Chris Ware

The other day I was looking through my books when I rediscovered how much I love the work of the awarding winning, Chris Ware. I remember writing an essay about him at uni just when he published his graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth in 2000.

I have to say I'm not a huge comic book fan (although I was brought up on children's comics such as Rupert the Bear and Beano). But I just fell in love with Ware's comic book style as it is so graphic; beautifully laid out and disarmingly lighthearted. Amazingly he draws all these precise images by hand using 'old skool' techniques such as pencil, rulers, compasses, set squares etc so no computers are involved in the process. The amount of detail he adds to his pages is just outstanding and they have a very filmic feel about them, especially when he pans out on an image or magnifies it.

Quimby the Mouse is perhaps his most autobiographical character which bears a similar resemblance to the early animation characters like Felix the Cat and he is also well known for the series called the Acme Novelty Library.


Strangely Ware also illustrated issue 13 of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern book (which is a quarterly literary review of various writings). McSweeney's are an American publishing house which helps young writers, which coincidentally is part of the 826National group. Such a small world...