Go Visit A Comics Exhibition In September!

UNITED KINGDOM:

Quentin Blake and John Yeoman: 50 Years of Children’s Books
A celebration of over 40 books created by Quentin Blake with writer John Yeoman. More details...
Where: Derby Museum & Art Gallery, Derby
When: Now until 3 October 2021

Ralph Steadman: Hidden Treasures
The first ever public display of three never-before-seen artworks by British satirist, artist, cartoonist, illustrator and writer Ralph Steadman. More details...
Where: The Cartoon Museum, London
When: Now until 10 October 2021

Black Panther & The Power of Stories
Three iconic costumes from Marvel Black Panther film - T’Challa, Shuri and Okoye - sit alongside Marvel comics, historic museum objects and local stories. More details...
Where: Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
When: Now until 24 October 2021

V For Vendetta: Behind The Mask
This major new exhibition invites you to step inside the story and characters of one of the world’s most iconic graphic novels: V for Vendetta. Featuring original artwork by David Lloyd. More details...
Where: The Cartoon Museum, London
When: Now until 31 October 2021

Drawing Life
A new display showcasing the very best of the Cartoon Museum collection of cartoon art, curated by Guardian cartoonist and Cartoon Museum Trustee, Steve Bell. More details...
Where: The Cartoon Museum, London
When: Now until 31 December 2021

The Political Comics & Cartoons of Martin Rowson
Featuring Rowson’s most powerful political cartoons, caricatures and comics from the past forty years. More details...
Where: Kendel, Cumbria
When: 15 October to 5 November 2021

Beano: The Art of Breaking The Rules
Come face-to-face with the Beano gang through original comic artwork and amazing artefacts, plundered from the Beano’s archive. More details...
Where: Somerset House, London
When: 21 October 2021 to 6 March 2022

NORTH AMERICA:

Three With a Pen: Lily Renée, Bil Spira & Paul Peter Porges
Featuring works by the three Jewish artists driven from their homes in Vienna after the German annexation of Austria, the so-called “Anschluss,” in 1938. More details...
Where: Austrian Cultural Forum, New York
When: Now until 3 September 2021

George Bess: Tale of Unrealism
Featuring the stunning artwork of French artist, George Bess, best known for his collaborations with Alejandro Jodorowsky. More details...
Where: Phillippe Labaune Gallery, New York
When: 9 September to 5 October 2021

Hometown Heroes: Steve Ditko
A retrospective exhibit of the legendary Steve Ditko’s career, with original works, production art, prints and memorabilia. More details...
Where: Bottleworks, Johnstown, PA
When: Now until 11 September 2021

Drawn to Combat: Bill Mauldin & The Art of War
A retrospective of the provocative work by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin about a nation’s time of war, civil rights, and social justice. More details...
Where: Pritzker Military Museum, Chicago
When: Now until Spring 2022

Chicago: Where Comics Came to Life  - 1880 To 1960
Curated by Chris Ware, and Chicago Cultural Historian, Tim Samuelson, this exhibition is a historical companion to the concurrently appearing survey of contemporary Chicago comics at the MCA. More details...
Where: Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago
When: Now until 3 October 2021

Chicago Comics: 1960s To Now
Telling the story of the art form in the influential city through the work of Chicago’s many cartoonists: known, under-recognized and up-and-coming. Featuring Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Chester Gould and more! More details...
Where: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
When: Now until 3 October 2021

Society of Illustraors: Comic Art Exhibition & Sale
Over 180 pieces of original comic book art from EC, Marvel & DC, from 1935 up to the modern era. More details...
Where: Society of Illustrators, New York
When: Now until 23 October, 2021

Marvel Universe of Superheroes
Celebrating Marvel history with more than 300 artefacts - original comic book pages, sculptures, interactive displays and costumes and props from the Marvel blockbuster films. More details...
Where: Museum of Science & Industry, Chicago
When: Now until 24 October 2021

Walt Kelly: Into The Swamp
Celebrating Walt Kelly and his social commentary through the joyous, poignant, and occasionally profound insights and beauty of the alternative universe that is Pogo. More details...
Where: Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Columbus, Ohio
When: Now until 31 October 2021

The Legend of Wonder Woman
An exhibition celebrating 80 years of DC Comics’ iconic Amazon. More details...
Where: Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco
When: Now until 31 December 2021

Romanticism To Ruin: Reconstructing the Garrick
Focused on the lost buildings of Louis Sullivan. Co-curated by John Vinci, Tim Samuelson, Chris Ware and Eric Nordstrom. More details...
Where: WrightWood659, Chicago
When: 24 September to 27 November 2021

Marvelocity: The Art of Alex Ross
Featuring original art from his most recent book, Marvelocity, visitors will also learn about how Alex Ross developed into a great illustrator through his childhood drawings, preliminary sketches and paintings. More details...
Where: Canton, Ohio
When: 23 November 2021 to 6 March 2022

COMIC ART MUSEUMS & GALLERIES

UNITED KINGDOM:

British Cartoon Archive
By appointment access to over 200,000 cartoons and comics. More details...
Where: University of Kent, Canterbury

Heath Robinson Museum
A permanent exhibition dedicated to Heath Robinson’s eccentric artistic career. More details...
Where: Pinner, London

Orbital Art Gallery
The gallery space of an awesome comics shop. More details...
Where: Central London

Quentin Blake Center for Illustration
Soon to be home to Quentin Blake's archive of 40,000 works. More details...
Where: Clerkenwell, London

The Cartoon Museum
Celebrating Britain’s cartoon and comic art heritage. More details...
Where: Central London

V&A National Art Library Comic Art Collection
By appointment access to the Krazy Kat Arkive & Rakoff Collection. More details...
Where: South Kensington, London

EUROPE:

Basel Cartoon Museum
Devoted to the art of narrative drawing. More details...
Where: Basel, Switzerland

Belgian Comics Art Museum
Honouring the creators and heroes of the 9th Art for over 30 years. More details...
Where: Brussels

Hergé Museum
Explore the life and work of the creator of Tintin. More details...
Where: Belgium

Le Musee de la Bande Dessinee
A celebration of European comics culture. More details...
Where, Angouleme, France

NORTH AMERICA:

Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum
The world’s largest collection of materials related to cartoons and comics. More details...
Where: Columbus, Ohio

Cartoon Art Museum
Exploring comic strips, comic books, political cartoons and underground comix. More details...
Where: San Francisco, California

Charles M. Schulz Museum
Dedicated to the life and works of the Peanuts creator. More details...
Where: Santa Rosa, California

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
Bookstore and gallery space of the publisher of the world's greatest cartoonists. More details...
Where: Seattle, Washington

Frazetta Art Museum
The largest collection of Frazetta art. More details...
Where: East Stroudburg, PA

Norman Rockwell Museum
Illuminating the power of American illustration art to reflect and shape society. More details...
Where: Stockbridge, MA

Philippe Labaune Gallery
Comic art and illustration by emerging and established artists from around the world. More details...
Where: New York, NY

The Society of Illustrators
Dedicated to the art of illustration in America. More details...
Where: New York, NY

STILL ON HOLIDAY!

 

...but RYR will be back in early September.

See you then!

GONE ON HOLIDAY!

...but RYR will be back in early September.

See you then!

City Of Glass: Introduction by Art Spiegelman

City of Glass (1994)

by Paul Karasik & David Mazzucchelli

It was a misnomer that started it...

A "Graphic Novel!" Bah! 

What would Peter Stillman, Paul Auster's cracked seeker of Ur-language in City of Glass call the visual adaptation of the novel he figures in? A Crumblechaw? A Nincompictopoop?? An Ikonologosplatt??? Comics may no longer be the "real name" for a narrative medium that intimately intertwines words and pictures but isn't necessarily comic in tone.

In the mid '80s some well-intended journalists and booksellers tried to distinguish a handful of book-format comics from other, less ambitious, works by dubbing them "graphic novels." But even though my own book, Maus, was partially responsible for making bookstores safe for comics, the new label stuck in my craw as a mere cosmetic bid for respectability. Since "graphics" were respectable and "novels" were respectable (though that hadn't always been the case), surely "graphic novels" must be doubly respectable!

It was a wrong-headed notion that started it...

It would take another decade before enough long, ambitious comics gave the concept critical mass - until enough work worthy of critical attention made a bookstore section of some sort inevitable - but, tired of seeing my Maus volumes surrounded by fantasy and role-playing game manuals, I tried to jump-start the process. In the early '90s I groused to one of my editors that if my work was fated to be ghettoized in a graphic novel section, perhaps the neighborhood could be improved by hiring some serious novelists to provide scenarios for skilled graphic artists. I got permission to approach several well-known novelists, including William Kennedy, John Updike and Paul Auster.

It was a number of friendships that started it...

I was fortunate enough to become friends with Paul Auster in the late 1980s, and my repeated cajoling got him to toy with the possibility of collaborating with a cartoonist. He had the glimmering of an idea: a vision of a boy floating above water. Next thing I knew, that glimmer became his next novel, Mr. Vertigo, and he kindly invited me to provide a jacket drawing. All the novelists I contacted were intrigued by my proposal, then fled. (Updike, who early in his career wanted to become a cartoonist, said it had taken him fifty years to finally become reconciled to making his cartoons with words.) Even I was a bit dubious of my own idea, secretly convinced that the "purest" expression of the comics form demanded text and pictures made by one person.

And so the project languished, only to be replaced with what I believed was an even worse idea. At some point Paul had suggested that I simply adapt one of his already published works. I shrugged that off until another friend, Bob Callahan, in turn cajoled me into co-editing a series of books with him: comics adaptations of urban noir-inflected literature. I couldn't figure out why on Earth anyone should bother to adapt a book into... another book! To make the task more difficult, the goal here was not to create some dumbed-down "Classics Illustrated" versions, but visual "translations" actually worthy of adult attention. City of Glass was exactly the sort of novel Callahan was reaching for to define what we eventually called "Neon Lit," but rereading Auster's slim volume made the choice seem downright daunting - and therefore actually worth a shot! For all its playful references to pulp fiction, City of Glass is a surprisingly non-visual work at its core, a complex web of words and abstract ideas in playfully shifting narrative styles. (Paul warned me that several attempts to turn his book into a film script had failed miserably.)

I enlisted David Mazzucchelli, whose art on Frank Miller's Batman: Year One had shown a grace, economy and understanding of the form that made the superhero genre almost interesting. The astonishing avant-garde comics and graphics he then went on to self-publish after abandoning the "mainstream" at the height of his acclaim made him seem ideally suited to the challenge of grappling with our proposed adaptation. But after a number of attempts, David began to look disheartened: he was more than able to tell the "story" in Paul's novel but couldn't quite locate the inner rhythms and real mysteries that made the story worth telling. Maybe it was impossible.

Grasping at straws, I called Paul Karasik who had been a student of mine at New York's School of Visual Arts back in 1981 and 1982 (the very years, it turns out, that Paul Auster was writing City of Glass). As a teacher I had come up with some resolutely implausible assignments - like asking students to turn a rather non-narrative passage of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury into comics - and Karasik had consistently demonstrated a gift for intelligent, plausible solutions.

After explaining our impasse, I remember him cockily telling me he was born for this assignment, but I didn't hear his Auster-like back-story til much later. It seems that back in 1987 (the year, it turns out, that Paul Auster and I first met) Paul Karasik was teaching art at Packer Collegiate in Brooklyn Heights. Learning that one of his most talented eleven year old students, Daniel, was the son of the novelist, Paul Auster, Karasik read several of his books, and for a lark... broke down a few pages of City of Glass in one of his sketchbooks!

The new breakdown sketches he did six or seven years after that first experiment were inspired. When I got to the pages that captured Peter Stillman's memorable speech to Quinn, my jaw dropped. It was an uncanny visual equivalent to Auster's description of Stillman's voice and movements:

"Machine-like, fitful, alternating between slow and rapid gestures, rigid and yet expressive, as if the operation were out of control, not quite corresponding to the will that lay behind it." 

By insisting on a strict, regular grid of panels, Karasik located the Ur-language of Comics: the grid as window, as prison door, as city block, as tic-tac-toe board; the grid as a metronome giving measure to the narrative's shifts and fits.

There was one problem with the sketches: Neon Lit's small final page format couldn't accommodate all those relentless rows of tiny panels without looking uncomfortably cramped. The scrupulous compressions (Paul K had shaped the adaptation so that each cluster of panels took up proportionally about as much space as the corresponding paragraphs did in Paul A's prose original) needed to be rethought so the pages could "breathe" a bit more. Occasional larger images were needed to beckon the reader's eyeballs into the congested grid. Fortuitously, this allowed David back in as a full participant in the further condensing and reshaping whereby he could engage the work with all his formidable skills.

As for Auster, I'm convinced he behaved generously throughout...

Paul Auster, appreciative of the wiggle-room translations and adaptations demand, spent a long, fruitful day with Mazzucchelli, Karasik and I, studying the draft and offering suggestions. Generous as always, he was pleased and supportive, but I don't think he fully realized just how overwhelming the odds against success had been or that his novel had occasioned a break-through work. By poking at the heart of comics structure, Karasik and Mazzucchelli created a strange doppelganger of the original book. It's as if Quinn, confronted with two nearly identical Peter Stillmans at Grand Central Station, chose to follow one drawn with brush and ink rather than one set in type. The volume that resulted, first published in 1994, overcame all my purist notions about collaboration. It offers one of the richest demonstrations to date of the modern Ikonologosplatt at its most subtle and supple.

 - art spiegelman 12/31/03

Uncle Scrooge by Carl Barks (No. 20)

Uncle Scrooge (1952-1967)

by Carl Barks

REVIEW BY KIM THOMPSON:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

Half a decade in to his stint as the preeminent teller of Disney duck stories, Carl Barks had raided Dickens's Christmas Carol to create a miserly old zillionaire for Christmas on Bear Mountain (Four Color #178, 1947). Designed as a one-shot character, Scrooge McDuck proved popular enough to make regular appearances in Bark's full-length Donald Duck stories throughout the next five years. Readers liked him, the Disney editors liked him, and for Barks, he was an invaluable plot mechanism: As a rich industrialist with a finger in every foreign pie, he proved a cozy rationale for the ducks' globe trotting exploits.

In 1952, Scrooge was granted his own comic. Barks celebrated Scrooge's autonomy with the issue-length Four Color story Only A Poor Old Man - a standard battle with the larcenous Beagle Bros, it doubled as a perfect summation of Scrooge's final personality: less nasty and cantankerous than the '40s  McDuck, but more complex and sympathetic.

Barks would write and draw four to six full-length Uncle Scrooge adventures a year for the next decade and a half. It's true that by this time, Barks had moved past his first hot blast of inspiration, but to argue that the Scrooge stories were not as brilliant as Barks' '40s work is hardly a slight. Even if some of the sharp edges had been lost (including the rounder, cartooned, less detailed artwork), Barks proved in such yarns as Back To The Klondike, The Golden Fleecing, Land Beneath The Ground, The Golden River, The Flying Dutchman, and stories set in Atlantis and Seven Cities of Cibola, that he still had a sense of wit and craftsmanship, that far outstripped other cartoonists. 

Barks often dropped hints about Scrooge's past. These hints were studied obsessively by fans - one of whom, Don Rosa, would eventually attempt to weave them all into a single "history" of Scrooge. The effort was never entirely convincing (Barks himself, who had no such grand scheme in mind, had thrown in flashbacks or lines of dialogue purely on a story-by-story basis) but it suggests the degree to which the world Barks delineated in these stories created its own reality - and give a hint as to why the Scrooge cannon remains a particular favourite among many readers.

REVIEW BY ART SPIEGELMAN:
I loved Carl Barks' work since those days of long-lost innocence when I assumed the duck stories were all written and drawn by Walt Disney himself. As far as I was concerned, they were Walt's best work, done on lunch-breaks, when he wasn't making animated cartoons or hosting his weekly TV show. Before that I just believed the ducks were somehow real, and now, as an adult I've reverted to my first opinion: the ducks ARE real. Not the way they look, of course, but they're emotionally real, realer than most people I've met.

FURTHER READING:

The Complete Carl Barks Library at Fantagraphics Books

EC Horror Comics by Al Feldstein & Others (No. 54)

EC Horror Comics (1950-1955)

by Al Feldstein & Others

REVIEW BY KIM THOMPSON:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

Created, with more than a dash of calculation and cynicism, by William M. Gaines to save the faltering comic book outfit he had inherited from his father, EC Comics' three continuing horror titles - Tales From The Crypt, Vault of Horror and Haunt of Fear - generated sacks of money (for its publisher), heaps of outrage (from its detractors), and undying loyalty (from its fans) until the company was virtually destroyed by the forces of decency (a story that need not be told here).

No comic book company, before or since, has maintained such a high standard of graphic excellence as EC - and the horror comics boasted some of the best artists even within EC. Jack Davis' southern-fried Bigfoot style routinely curdled laughter into terror; Graham Ingels' putrescent detail gave a tactile impact to his tales of ghouls and decomposing corpses; and Johnny Craig (who also wrote many of his own stories, and took over the editorial reins on Vault of Horror) trumped them all by presenting the most awful occurrences in such clean and tidy strokes that the horror seemed to leak out between the panels. (As a result, a Craig axe-in-the-head panel seemed to carry more of a jolt than any graphic disembowlment from the pen of his peers.) Reed Crandall, George Evan, and even the maligned Jack Kamen, while not as distinctive, ensure that no EC horror story was drawn with anything less than superlative skill, and the occasional surprise appearance by an Al Williamson or a Bernard Krigstein (or, on the writer's side, Ray Bradbury!) kept things hopping.

Frequently formulaic (bad person get ironically appropriate comeuppance), often ludicrously overwritten, and knee-jerkingly transgressive to a fault, the EC horror comics remain compelling and influential half a century after their initial release. Their mixture of campy comedy (typified by the cackling, pun-crazy "hosts" who married every story) and unflinching, grisly horror has been endlessly copied - in other comics, on TV, and on the silver screen - but never with the panache and freshness of those pulpy pamphlets. In fact, even if their ambitions may not have been as great, they often remain more compulsively readable than Feldstein's (somewhat) more serious-minded ventures into socially conscious crime fiction (Crime and Shock Suspen-Stories) and science fiction (Weird Science and Weird Fantasy).

FURTHER READING:

EC Comics at Fantagraphics Books

TCJ Obituary: Al Feldstein (1925-2014)

TCJ Interview: Al Feldstein (2013)

TCJ Interview: Al Feldstein (1995)

TCJ: The Horror! The Horror!: Graham Ingels and the Art of Real Yuch

Hey, Look! by Harvey Kurtzman (No. 63)

Hey, Look! (1946-1949)

by Harvey Kurtzman

REVIEW BY ERIC REYNOLDS:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

MAD may be Harvey Kurtzman's lasting legacy when it comes to defining his artistic genius and contribution to American pop culture, but the one-page Hey, Look! strips that Harvey Kurtzman created in the late-1940s are perhaps the purest record of Kurtzman's talent as a cartoonist. The 150 or so strips play to the strengths of the medium so effortlessly and economically that they are, at least in terms of the craft of doing comics, better evidence to Kurtzman's talents than MAD. MAD is certainly the reason that Kurtzman is remembered as one of the four defining classic American comic book cartoonists (along with Barks, Eisner and Kirby), but the Hey, Look! strips are amongst the purest expressions of cartooning ever put to paper.

Aside from a handful of EC stories, Hey, Look! represents some of the last comics that Kurtzman not only created and executed entirely on his own, but that showed such a dedication to every step of the cartooning process. Each is a one-page lesson in the language of comics: storytelling, timing, control, pacing, page design, panel composition, movement, light and shade... it's all there.

Inside each simple illustrated page is a complex and sophisticated design of panels that tell the essentially simple "joke" of the script with as much humour as is possible. These (usually) nine-panel gags that were intended as filler for Timely monster and romance comics could only be the creation of someone who had honed his craft so finely as to compliment and give life to the intangible instinct and inspiration flowing from his mind. 

For me, what makes Hey, Look! hold up so well against the more mature work he later created is the unabashed devotion to craft that the pages display. I miss the Toth-like dedication to black-and-white contrast in later Kurtzman solo projects like The Jungle Book. What the Hey, Look! strips lack in the visceral and naturalistic penwork of The Jungle Book they more than make up for in dripping blacks that proudly display Kurtzman's mastery of the brush. (Kurtzman's ego perhaps never loomed larger than in these strips.) He never again embraced the process of "inking" quite so romantically as then, preferring to collaborate with other master craftsmen like Bill Elder or stick to the simpler, more expressive style of The Jungle Book.

FURTHER READING:
Harvey Kurtzman at The Dennis Kitchen Art Agency
Harvey Kurtzman at Fantagraphics Books
The Harvey Awards

Bringing Up Father by George McManus (No. 65)

Bringing Up Father (1913-1954)

by George McManus

REVIEW BY R.C. HARVEY:
(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)
The strip called Jiggs & Maggie by most of its readers started January 12, 1913, and like many of its vintage, it was essentially a one-joke enterprise, part of a constellation of strips about various aspects of courtship and married life that George McManus (1882-1954) was producing. 

In Bringing Up Father, Jiggs, an ordinary Irish labourer, has become very wealthy and has moved his family into posh surroundings, but Jiggs persists in his old habits. And in his uninhibited naturalness (of which his socially ambitious wife Maggie is ashamed), and consequent desire to escape (for however brief a time) from the pretensions of the social world into which his wealth has thrust him (and from his wife's relentless attempts to reform him), we have both the source of the strip's comedy and an evocation of the immigrant experience in America - the ascent out of old world poverty into the relative prosperity of the new world.

A tireless escape artist, Jiggs is victorious (and persistent) enough to suggest that people are always better off being themselves than pretending to be something else. McManus multiplied endless comedic variations on this theme, preserving the aura of early comic strips well into mid-century. 

Drawing with a fine and delicate line, he embellished the strip with decorative rococo backgrounds and ornate props - the filigree of a city skyline, the graceful curlicues in the design of a stair-railing or in the pattern of Maggie's dress - and by the artful placement of solid blacks, including the stunning deployment of silhouettes. 

Still in circulation, Bringing Up Father is the second-longest running strip in history.

FURTHER READING:
TCJ: Bringing Up Father & The Rest of The Comics Page by R.C. Harvey
Bringing Up Father at Wikipedia
The Library of American Comics

The ACME Novelty Library by Chris Ware (No. 17)

The ACME Novelty Library (1993-present)

by Chris Ware

REVIEW BY RICH KREINER:

(from The 100 Best Comics of the Century! in The Comics Journal #210, 1999)

Over the past six year, the 11 issues of ACME Novelty Library have established Chris Ware as the most electrifying new cartoonist of our personal fin-de-siecle. It's a title to which he couldn't resist bi-polar meaning. On the plus side, there's the fresh tingle of innovative graphics conveying earnest narratives which compel unique participatory experiences. At the opposite pole, involvement carries an unsettling jolt which, at low voltage, can be laughed off; at full power, the comic shocks like a live wire, too direct, visceral, and overwhelming to want to stay in touch with.

Ware has proven himself to be a tactical cartoonist, perhaps the most doggedly innovative practitioner since funnies froze into form. Each volume in the carefully and lavishly appointed Library represents a supremely rational invention or appropriation of forms. As excruciatingly apt crystallisations, they suggest what Joseph Cornell's exquisite boxes might have looked like had they intended to tell stories. Individual issue subvert nostalgia (childhood toys and comic book ads), quaint neutral backdrops (isolated, beautifully-drawn panels and scenes), and appropriate  innocent visual formats and languages (cartoonish characters and animation-like sequences). They reveal a sensitivity to period architecture and to the role of music as catalyst. Invariably they co-opt cheery design elements, darken the claire-ligne, and generally shutter up any ray of hope of optimism. Each is a singular provocative, mordantly humorous, utterly wrenching read, cunningly executed, as cleanly and irrefutably rendered as an electrician's blue-print.

Ware's exploration of the medium's properties spans the visual spectrum and reconstructs its borders. At an iconic level - drawing's atomic scale - cartoon quanta acquire abstracted strangeness and charm. At eye level, mechanical manipulations produce amazing narrative rebuses. At the relatively "cosmic" scale, Ware fashions whole universes in uniquely propertied packaged where alternative laws of narrative physics operate side by side with traditional artistic flourishes. "It's like reading in three dimensions", said Journal critic Andrew Arnold (TCJ #200). No need to be so Newtonian. With topographical warping and expanded horizons, Ware now has us traversing the fourth dimension of visual time.

The series format-busting instalments depict thematic stumbles through childish nightmare (where eyeballs repeatedly pop from heads), psychologically resonant images (abandoned homes are returned to and, locked, broken into), modern woes of alienation and emotional paralysis (being encased in a crude, bulky robotic shell), and fears that defy common taxonomy (a suicidal pistol shot to the head that has little effect). A slate of significant and intermittent characters dream their pathetic fantasies, embody their perverse and ruinous romanticism, and play out their sad repertoire of conditioned responses accordingly. "Characters grind dryly off each other, sliding into blank, isolated holes of disappointment and loss... The comics proceed without the usual cushioning of denial and self-delusions which allow most human beings to continue living without going mad." (Scott Gilbert, TCJ #174)

The most lovingly ground down and uncushioned is Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth. His extended story has taken on new dimensions of generational misery, particularly the impossibility of compensating for a lack of parental affection and oversight. His airless and ineluctable domestic tortures, blunt spiritual trauma, and bleak social terrain are so ghastly that Aeschylus would have shied from levelling them on the House of Atreus.

Remarkable talents force the rest of us - especially critics - to keep up. Some have slighted the book for its seeming coolness and distance from its emotional content; this sounds like the early gripe against analytic cubism for departing from the dynamics of overt emotional displays of prior artistic movements. I myself once fretted that, on the basis of the first issue, the book "may be something of a one-note, but that singular unwavering pitch is held so long and perfectly that the comic remains an altogether unique and powerful experience." (TCJ #168) Leave it to the great ones to demonstrate how that one clear, perfectly perceived and transmitted tone can be the timbre of the spheres. The ACME Novelty Library remains absolutely piercing. 

FURTHER READING:

Chris Ware at D&Q

Chris Ware at Penguin Books

Chris Ware at Rizzoli

Chris Ware Conversations
Cartoonist Kayfabe Review: Acme Novelty Library #1

The 100 Best Comics Cartoonist Kayfabe Review!

The 100 List | The Reviewers | List Making
Cartoonist Kayfabe

The Cartoonist Kayfabe YouTube Channel is THE place to get an audio/visual inside scoop on comics from two lifetime comic-book makers - Jim Rugg and Ed Piskor! In the videos below Jim and Ed turn the pages of The Comics Journal #210, which featured The 100 Best Comics of the Century! list.

Top 100 Best Comics of the Century: Part 1

Top 100 Best Comics of the Century: Part 2