Ware came to be noticed during his time at the university of
Texas with his comics about Quimby the mouse, a simply drawn character similar
to Felix the cat. They eventually made it into Acme Novelty
Library series
and became highly popular. His other famous works are Jimmy Corrigan, the
smartest kid on earth, and Rusty Brown. His work strikes a chord with childhood
insecurities, something we can all relate to, and perhaps why his work is
popular.
He described the cartoon as a ‘working-class art form’ and
an ‘art of the people.’ He says Charles Schulz's Peanuts is one of his
influences. "Certainly as a kid I never read any comics in the newspaper
with any expectation of having any kind of emotional reaction other than
laughter. In America, Schulz was the first cartoonist to introduce the idea
that you could empathise with a cartoon character: Charlie Brown felt bad
about himself, so you end up feeling bad for him.” (Stuart Kelly, 2013)
Chris wares work is reminiscent of flow diagrams[1]
and exploded diagrams used to describe how something works. His work isn’t in
linear panels as convention comic book strips, as he lays out his work with out
a start or end point, leaving you to roam around the image and decipher each
section. Like reading a story, you have to remember the past section in order
to process and make sense of the following, and make several visits around the
page as each time you revisit you find something new within the work. This
circling of the image and revisiting is like the pattern of thinking, and
especially Wares characters where they obsessively think about their past and
pains.
In this end sheet, Wares uses mainly typography (which is
all hand painted) rather than images to create a swirling pool of thoughts that
his character obsesses over, the continuous loops enclosing us in her though.
“[Wares work is] sort
of analogous to the way that we could divide and break up our own memories
where we choose to start and stop” (FearNoArtChicago).
The way its illustrated is similar in the way our thoughts happen, with reoccurring patterns and one question leading to the same outcomes that torture the soul. His work often shows characters that have regrets or tormented memories. Ware also uses the idea of location, the characters remembering as they enter their room. His clean lines and simple colours contrast with his complex layout and storylines.
Stuart Kelly. (2013). Chris
Ware: 'There is a magic when you read an image that moves in your mind'.
Available:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/11/chris-ware-graphic-novelist-interview.
Last accessed 6 october 2014.
FearNoArtChicago. (). Graphic
Novelist, Chris Ware. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4MOYCvgEmw. Last accessed 4 october 2014.
James Cartwright, .
(2014). Illustration: Valuable life lessons in Chris Ware’s seminal Quimby
comic. Available:
http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/chris-ware-quimby-mouse. Last accessed 4
october 2014.
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