I Like Comics

Chris Ware is one of the most lauded cartoonists and designers in the country. From inside comics and out, Ware has found tremendous success since the 2000 publication of Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Pantheon Books. It went on to become a bestseller. Jimmy Corrigan is now a basic resume entry of the “comics as literature” concept, appearing in college syllabi and library lists.

Below, you will find a selected bibliography of Ware’s publications. You can then find many links to fascinating reviews from the mainstream press, the fan press, and academics. There are also many web sites where you can find images of Ware’s work, listed at the bottom of this page.

Chris Ware Bibliography

Books

These are all very widely available.

Chris Ware’s first and most significant book (2000) is Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth. This book won him several awards, including the Guardian First Book Award in England, and pretty much every comic industry award. This book serialized Acme Novelty Library issues 5-6, 8-9, and 11-14, with an excerpt from #1.
The original hardcover edition contains the gorgeous fold-out cover that makes a large, double-sided poster that one can pore over for hours, and a unique design on the book boards and endpapers. A paperback version, beautiful in its own right, was published in 2003 with a new cover, placing one side of the fold-out poster inside the book, with blubs along the margin.

Quimby The Mouse (2002) is Ware’s second book. It collects Acme Novelty Library volumes 2 and 4, along with some bonus material: [”I’ve Been Visitng My Grandmonther Every Week Since She Started Getting Really Sick”], a four-page story original published in Kaz’s short-lived anthology Snake Eyes; “Every Morning” and “The Daily Observer,” additional full-color grandmother-related material (I don’t think it was published before, outside of the newspaper strip); “I Guess,” the breakthrough strip from RAW v2n3; and a new four-page introduction. The material has been thoroughly picked-over, rearranged, recolored, and in some instances colorized by the artist. The cover includes the mural which Ware created for Dave Eggers’ 826 Valencia school/store in California. Links to reviews are below.

The Acme Novelty Datebook 1986-1995 (2003), Ware’s third book, is the long-awaited sketchbook. Copublished by Drawn and Quarterly (Canada) and Oog & Blik (The Netherlands), this international effort presents Ware’s work in an ideal environment: a clothbound hardcover, gloriously printed on heavy stock in The Netherlands, selected, designed, and introduced by the artist. Here, we can see Ware creating in a looser style. The contents range from pornographic sketches, to outlines of comic books published and unpublished, to finished strips, to portraits, landscapes, and renderings of urban architecture. It’s phenomenal. Reviews are linked below.

The Acme Novelty Library is expected to be released in 2005 by Pantheon. It will collect Acme Novelty Library issues 7 and 15 — the enormous issues (18″ tall x 10.75″ wide!). There will be extra material as well. The original books contained one-page stories in the format of classic newspaper cartoons, but always with a heartbreaking twist. The strips are visually astonishing, displaying Ware’s masterly use of color, layout, character design, and pacing. Look out for this one — but it’ll be hard to miss…

Comic Books

Ware’s series, Acme Novelty Library, is published by Fantagraphics in many different formats. (From issue 16 on, the series will be published by Ware and distributed by Fantagraphics.) Most of the issues are out of print. Those that are not collected in a book are in boldface. All unlisted issues are part of the Jimmy Corrigan book.
Keep in mind: The issues’ volume number refers to the order in which Ware created the art; the issue number refers to the order in which the pamphlets were published. Hence the first issue of Acme Novelty Library is labeled as “volume 4.”
1 comic book size, early Jimmy Corrigan strips.
2 Quimby the Mouse
3 Very early “Potato Man” stories. (in print!)
4 Sparky the Cat (Quimby the Mouse, book 2)
7 “Book of Jokes” (oversize) small>(part of Acme Novelty Library book)
10 Digest-size Jimmy Corrigan “kid” story that ran in Blab, with many fake ads.
15 “Book of Jokes” 2 (oversize) (part of Acme Novelty Library book)
16 is a hardcover (and available in the book market), starting the official Rusty Brown saga. This and the following several volumes will eventually be released in one large hardcover.

Appearances in Periodicals and Anthologies

The Acme Novelty Warehouse has not been updated since 1999, but it includes an excellent listing of Ware’s early appearances, which were many.

Far and above Ware’s most important anthology appearance is his piece from RAW vol. 2 no. 3, Thrilling Adventure Stories. That was his breakthrough — his material since then has really been based on the same premise as that piece. The whole story is avaliable online, courtesy of NPR (see below); it has also been printed, in color, in Quimby The Mouse.

There’s a great Ware piece in Little Lit 1, which will be reviewed on that page. He rocks the endpapers in that book.

Every week for years, Ware has been publishing a full-page newspaper strip in a free Chicago weekly; originally it was New City, now the Chicago Reader. Recently he has shifted his schedule to once a month, to devote more time to his other publishing projects.

Designed / Edited Books

These books will all have their own pages eventually. Mcswy 13 is an essential anthology.

REVIEWS / ONLINE MATERIAL

• Andrew Arnold: Best of 2000 / review of Acme 15.
• Acme Novelty Warehouse - a fan bibliography that hasn’t been updated since mid-1999. But in early material, it is an invaluable reference.
• Tuscon Weekly - Brief review of ANL #7, the first super-giant size issue.
• The Acme Novelty Library Magazine - Pour commencer disons qu’on vous mette dans les mains tous les albums d’Acme Novelty Library, son principal travail.
• Fantagraphics: Chris Ware - Fantagraphics (FBI) is the publisher, and useful mostly as a source of info on what’s in print. Also use the shopping cart to get info.

  On Jimmy Corrigan, the book

• NY Times Review by Dave Eggers (requires login).
• The Guardian First Book Award - The Guardian’s section on Jimmy Corrigan, featuring critical articles, an appreciation by Raymond Briggs, and streaming audio!
• Please Don’t Hate Him - by Chip Kidd. Originally from Print magazine, now on Pantheon’s website.
• 100 Years of Solitude - by Richard von Busack for Metroactive (San Jose). Bill Boichel calls this “The Eloquent Cultural Validation.”
  CNN.com Book Review - by Beth Nissen. Good overview, supported by Ware and Kidd interviews.

  INTERVIEWS

• The Onion / AV Club
• This American Life, “Superpowers,” 2/23/01 (audio)
• Q and A With Comicbook Master Chris Ware, by Time.comix’s Andrew Arnold

MAJOR CRITICAL ESSAYS / OFFLINE MATERIAL

• Dan Raeburn, Chris Ware: Monographics Series. This is a slick art book with text by Dan Raeburn and rare illustrations and photographs of Ware’s work. I haven’t read this book but I hear it’s good. Unfortunately, they didn’t let Raeburn design it, so the layout is pretty uninteresting, especially when compared with…
• Dan Raeburn, The Imp #3 - danraeburn@earthlink.net for info. This is a tabloid-size printed “newspaper” from that king of super-fanzines, Dan Raeburn. A must-read. Several articles plus an interview. Whatever it is that honey wraps around. There are also full-color strips in the middle! Raeburn is a wonder! (Hard to find.)
• Gene Kannenberg, Form, Function, Fiction - if you have access to Dissertations Online, I strongly recommend downloading and finding someplace to print this awesome dissertation. You can also find the Chris Ware chapter in a better format in The Language of Comics, edited by Robin Varnum. The rest of the paper is great too. It focuses mainly on super-formal analysis but also hits on other
  methods of reading Ware.
• The Comics Journal #200. I still haven’t seen it but there’s a Ware cover and a huge Groth/Ware interview.
  

  ONLINE GALLERIES

• The Guardian - six pages from the beginning of JC.
• This American Life presents “I Guess” (”Thrilling Adventure Stories”). This is it, the big Ware breakthrough piece from RAW vol. 2 no. 3, online and legible, all pages!
• Niemworks / My Acme Novelty Toy Gallery - An internet gallery of Chris Ware’s paper toys, assembled. Eye-popping beauty.
• Acme Novelty Warehouse also has scans along with every review, and the animated GIFs are priceless.
• Lambiek - If you’ve got $5,000, you can buy the painting pictured at right. Start saving those pennies! [Update: it’s been sold.]
• The Artwork of Chris Ware - One man’s gratuitous display of badly photographed original artwork, along with small (but still almost legible) scans of the printed pages.
  The pages are interesting because they’re “New City” pages mostly, so many of the pages are never before seen by us non-Chicagoans. ALSO, if you click “More Chris Ware” at the bottom of the first page, you’ll see more great animated gifs from the Acme series.
• Hotwired - Pages still up from 1995! A serial of the beginning of the JC hardcover (or ANL #5).
• 5ive Style - Just click!!!!
• Pantheon Jimmy Corrigan Gallery - Pantheon’s page includes three of my favorite pages from the Jimmy book. Also: a ridiculous Flash version of the dust jacket, and another page with many more well-chosen images.

Amazon.com has “inside this book” for most of Ware’s books. Just click on any link to a book page, above on this page.