Chris Ware
Chris Ware (1967-present) is a successful American graphic
novelist. His awards have included “Man’s First Genuine Successor” and Time
magazine’s “Book of the Year”. The success
of his main works, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smallest Kid on Earth (2000) and
Building Stories (2012) has come through his ability to communicate with his
audience on an emotional level. (1)
In Quimby the Mouse, the narrative dealing with treatment of
Sparky and his regret for his cruelty shows a link between Gasoline Alley and
flat panels (3). You can see his
drawings are line filled and incorporate a linear perspective that is flattened
or exchanged with panoptical projection.
Not only does Ware use these techniques he reduces the panels or objects
to geometric shapes (Image 3).
Jimmy Corrigan was influenced by Ware’s childhood. Charles
Schulz’s Peanuts showed Ware that one could empathise with cartoon characters: (2)
when Charlie Brown feels bad for himself, you feel bad for him. Schulz portrays his emotions through the
character and page layout. In Jimmy Corrigan, Ware uses an interlocked
narrative of two father- son relationships, incorporating regret and
abandonment in his attempt to understand his own relationship with his absent
father. Ware’s use of memoir and personal history grips the reader. (1)
A further influence was Frank King, whose layout of Gasoline
Alley had a “raccord” format giving a 5 second time frame to the linear sequence
of the same scene. Ware used time by putting a monthly timeframe to the
sequence and formatting the panels in a panoptical diagrammatical method (2)
(images 1 and 2). Ware uses time and
memory in his work as two key methods of creating dynamic and emotion. Raeburn
said “Gasoline Alley taught Ware that the feeling of a comic strip was best
built into its structure” and “musical emotion need not be expressed through
performance but through composition.” (3) Ware incorporates this cyclosis into
practice via “Building Stories” by presenting Joseph Cornell’s surrealist
boxes. Ware sees literacy and visuals as
two distinct aspects of his work and changes his adjectives and adverbs into a
visual story. (4)
Philosophically, Ware describes himself as a “cartoonist” working
with a working class art form that moves you emotionally and deeply. Gasoline
Alley has a real life narrative and warmth so that readers of the newspaper do not
feel as if they are inadequate. He wants
his cartoons to be regarded as an art of the people. (5)
Rudolphe Topher, father of the comic strip, influences Ware
by his use of broken lines, figures in scattered hyperactivity and ironic
phrases. Richard Felton Outcault , the father
of American Sunday comics, created the comic strip that merged into American
society’s day to day living. (6)
Doug Wolk, art critic and historian, dislikes Ware’s use of
traumatic experiences within family units, regarding them as “pathetic
fantasies and painful realities”. He contends that the composition and
geometric forms challenge the face of human despair and cruelty. (1)
Bibliography of Chris Ware
Cartwright James,
“Illustration: Valuable life lessons in Chris Ware’s seminal Quimby
comic” available at http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/chris-ware-quimby-mouse
(Accessed: 5 October 2014)
Cliffnotes, Houghtern Mifflin Harcourt “Of Mice and
Men by John Steinbeck” available at http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/o/of-mice-and-men/of-mice-and-men-at-a-glance
(Accessed: 5 October 2014)
Cushner Seth (2012) “Chris
Ware building a better comic book”
available at http://www.nycgraphicnovelists.com/2012/03/chris-ware-on-building-better-comic.html
( Accessed: 5 October 2014)
Herge, the adventure of tin tin “Herge” available at http://us.tintin.com/about/herge/
(Accessed: 5 October 2014)
Kelly Stuart (2013) “Chris
Ware: 'There is a magic when you read an image that moves in your mind'
available at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/11/chris-ware-graphic-novelist-interview (Accessed 5 october 2014)
Kreilkamp Ivan Associate Professor in the
Department of English at Indiana University (2013) “The not –so-comic art of
Chris Ware” the Ryder, available at http://theryder.com/2013/11/15/the-not-so-comic-art-of-chris-ware/
(Accessed: 5 October 2014)
Kunzle David “A
critical study of the Swiss artist who created the comic strip” available at http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/869 (Accessed:
5 October 2014)
Larimer Kevin “The Color and
the Shape of Memory: An Interview With Chris Ware available at http://www.pw.org/content/the_color_and_the_shape_of_memory_an_interview_with_chris_ware
(Accesed: 5 October 2014)
Olson. D. Richard “R. F. Outcault, The
Father of the American Sunday Comics, and the Truth About the Creation of the
Yellow Kid” available at http://www.neponset.com/yellowkid/history.htm (Accessed: 5 October 2014)
Raeburn Daniel (2004) Chris Ware, Pg 25 (Accessed: 5 October
2014)
Schulz. M Charles Schulz Museum “Charles M Shulz
Biography” available at https://schulzmuseum.org/about-the-man/schulz-biography/
(Accessed: 5 October 2014)
Images
Image 1 – Douglad Wolk, “Inside the box
“building stories” by Chris Ware”, available http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/books/review/building-stories-by-chris-ware.html? (Accessed 5 October 2014)
Image 2 -walt and skeezix, “Frank o
King”, available at http://www.du9.org/auteur/king-frank-o/ (Accessed 5 October
2014)
Image 3- Raeburn Daniel,
Chris Ware,Pg 25 (Accessed: 5 October 2014)
Footnotes
(1) kreilkamp
(2) Kelly, 2013
(3) Raeburn
(4) Larimer
(5) Cliffnotes
(6) Olson
