Chris Ware Report

Introduction

This short report will examine some of the work of Sequential Artist Chris Ware and briefly analyse his fascination with time and memory.

It was Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, which made Chris Ware famous. This won him the Guardian Newspaper's first novel award (1) , as well as acclaim amongst scholars.

Fig.1 Jimmy Corrigan Smartest Kid on Earth

Prior to this, he had cartoons published in UT Austin's Daily Texan and, in 1990, four pages in RAW which gave him widespread attention and a thriving fan base.

Fig. 2 RAW Magazine in 1991, “Thrilling Adventure Stories/I Guess

Over the course of ten years, 1990-2000, Ware produced fourteen volumes of The ACME Novelty Library (2), which he said of the title,

...why you shouldn't name anything in your twenties!(4)

It was this collection of comic stories, which Ware used to develop his graphic design and composition styles, along with his semi-autobiographical characters (5). They even included fabricated funny adverts like this one (fig. 3):

Fig. 3 ACME Novelty Library

In the box of comics, Building Stories (Fig.5), pamphlets and even a game-board, tells the story of an apartment building in Chicago and it's inhabitants, again using Ware's remarkable ability to portray time and memory (6).

Fig.4 Building Stories

Time and Memory

Ware's narratives function around an interesting concept: a comic enables the viewing of panels/scenes at the same time, like actual memory function. Roberto Bartual says in his journal paper, (Towards Panoptical Representation of Time and Memory: Chris Ware...), that traditionally novels and movies follow a linear format, where one scene leads into another and so on.  There are exceptions, where the screen may be split, showing simultaneous events. Chris Ware's works use the comic format to convey the narrative in the way that memories are formed in the mind, simultaneously.

Comic stories also follow the tradition of a linear sequence, however, the other panels are still visible, even though they have been viewed in order already. Chris Ware uses this to his advantage. His narratives follow this linear path, and, in addition, he employs other techniques of displaying sections of his stories in the form of diagrams (Fig.5) and it is this method of depiction which sets him part from(7):

...the concepts of time and memory we have inherited from pre-modernist literature and classic Hollywood film-making(8)

Chris Ware says his way of illustrating is an,

...attempt to encode emotions onto the page in a very regular way that one can read through and hopefully those feelings can be recreated(9). 

Influences 

Ware grew up with Shulz's Charlie Brown, whose characters showed human emotional frailties that could be empathised with by the readers. Another influence on Ware was Art Speigelman's Maus(10), and America's "funnies" of the 1920s and 1930s(11).

Fig.5 60 years of Charlie Brown

Fig.6 Art Speigelmen's Maus

Practice as Research

Brief: To produce a diagrammatic illustration

I have attempted this and found it surprisingly challenging. I used a story I have written and am developing for a sequential illustration module. I will upload this once it is completed

Footnotes

1. pg.184 Gravett, Paul. Graphic Novels Stories to Change Your Life (2005) Aurum Press Limited
2. pg.145 Pemberton, Michael A. College Literature. Fall 2012 Vol.39 Issue 4
3. pg.145 Pemberton, Michael A. College Literature. Fall 2012 Vol.39 Issue 4

4.1min3sec Chris Ware at the Printers Row Lit Fest 1-2 Youtube

5. pg.23 Gravett, Paul. Graphic Novels Stories to Change Your Life Aurum Press Limited 2005

6. Wolk, Douglas. Inside the Box 'Building Stories,’ by Chris Ware. The New York Times, October 18, 2012

7. Bartual, Roberto. Towards a Panoptical Representation of Time and Memory: Chris Ware, Marcel Proust and Henri Bergson's "Pure Duration", Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art (SJoCA) Vol. 1:1 Spring 2012)

8. Bartual, Roberto. Towards a Panoptical Representation of Time and Memory: Chris Ware, Marcel Proust and Henri Bergson's "Pure Duration", Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art (SJoCA) Vol. 1:1 Spring 2012

9. 6min30sec Chris Ware on Bookworm: Interview with Michael Silverblatt YouTube

10. pg.22 Gravett, Paul. Graphic Novels Stories to Change Your Life (2005) Aurum Press Limited

11. pg.39 Gravett, Paul. Graphic Novels Stories to Change Your Life (2005) Aurum Press Limited

Bibliography

Bartual, Roberto. Towards a Panoptical Representation of Time and Memory: Chris Ware, Marcel 

Gravett, Paul. Graphic Novels Stories to Change Your Life (2005) Aurum Press Limited

Pemberton, Michael A. College Literature. Fall 2012 Vol.39 Issue 4
Proust and Henri Bergson's "Pure Duration", Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art (SJoCA) Vol. 1:1 Spring 2012)

Ware, Chris. Bookworm: Interview with Michael Silverblatt YouTube
Ware, Chris. at the Printers Row Lit Fest 1-2 Youtube

Wolk, Douglas. Inside the Box 'Building Stories,’ by Chris Ware. The New York Times, October 18, 2012