading to see where it would all end up.

how did you get back here to post, shouldn't you still be reading until 2015 or something?

I never, ever get the point of this guy ever.

xp you mean above the pirate store? pretty sure that's him, since that store is mcsweeney's headquarters or something

Oh Jesus Christ it figures.

how did you get back here to post, shouldn't you still be reading until 2015 or something?

noo not the whole series, just the series in the book i have (not sure of the number, it's the one that ends with Chalky White vs Brittany year sum up)

http://i40.tinypic.com/20kor5u.jpg

:-/

lyfe, man

everybody kill themselves now!

Our kids play together in the park a lot. Nice guy!

Read ANL no. 20 aka Lint the other day and he'd be classic all over again just for that. (My impressions above still hold for a certain strain of his work and most everything he's been doing lately I've barely kept in touch with so i likely have missed a bigger shift but Lint as a self-contained standalone is amazing stuff, actually living in the past, present and future in a way that works more for me than he'd used to.)

The previous issue was a similarly stand-alone chapter in the giant Rusty novel, and also serves as another answer to

I wish he did some other things too. Like a space adventure comic or something.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 27 November 2005 11:15 (5 years ago)

http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/imagesProduct/a4816331de4fe7.jpg

20 is amazing. It's a "raise the bar" moment for American comics - keep up folks! 19, with the intertwining of pulpy sci-fi and a sad humdrum existence, is highly recommended as well.

For someone whose work I'd previously thought of as top-down experiences - tremendous for a mental workout, but not immediately engaging - those two books are arguably the some of the most viscerally engaging lose-track-of-time works of art I've encountered over the past few years.

I forget the review I scrounged up which noted that if this were something by Lethem -- or more to the point, written in Lethem's text-only medium -- it might garner wider attention beyond the Ware niche. My thoughts on that aren't to agree or disagree, but to think that Lint really proves the point that Ware can tell a story about the 'real' world in a way that I admit I would not have read or even thought about reading if it were simply word-only fiction (or, for that matter, a movie in that vein). It's not a sign of the supposed maturity of the form, more that Ware's use of the form itself succeeds where others will not or cannot, at least for me and I'd guess for others as well -- a straightforward story of Lint in verbal fiction could well be a compelling read, but if you sold it to me with "It's a book about this schmuck of a well-off straight white guy over his entire life and his struggles and self-delusions and all that" I would not care to explore it at all. Ware makes me care, that's a gift.

Related to which, the use of lacunae throughout is masterful.

I hate not having a decent comic book store in my town anymore. I would always buy these when I saw them but for some reason I never get it together to mailorder them from a town only a 5-hour drive away.

better distributed to bookstores these days tbh.

Cool endpaper diagram from Ware’s “Building Stories” (ACME Novelty Library No. 16)
http://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Building-Stories.jpg
right click - view image - zoom in

All his Building Stories comics will be distributed as “many little books in a beautiful box” early October 2012.

I haven't read all the Building Stories installments that were published in New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Acme Novelty Library, etc., but I hesitate to think there will be any new material in this box set. Nor do I think he'll ever release a graphic novel with all new material ever again. Just stuff like ACME and compilations.

I'll probably like this box set as if it isn't all old stuff, but whatever.

that is fucking gorgeous and oh will i buy that for sure

i stand by some of my cranky criticisms in 2003, but after acme nos. 19 and 20, and the most recent batch of building stories strips, i really feel like i am living through the flowering of one of the greatest living artists.

I hesitate to think there will be any new material in this box set.

I don't.

Nor do I think he'll ever release a graphic novel with all new material ever again.

He never has.

correct me if I'm wrong but the jimmy corrigan strips were mostly all different than the stuff in the book...

http://joglikescomics.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/building-stories-suggested-reading-order.html

thanks, sic.

haha, never knew about this:

Fortune 500 cover

In 2010, Ware designed the cover for Fortune magazine's "Fortune 500" issue, but it was rejected.[21] Ware had mentioned the work at a panel at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo on April 16, as first noted in an April 20 blog post by Matthew J. Brady.[22] The cover, featuring the circle-shaped humans common in Ware's more broadly socially satirical comic-strips, turned the numbers 500 into skyscrapers looming over the continental United States. On the roofs, corporate bosses drink, dance, and sun themselves as a helicopter drops a shovelful of money down for them. Below, among signs reading "Credit Default Swap Flea Market," "Greenspan Lube Pro," and "401K Cemetery," a helicopter scoops money out of the US Treasury with a shovel, cars pile up in Detroit, and flag-waving citizens party around a boiling tea kettle in the shape of an elephant. In the Gulf of Mexico, homes are sinking, while hooded prisoners sit in Guantanamo, a "Factory of Exploitation" keeps going in Mexico, China is tossing American dollars into the Pacific, and the roof of bankrupted Greece's Treasury has blown off. A spokesperson for the magazine only said that, as is their practice, they had commissioned a number of possible covers from different artists, including Ware.[23] Brady wrote in his blog that Ware said at the panel he "accepted the job because it would be like doing the [cover for the] 1929 issue of the magazine".[22]

He recently wrote a neat piece on the Laura Ingalls Wilder books... I think it was on The Millions site?