Ryan Banfi
Last spring marked the tenth anniversary of Patrick Jagoda and Hillary Chute’s special issue for Critical Inquiry, “Comics & Media,” which followed the May 2012 “Comics: Philosophy and Practice” conference at the University of Chicago. Chris Ware designed an original poster to advertise that conference, and the discussion he participated in during the conference is included in the special issue. In the right panel of that poster, a figure slumps frustrated over a drawing table surrounded by, what we might assume, are failed comics. The anxiety is palatable, like much of his other work, including, as I’d like to discuss in the following, the commissioned covers he created over the years for the New Yorker. According to Ware, those covers remain one of the few vital ways for artists to speak truth to power within mainstream media.
In his school shooting triptych “Back to School” (17 September 2012), “Threshold” (7 January 2013), and “Lockdown” (17 October 2022), Ware uses characters from his life for the first time in his work. They stand in for his wife, Marnie, a high school teacher; Clara, his teenage daughter and a high school student; and himself, a powerless observer. Although the worries in Ware’s triptych still pertain to the institution of schools where he was bullied (see Jimmy Corrigan or Rusty Brown), his angst now revolves around his daughter and wife’s safety and well-being.[1]
“Back to School” “Back to School” was meant to be a lighthearted remembrance of the start of the school year. On the cover, a little girl looks back at the adults with worry. Ware later stated that this cover depicted “a real moment: Clara, then in elementary school, looking back at me as I left her at school.” Originally, Ware drew this image with happy intentions, depicting children returning to school to learn while their parents are ecstatic to receive their respite. But after Sandy Hook, that little girl’s body language and the gulf represented between parents and their children can now read as a premonition of the terrible school shootings to come.
“Threshold”In comparison, “Threshold” conveys an intentionally different tone. Ware shows the vantage point from within the hallway of the school rather than from outside looking in. The parents no longer migrate in various pathways but stand side by side, inert, worrying about whether their children will return home. Unlike the parents, the children are happy to return to school: a little boy, the last in line, waves at his teacher, which calls back to and inverts the little girl’s anxiety in “Back to School.” Between the release of these two covers, Adam Lanza killed twenty children between the ages of six and seven years old.
The word threshold implies two things. For one, a threshold can mean an “entry point” or “the point at which a . . . psychological effect begins to be produced” (for example, he or she “has a high threshold for pain”). Ware’s cover and title suggest that parents must now have an extreme tolerance for anxiety if their children are to attend school in the US. The entry way to the school also has a double meaning. The school’s front door is an entryway, but it might lead to a death trap, not a place of knowledge. “Back to School” connotes fond memories of reuniting with friends, whereas “Threshold” conveys what returning to school means for many American children and parents after Sandy Hook. Going to school is no longer just about learning but surviving. This image of powerlessness becomes even more obvious with Ware’s final cover, “Lockdown.”
“Lockdown”Unlike the previous covers, “Lockdown” explicitly engages with the depiction of a school shooting. In this way, Ware zooms in on the tragedy which suggests the urgency of the violence. It also conveys explicit images of school shootings that are now regularly posted to social media websites.
Ware drew “Lockdown” based on his daughter’s description of what a lockdown drill entails. To draw attention to the foreground, Ware uses vivid crayon colors to emphasize a child’s drawing of a flower that rests on a desk next to a picture of a house. These are, unlike the cover itself, cheerful graphics. The primary colors also draw attention to the empty seats. Chairs are designed for sitting, but in this instance the children are found on the floor, away from any windows, hidden from any view from the room’s door. Like Ware’s diagrams that lead readers to various points in his images, the vacant seats draw the readers’ eyes to the people who should be sitting in them. In the first two covers the teachers are shown as the gatekeepers of the school’s thresholds, but in “Lockdown” the teacher hides from the threshold, fearing what might cross it.
Sequential Art?Ware often depicts slowness in his graphic novels. Slowness is also evident in my manipulation of Ware’s covers to form sequential art. In this sequence there is no change in terms of optimism, the characters remain insecure. Scott Bukatman writes that Ware uses “moment-to-moment transitions . . . to an almost parodic degree. Stasis becomes an existential condition.” Ware’s covers showcase this stasis or slowness, which is not used for parody but rather political commentary. Unlike the seemingly rushed imagery we see on social media and in the news about these massacres, Ware’s images ask us to slow down, to remain in the fear and anxiety that his images produce. Ware’s covers provoke conversation because they contrast with the violent photos of school shootings in the news and on social media.
The US deals with school shootings, not by banning assault weapons (or lethal gun accessories), but rather by placing the onus on the teachers and the children to survive, which Ware’s last cover clearly addresses. Upon the release of the Uvalde massacre footage, it became obvious that the same people who signed up to protect the innocent were unable to. While state level gun advocacy groups have won some victories like state legislatures passing 130-gun safety bills in 2023 and also heavily blocking the gun lobby’s (NRA) agenda, in other locations (and at the federal level) ordinances on gun safety has had little effect on school shootings. Since Columbine there have been 377 school shootings in the US. More than 300,000 American students have experienced gun violence since that 1999 massacre.
Journalistic reviews of gun control and academic studies on the matter indicate that Ware is right to show concern about gun safety in the US. After the Newtown Massacre, politicians and the media described the event as a “tipping point.” Post-Sandy Hook, many US gun laws faced a gridlock between gun safety advocates and firearm lobbyists during the ensuing decade. In the months preceding the Uvalde massacre, for example, Texas lawmakers made it easier for citizens to buy firearms, which certainly enabled Salvador Ramos’ shooting spree.
One way in which the media is fighting back against the relaxed gun laws is to show images of gun violence. As photographs of school shootings contrast with one another to create a narrative about gun safety, Ware, too, uses his platform at the New Yorker to draw attention to the power of opposing images. Ware is answering, albeit not directly, W. J. T. Mitchell’s question about comics’ intersection with media: “Where do comics fit among the media, and what can the study of media tell us about comics?” For Ware, illustrations can speak to the public. According to Jean Braithwaite, Ware’s New Yorker covers are “accessible,” and the school shooting triptych contrasts with national narratives. The covers are not graphic depictions of school shootings but artistic critiques of gun safety.[2] Ware’s art means to explore human emotions. Part of that emotional intensity arises from not only Ware’s personal insecurities but safety concerns for his wife and teenage daughter. That is the power of his New Yorker covers.
Ryan Banfi is a PhD Candidate in The Martin Scorsese Cinema Studies at New York University Tisch School of the Art. He is on the editorial board of Games and Culture.
[1] See Chris Ware, “Komiks.dk Interview,” interview by Matthias Wivel, in Chris Ware: Conversations, ed. Jean Braithwaite. (Jackson, Miss., 2017), p. 173.
[2] Jean Braithwaite, Zoom interview by Banfi, 4 Apr. 2024.