Chris Ware

I really enjoyed the interview with Chris Ware. I like how interviews are very personal and allow the reader to get to know someone directly from their words. It was interesting to be able to read about Ware’s childhood. It was even more interesting to know one of his characters was created based on his father. Though he seemed pretty indifferent in the interview about not knowing his father, I think he used the character as his scapegoat for his emotions. In the interview he states that he created the story with the character based on his father as an experiment to see what it would be like to have his father. I think this was very interesting because he could see how his life could have been with his father without having to do the impossible of traveling back in time. The downfall to this is that his story would be biased to his beliefs and how he feels life with his father would be. I think making the choice to create a story that is so close to home is admirable because the artist is allowing their audience to come into their life.

     The photo I chose is a Chris Ware piece. I was drawn to this because of how well the character’s emotions are shown. Ware places a dialogue box at the top to show what the character is saying. However, I do not think that is it necessary. The sweat beads placed on the character’s head and the squiggly lines on the side of his body show that the character evidently has stage fright. Many comics that I have viewed before do not pay as much attention to conveying the emotion of the character. Instead, the artist relies heavily on the dialogue. I think being able to see the emotion on the character is a more effective choice than simply relying on dialogue.