The comics of Chris Ware should be familiar to
many Austinites. His eye-popping full-page tableaux in the defunct Daily
Texan weekly entertainment supplement Images, featuring Quimby the
Mouse and Sparky the Cat, set standards few working comics professionals could
hope to attain… and in those days Ware was still a University of Texas
student in his early 20s.
Stalwart alternative comics publisher Fantagraphics Books has now signed
Ware, and is releasing both these early comics and newer material in the unique
series Acme Novelty Library. Four issues have appeared so far, each in a
different format, in what seems a delightfully seditious attempt to stir-fry
the undercooked minds that run what might kindly be called the Average Comic
Shop.
Issue 1 more or less resembles a standard comic, except for the fact it
features three different paper stocks and black-and-white, two-color, and
four-color printing. It is my least favorite of the series, though, as it
features Ware’s “Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth” strips from
Chicago’s weekly New City. These tales mix fanciful, Tom Swiftian
fantasy plots with bleak and profoundly saddening stories of emptiness,
rejection, despair, hopelessness, and you-can’t-go-home-again-ever Oedipal fantasies. The juxtaposition is, you might say, unnerving. Things
improve tenfold with issue 2, a tabloid-sized art director’s wet dream
featuring most of Images’ “Quimby the Mouse” episodes; the recently
released fourth issue is also tabloid-sized, reprinting the “Sparky the Cat”
pages. The third issue is a charming little digest edition reprinting the
strips starring that odd potato-shaped fellow whose eyeballs keep falling out
for no reason.
Ware’s work is informed by a devotion to early 20th century animation and
newspaper publication. Each issue of Acme opens with some uproarious
contents and “editorial” page. Ware strikingly captures an antiquarian look and
at the same time gives us several passages of truly funny text, capturing the
stilted, highbrow speech of a bygone age and putting it to brilliant satirical
use in the service of spurious ads, “helpful hints,” and other ephemera. The
comic strips themselves are visual smorgasbords, breathtaking little
masterpieces of layout and design; Ware’s most powerful influences here are the
Sunday strips of George Herriman’s classic Krazy Kat. Ware sees a comics
page as a whole, not just a series of individual panels; each Quimby and Sparky
strip seeks not only to tell a story, but to look good on the wall from thirty
feet away. And though that may be simplifying Ware’s intentions just a tad, the
fact remains that the strips do look good on your wall from 30 feet
away.
Ware’s comics have taken some heavy critical body blows for being rather
cold exercises in style over substance, but the way in which his critics are
divided on this issue speaks volumes. When one of Ware’s strips appeared in
Raw a couple of years back, The Comics Journal trampled it for
being the weakest thing therein, while Entertainment Weekly was telling
its readers Ware’s strip alone was worth the price of the magazine. Also,
Ware’s combination of whimsical cartoon art in the service of an often
depressing narrative has turned more than one reader on his ear (even me).
Still, there’s no one in comics like him, and his drawings will open the eyes
of anyone seeking a little novelty in their libraries. – Martin Wagner (Acme Novelty Library should be for sale anywhere that alternative
comics are sold. Try Austin Books, Blast Comics, and Dragon’s Lair. You may
request a free catalog from Fantagraphics by calling 800/657-1100. It’s very
cool.)
This article appears in June 30 • 1995 and June 30 • 1995 (Cover).