Chris Ware
Pantheon to publish Chris Ware’s Building Stories this fall
Building Stories
OK, so after I posted my list of comics I’m looking forward to this year, my buddy David Ball was like, “Dude, what about Building Stories?” And I was all like, “Building the what now?” And he was all like “You know, man, Chris Ware, the thing he’s been serializing forever in stuff like The New York Times and Acme Novelty, etc.” And then I was like, “No way man, for realz?” And he was like “Totes, man.” And then he sent me this link and it’s totally true. New Chris Ware book comin’ atcha this autumn.
Did anyone catch this before? The Pantheon post seems to be at least three months old, but I don’t remember anyone talking about it beforehand.
- January 13, 2012 @ 07:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Chris Ware creates movie poster for award-winning Thai film
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Chris Ware fans take note — the comics creator/designer has created a poster for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, a 2010 Thai film directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul that won the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.
The poster is for sale from Mondo Tees; it’s $75 and limited to 400.
- June 3, 2011 @ 11:30 AM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Spiegelman talks Grand Prix, Stephenson talks industry
Art Spiegelman
Creators | Michael Cavna talks with cartoonist Art Spiegelman about being only the third American to receive the Grand Prix from the Angoulême International Comics Festival. As recipient of the honor, the 62-year-old artist will help plan next year’s festival. “I don’t know whether you should say ‘congratulations’ or ‘condolences,’ ” he says. [The Washington Post]
Legal | A Michigan judge on Monday ordered the DNA of former retailer Michael George to be compared with a hair found on the body of his wife when she was shot to death in 1990 in their comic book store. George, 50, was found guilty in March 2008 of first-degree murder, but that conviction was set aside because of prosecutorial misconduct and the possibility of new evidence. [The Detroit News]
- February 1, 2011 @ 07:41 AM by Kevin Melrose
Comics A.M. | Spiegelman wins Grand Prix, Borders delays more payments
Art Spiegelman
Awards | Art Spiegelman on Sunday won the Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, marking only the third time an American has received the honor (the other two were Will Eisner and Robert Crumb). “Considering my poor skills, I’m looking a little like the president Obama receiving the Nobel Peace prize,” he told the festival by telephone from the United States. Spiegelman will serve as the grand marshal for next year’s event.
Other winners at the four-day festival, which drew an estimated 200,000 visitors, include David Mazzuchelli for Asterios Polyp (Grand Jury Prize), and Naoki Urasawa and the late Osamu Tezuka for Pluto (Intergenerational Award). The full list of winners can be found here. [Agence France-Presse]
Retailing | The beleaguered Borders Group announced on Sunday that it’s delaying January payments to vendors and landlords in an effort to save cash while it tries to complete a debt restructuring. This marks the second round of delays for the bookseller, which has been pressuring large publishers and distributors to agree by Feb. 1 to convert late payments into $125 million in loans. The bookstore chain announced just last week that it secured a $550 million credit line from G.E. Capital, but only if several tough conditions were met — including an unlikely agreement from publishers. [The Wall Street Journal]
- January 31, 2011 @ 07:20 AM by Kevin Melrose
Chris Ware covers Presspop’s Tank Tankuro collection
Tank Tankuro cover by Chris Ware
Comics creator Chris Ware provides the cover for Presspop’s upcoming Tank Tankuro: Perwar Works, which collects Gajo Sakamoto’s pre-World War II robot manga.
- December 17, 2010 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
Food or Comics? | This week’s comics on a budget
Chaos War: Alpha Flight #1
Welcome to another installment of “Food or Comics?” Every week we set certain hypothetical spending limits on ourselves and go through the agony of trying to determine what comes home and what stays on the shelves. So join us as we run down what comics we’d buy if they only had $15 and $30 to spend, as well as what we’d get if we had some “mad money” to splurge with.
Check out Diamond’s full release list for this week if you’d like to play along in our comments section.
Michael May
If I had $15:
I’d pick up Salimba ($9.99), because it’s Paul Chadwick drawing a jungle girl who fights pirates. Then I’d add Chaos War: Alpha Flight #1 ($3.99) to that pile. I’m a huge Alpha Flight fan and can’t wait to read about the original team’s new adventure, even if they are dead.
- November 23, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
If there were a comics version of the Netflix Watch Instantly queue, what would you put on it?
Today Pop Candy’s Whitney Matheson did something that some consider too revealing even in this socially networked, airport x-ray’d age: She posted 20 movies from her Netflix “Watch Instantly” queue. Like anyone else’s, it’s a motley crew of movies made possible by a massive library of films and the power to watch any of them at any time with a few clicks of a mouse — a blend of “comfort food” you want access to at all times, unwatched stuff you’re dying to see at the next available opportunity, major investments of time or energy you haven’t been prepared to make just yet, “eat your vegetables” fare you know you ought to watch eventually, and goofy guilty pleasures you’re simply tickled to be able to watch whenever you feel like it.
This got me thinking. I know there are any number of logistical and financial reasons why such a thing doesn’t exist for comics. But we comics readers are an imaginative bunch, no? And today I choose to imagine a world where I can load up pretty much any book I can think of and read to my heart’s content. So here’s what my imaginary “Read Instantly” queue would look like, circa today. Check it out, then let us know what’s on your queue in the comments!
- November 16, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Robot reviews: Acme Novelty Library Vol 20
Acme Novelty Library #20 by Chris Ware
Acme Novelty Library Vol. 20
by Chris Ware
Drawn & Quarterly, 72 pages $23.95
(Note: I shall endeavor to be as spoiler-free as possible, but obviously if you’re the sort who would rather dive into a book like this knowing as little as possible then you may not want to click on that “continue reading” link.)
Acme Novelty Library #20 is about an asshole. The book’s main character, one Jordan W. Lint, is a bully, a coward, an adulterer, a drunkard, is frequently callous and cruel to friends and family, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In some regards he is an outright monster.
And yet, Ware manages to make us not only care, rather deeply, about this unlikeable figure but also sympathize and, to a surprising degree, understand his plight. Without condoning or excusing his behavior, Ware manages to offer a portrait that is nuanced enough to make us reflect upon our own foibles and fears. If that’s not the mark of a great artist, I’m not sure what is.
- October 8, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Chris Ware covers The New Yorker
If it’s our umpteenth month with 9.5+% unemployment, it must be Chris Ware on the cover of this week’s “Money Issue” of The New Yorker, showing a family rendered faceless and hopeless by the economy. That’s our Chris — always good for a laugh!
In other news, you must read The ACME Novelty Library #20 when it comes out in November. That is all.
(via Whitney Matheson)
- October 6, 2010 @ 06:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
What Are You Reading?
Creepy Archives
Welcome once again to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look at what’s on the night stands of the Robot 6 crew. This week our special guest is Kody Chamberlain, who you might know from such comics as Punks, newuniversal: 1959, The Foundation and his latest, Sweets, from Image Comics.
To see what Kody and the rest of the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …
- August 1, 2010 @ 02:24 PM by JK Parkin
Hey look, it’s the cover for Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library #20
Acme Novelty Library #20 by Chris Ware
As if Memorial Day Weekend weren’t eventful enough for the nerd community, Blog Flume’s eagle-eyed Ken Parille spotted and posted the none-more-blue cover for the 20th installment of Chris Ware’s one-man anthology series, Acme Novelty Library. Subtitled “Lint,” the volume collects a chapter from the ongoing Rusty Brown graphic novel that Ware originally serialized in The Virginia Quarterly Review. The product description on Amazon reads like a bio for main character Jordan Wellington Lint; see if you can spot the quick phrase that hit me like a punch in the gut. The book hits shelves on October 12th of this year–earlier in the season than the last few releases, and hopefully early enough for the book to get ample consideration for year-end best-of listings. (Something tells me it’ll be worth considering.)
- June 1, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
Editing is thinking: An interview with David Ball
The Comics of Chris Ware: Drawing Is A Way of Thinking
I first met David Ball a few years ago, while working on a story for my employer, The Patriot-News, about how comics were being used in high school and college classrooms. Luckily for me, Ball just happened to be teaching a class on the subject at the nearby Dickinson College. Ball was kind enough to return the favor and invite me to speak to his comics class when he taught it again a few semesters later.
Fast forward to today, where Ball is co-editor, along with Martha Kuhlman, of the new book from the University of Mississippi Press, The Comics of Chris Ware: Drawing Is A Way of Thinking, a collection of essays by noted comics scholars like Jeet Heer about the seminal Acme cartoonist.
Knowing Ball lived and worked next door (relatively speaking), it seemed silly for me not to get in touch with him and see if he was up for an interview. Thankfully, he was eager to talk about the book.
Why Ware? What is it about him and his comics that you feel justify a book of this nature?
Unlike many of our contributors in the collected volume, I came to Ware’s work very late and not as a dedicated reader of comics but rather as a scholar of American literature. I had known that fascinating things were going on in contemporary comics for a while, but reading Jimmy Corrigan knocked the wind out of me. The book seemed so versed in the American literary genealogy of Melville and Faulkner and Nabokov with which I was familiar, but was using techniques, referring to other comics, and stretching my brain in ways that were wholly new to me. I knew that I would need to educate myself rapidly to catch up — a still ongoing process — and that colleagues in history, art history, and comparative literature, as well as comics commentators and enthusiasts could help me better understand what I was reading. Ware quickly became a discovery I could share with others and a way I could talk to, and learn from, scholars and readers whose interests were different than mine. That kind of intellectual dialogue is what this book of essays is about, and I hope that readers of the volume will similarly find ideas that are new to them, and share in that sense of discovery. Every time I reread one of Ware’s comics, or get my hands on a new fragment of “Rusty Brown” or “Building Stories,” I find something new and unexpected. That sense of discovery is a rare thing in any art form, and I’m convinced it’s why we’ll still be reading Ware fifty years from now.
- May 7, 2010 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Comics College: Chris Ware
Quimby the Mouse
Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.
This month we’re examining looking at the career of one Chris Ware, who’s name you may have seen bandied about in certain circles here and there. He’s certainly become one of the more divisive figures in comics — those who love him proclaim him to be one of the finest and most important cartoonists working in the field today, while those who dislike him describe his work as cold, overly precise, depressing and overly pretentious.
I don’t believe any of those descriptors are true (at least not to the extent that his critics seem to think they are) but I can see where those who have for one reason or another avoided his work thus far may have difficulty finding an entry point. So let’s see if we can alleviate that problem somewhat …
- March 26, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Mautner
New Yorker celebrates birthday with Ware, Tomine, Clowes, Brunetti
Yes, the New Yorker
Heidi MacDonald and D&Q beat me to the punch, but just in case you missed the news, I thought I’d let you know that this week’s issue of The New Yorker magazine is sporting four swell covers by Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Adrian Tomine and Ivan Brunetti. Supposedly when you arrange the four covers together in a certain way, a super-secret picture forms. Alright, I’ll spoil it: It’s a picture of Eustace Tilly. It must be one of those “Magic Eye” type images though, because I’ve been staring at the bloody things for hours on end, and all I’m getting is a headache.
- February 9, 2010 @ 08:51 AM by Chris Mautner
Conan O’Brien’s Chris Ware homage
Conan O'Brien, the Smartest Fired Talk Show Host on Earth
As if we didn’t already have enough reasons to join Team Coco: Peggy Burns at Drawn & Quarterly draws our attention to a very cool pre-commercial bumper that the soon-to-be late and lamented Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien used the other night, featuring art that looks a whole heckuva lot like the sticks ‘n’ circles style of ACME Novelty Library genius Chris Ware. Peggy snagged the screenshot from Adam Kempa, who reproduces an earlier Ware Easter egg from the show as well. Unfortunately, with the final episode airing tonight, I guess we won’t be seeing any more … for now, at least.
I sat around trying to fill in the blank for “Heh, Jay Leno probably reads _____ instead,” but I couldn’t think of a comic so self-evidently lame that it wouldn’t fill the comment thread with pissed-off fans anyway.
- January 22, 2010 @ 07:48 AM by Sean T. Collins