Chris Ware

Reading the interview with Chris Ware was a completely eye-opening experience for me concerning comic artists. I didn't necessarily have an opinion on comics before, though I correlated them with (to me) cliché, American superhero nostalgia. What Ware had to say about his work and how many aspects of his life came into play in the unfolding story of Jimmy and his relatives. His comment that "the advantage of being a cartoonist is that you are not looking out into the world to make your work, you’re looking into yourself" really provided me with a much better definition of what comic artists really do-- and it makes perfect sense. To illustrate a story, its characters, and their visual behavior, a comic artist like Ware has to look into their memories and past experiences to create a believable and cohesive creation.

The part of the interview I found most noteworthy was Ware's discussion of his experience (or lack thereof) with his father, and how that molded his story of Jimmy. His incredible insight on his father in explicating their first phone call was amazing- and perhaps that's one of the main reasons why he's such a talented and powerful artist. He seems to know human behavior so well that he can draw a story (with or without words) and have the viewer not only connect with the story's plausibility, but relate to its characters and supply empathy for them.

The image I chose is from the Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest kid on Earth book by Ware. I think it presents Jimmy's (and perhaps Ware's) thought-processes as he tries to picture meeting his father for the first time; what he'll look like, what he'll say. Though it's a little humorous at first, ultimately I feel pain for the son who doesn't know his father and only has his imagination to visualize him.