Chris Ware mentions that when he was a little boy he always secretly wanted to become a superhero. He made up his own superhero, The Hurricane, and tried to give himself "bionic legs" (www.thisamericanlife.org). Now he says that the way he creates his characters for his comics start off as a joke, then slowly become a part that resembles Ware, himself (classic.tcj.com). The comic is about three generations of men, which resemble his association with his father, which he also met later in his life just like Jimmy, the main character has(classic.tcj.com). Ware also mentions that his comic strip, "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth", is a representation the creation of modern America (classic.tcj.com). It's a book about symbols and people various interpretations of those symbols. He additionally comments on how weak Americans are because they always complain and whine, but at the same time they are "destroying" the world around them. Ware says, "We take in our experiences and then put them together in a way that makes sense to our personalities and explains our lives and our friends." I guess Chris Ware can be considered a conceptual artist as well, as he is trying to pinpoint some error in himself, or, in the way his society is exists in present day.
Chris Ware is another artist that compares his art to music. When a viewer reads his cartoons, he wants them to hear a certain mental music, or imaginary mental sound with each drawing. "When you read it, it creates this sense of rhythm or music or melody, even if there’re no words in it" (classic.tcj.com). This can be also seen as another way to put one's own experiences into context, and interpret the comic in your own way.
The reason as to why I have Charlie Brown is because it's what influenced and helped Ware produce his work.
Captain Underpants is just another comic strip, and it's the only comic book I have ever brought myself to read (but thought it was an appropriate parallel because it's about a kid, who just wants to solve silly everyday crimes in life).
Lidia- What you said about Ware being a conceptual artist is so true, I hadn't even thought of it that way. Throughout the interview, he (and the interviewer) kept alluding to the fact that the story of the characters and their complexities are much larger than just text or images- they're metaphors and symbols of what Ware has experienced as a person grown up in his generation and in this country. Before reading about his work, I wouldn't have thought all that could come from a comic, but I got a lot of clarity from Ware's point of view on his work.
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