Ryan Banfi
In “Chris Ware’s New Yorker Covers: Reading the School Shootings Triptych,” I wrote about Ware’s visual exploration of school gun violence through the medium of the comic. I sent him my essay and asked if I could interview him about his new book, Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three (2024), and about his trajectory as an artist. And because I was teaching his work at MassArt, I wanted to know his thoughts about his comics in the classroom. He was kind enough to oblige. I hope this interview will be insightful, not just for learning about Ware’s art, but also about his understanding of comics.
PAFF! International Museum of Comic Art – Pordenone – CHRIS WARE – Inaugurazione – 09/03/2024 – Foto Elia Falaschi/Phocus Agency © 2024 – https://www.eliafalaschi.it – https://www.phocusagency.com – https://paff.itRyan Banfi: In the introduction to Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three, you draw yourself thinking about comparing your work to Robert Crumb. Do you feel that you have reached this level of comic artistry? Are you the R. Crumb of the twenty-first century? The awards you have received certainly reflect your importance.
Chris Ware: My many thanks for your kind words, but aside from making fun of myself in the introduction, I definitely do not in any way feel that I’ve somehow reached any level of artistry compared to any artist, especially compared to Robert Crumb. I’m regularly paralyzed by self-doubt and am especially aware of all my deficits, which I nonetheless am always trying to improve upon. I harbor very mixed feelings about awards and prizes, though given that I work in a medium which in America at least is more likely to be associated with superhero franchises and illiteracy, occasionally being compared with thoughtful writers and artists can cheer one for an hour or two—but real life always asserts itself.
It’s, of course, buoying to be the recipient of plaudits, but it’s also quite frustrating that awards (and worse, lists) seem to act as a sort of legitimizing cultural shorthand, because they’re not always accurate (Tolstoy being denied a Nobel prize and the delightful Academy Awards “season” soon to be upon us.) Really, in many ways, the negative effects public decoration has on overlooked artists and writers is worse, sometimes calamitously so. Developing a “thick skin” is not always an asset to an artist unless that artist is also an asshole. Most importantly, awards tell you more about the people or committee who award them than the artist who receives them. Besides, no award or list will win out in the harsh light of posterity, a judgment based on whether the artist or writer was somehow incisive enough about human experience to earn the heart of a soul not yet born looking for solace. (I know this sounds dippy, but I believe it.)
Chris Ware, “Self-Portrait”Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three (2024)“Ware’s Self-Doubt,” in Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three, p. 43RB: Are your Acme Novelties and other books paratexts for your explicit (streamlined) graphic novels such as Jimmy Corrigan (2000), Building Stories (2013), and Rusty Brown (2019)? Of course, the Novelties contain these characters (that is, drawings of Jason Lint), but do you view their sketchbook references as complementary to your graphic novels, or do they act as the genesis for longer stories? Will readers find out more about the graphic novels by reading the Novelties?
CW: Not exactly—this all simply had more to do with them as periodicals versus final books and how I figure things out along the way; I learned to not always trust my initial ideas and found that those which occur unexpectedly and in the process of writing were the “real” ones. There’s a long tradition of this in comics but also in literature (Dostoevsky, Chekhov—and anyone who’s written a short story that has then grown into a novel).
“Jason Lint in College,” Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three, p. 13RB: Just a follow-up question about the “Ware Universe.” Many characters intersect with your novels (for example, characters in Jimmy Corrigan are referenced in Rusty Brown). Why are all your books in dialog with each other?
CW: Well, because life is, and everything is interrelated in ways we can’t either articulate or, most of the time, even perceive. The invisible influences we have on each other—whether social, emotional or biological, from something as simple as noticing a previously dormant word suddenly appearing again in everyone’s conversations to not recognizing a person at an art gallery next to whom you sat on a plane — are incalculable. Again, however, I don’t plan any of this; it just sort of happens because the mind is already a very organized thing. (I do greatly appreciate your having noticed, though.)
RB: How are your New Yorker covers in dialog with your graphic novels? How might they expand people’s readings of your graphic novels?
CW: The majority of them are part of a larger story on which I’ve been working on and off for years, the way I do everything, which is: completely uncertainly and instinctually, since that’s the way I’ve noticed life also more or less works. (Again, thanks for noticing.) Beyond this, I’m afraid I’d rather not write too much about it since such notions sound silly when articulated, and these things change as the stories change.
RB: In my essay, I write about your daughter, Clara, being a concern and inspiration for your New Yorker covers, or what I call the “School Shooting Triptych.” As the Trump administration comes into power (2024–2028) and due to the increase in school shootings since “Lockdown” was published, do you foresee yourself doing more work on the topic of school shootings? What might that look like, and how might the topic find its way into your graphic novels?
CW: I would really, really love not to write or draw about school shootings anymore. The fact that it was both in the news and a source of regular anxiety during Clara’s childhood—and around my wife’s profession, as she’s a public high school teacher and has experienced threats and lockdowns herself—is stunningly damning of our country, as if we need anything more to be stunned and damned about. The ubiquity of guns was a factor in my daughter’s deciding to attend college in Canada, and it’s a factor in my daily anxiety of wishing my wife a good day every morning. Worse, that it’s now considered clichéd or even naïve to say this is a “regular part of daily life in America” is especially shameful. I don’t see how it will ever change at this point. I know of teachers who have considered, or whose family has actually bought, guns. Is this really the world we want to live in?
“Clara,” in Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three, p. 1RB: In my graphic-novels class at MassArt, we read Rusty Brown. The students and I had a long conversation about its ending, the “Intermission.” Will Rusty Brown be continued, or is the “Intermission” supposed to be an open-ended ending, like The Sopranos finale?
CW: Well, thanks for caring, but no, it is actually, genuinely only halfway done; I’m not trying to be evasive or clever. There are three and a half chapters left to go, one of which I’ve been working on since the first half was published, and all of which I expect to be working on for many years to come, along with all the other books I’m not done with. I feel bad this all takes me so long, but fortunately I’m not the only person out there making books.
RB: We also extensively discussed why you insert yourself into Rusty Brown. Why did you make this decision, and might you have drawn inspiration from other graphic novelists like Daniel Clowes, who inserts himself in Ghost World (1997), for example?
CW: I only did this because the story needed a jerk and my schedule was free. This said, drawing comics is nearly always an act of inhabiting and feeling through a drawing, but oddly, I’ve noticed that this is easier the stranger the person is compared to me; that is, whenever I draw “myself,” I remain very much on the outside—which was sort of necessary for this particular character, if that makes any sense at all.
Original art from Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three, p. 141RB: What advice might you give to professors who teach graphic novels?
CW: (1) Only read works that are by a single artist, (2) if the book seems to have an obvious clear point to make, avoid it, and, most importantly, (3) don’t bother with any “how to read comics” textbooks. All focus should ideally be on the stories and the characters and especially on the emotions captured in the books themselves.
RB: If teachers had to select one of your books to teach, which one would you suggest and why?
CW: I wouldn’t ever recommend any of my books be taught; it’d sort of be like picking one sibling over another. Though of course it’s always nice to hear that one was deemed worthy enough. It seems to me that if an instructor is compelled or annoyed by something to want to look at it more carefully, that’s nice, though I wouldn’t want my opinion being a part of that.
RB: What lasting impact has Building Stories had on graphic novels? I ask because it differs, especially in its use of storytelling conventions (that is, it’s nonlinearity) and book construction.
CW: I have absolutely no idea. Though I greatly admire works that have seemed to expand some possibility for expression, like Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1991), Richard McGuire’s Here (2014), Gary Panter’s Jimbo (1982), Olivier Schrauwen’s Sunday (2024), or Rodolphe Topffer’s Albert (1845), and I hope my stuff someday might be considered to have done something similar. With Building Stories I was trying to make a book that didn’t have a beginning or an end and was more attuned to how we remember things rather than how we experience them — for better or for worse.
RB: If you were to make a syllabus for an English class on graphic novels, which seven books would you place on the syllabus?
CW: Well, those mentioned above could be a start. Seven seems like way too few, though. Many graphic novels usually only take a couple of hours to read; if I were teaching such a course there would be at least two or more to read a week, and they don’t all have to be discussed. On the other hand, I could easily spend an hour talking about one of George Herriman’s or Jerry Moriarty’s pages. Also: there is a tremendous difference between graphic memoir and graphic fiction; though often conflated, the two use almost two different visual languages and approaches.
And, in case you haven’t already noticed, I really, really don’t believe in playing favorites—especially with living people whose feelings might be hurt. My apologies.
This interview was conducted by email on 16 December 2024. Julia Pohl-Miranda (marketing director of Drawn and Quarterly) provided all images to the author, and they have been approved for reprinting in this interview.
Chris Ware is known for his New Yorker magazine covers; he’s hailed as a master of the comic art form. Ware’s complex graphic novels tell stories about people in suburban Midwestern neighborhoods, poignantly reflecting on the role memory plays in constructing identity. Stories featuring many of Ware’s protagonists—Quimby the Mouse, Rusty Brown, and Jimmy Corrigan—often first appear in serialized form in publications such as the New York Times,the Guardian, or Ware’s own ongoing comic-book series Acme Novelty Library, before being organized into their own stand-alone books.
Ryan Banfi recently received his PhD in Cinema Studies from The Martin Scorsese Cinema Studies Department at New York University Tisch School of the Art. He is on the editorial board of Games and Culture.