Don't mention the c word

November 5, 2017 2:11 AM

The Observer celebrates 10 years of the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story prize with a Graphic Novel special

Graphic short story: If You’re So Wise, How Come You’re Dead? Winner of the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story prize 2017.
Graphic short story: Dennis and June Runner up
'I was in shock!': all the winners of our graphic short story prize interviewed

On my radar: Chris Ware’s cultural highlights
Grow Up by Chris Ware: exclusive cover art for the Observer New Review

Syrian graphic novelist Hamid Sulaiman: ‘I don't present villains or heroes’
Fun Home creator Alison Bechdel on turning a tragic childhood into a hit musical
Simone Lia on comics
From Zadie Smith to Ethan Hawke: why we love graphic novels
‘Looking blankly at absurdity’: inside the world of Private Eye’s cartoonists

posted by fearfulsymmetry (16 comments total)

"If you're so wise" is incredibly sweet! What a lovely thing to read while drinking my morning cup.
posted by endotoxin at 6:01 AM on November 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah, tell fucking Beethoven that you’ve got anxieties and his life was easy.
posted by Segundus at 6:52 AM on November 5, 2017

So far what amazed me most was discovering that Private Eye still does their page layouts on pasteboard.
posted by ardgedee at 7:08 AM on November 5, 2017

It's like a whole over world of comics than the one I'm usually in. Weirdly it's stopped looking more grown up and started looking a bit archaic - Chris Ware? Really?
posted by Artw at 8:06 AM on November 5, 2017

Seconding If You’re So Wise, How Come You’re Dead? being lovely though.
posted by Artw at 10:36 AM on November 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

There are so many incredible indigenous writers out there. Why is Ethan Hawke writing a graphic novel about the Apache Uprising?
posted by pxe2000 at 11:13 AM on November 5, 2017

Chris Ware? Really?

New, expensive book out to promote plus long history of Guardian love. What's the surprise?
posted by macapes at 2:52 PM on November 5, 2017

Loved his 00s stuff and then he went into a loop.Him seeking to give thecreat of comics a lecture is a laughter.

And that cover is self parody.
posted by Artw at 3:04 PM on November 5, 2017

As someone who considers Chris Ware an excellent cartoonist, what the hell is this?

His 'mind-map' cartoons have become increasing inscrutable with skin-deep messages.
posted by bittermensch at 3:07 PM on November 5, 2017

Deeply agree, Artw. I used to defend his work when people said they're basically the same story on repeat, but can't any longer. Dude has been making the same miserable stories about miserable people for his entire career without any growth. Despite his craftsmanship (at times...that cover is just horrendous), I honestly think some his best work was the stuff he made very early in his career (the Quimby the Mouse collection is better than Jimmy Corrigan). There's no joy - at best it's blase ruminations on "the nature of thinking" and at worst horribly cynical. The stuff he makes now looks the same as the stuff he was making 10 years ago.

I know auteurism is incredibly important to comics, but an alternate reality where Chris Ware made comics written by someone other than himself probably would have been far more interesting.

Choice quote from his interview posted above:
"My own profession currently seems divided between comics fiction and comics memoir, the former more or less growing out of the childish fantasies now grotesquely metastasised as “superhero stories for adults” — which makes about as much sense to me as writing pornography for children."

Yeah dude, all comics fiction are dumb gritty superhero fantasies (as if Chris Ware has read anything outside of the "literary comics" scene in the past 20 years). And the only other dominant comic subject is definitely "cartoonist memoirs." Very myopic.
posted by bittermensch at 3:26 PM on November 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

He really can fuck the entirety of the hell off with that.
posted by Artw at 3:28 PM on November 5, 2017

FWIW the split between autobio/artsy comics and, as Ware puts it "comics fiction", i.e. everything not a zine or published by Fanragraphics, doesn't really seem to exist for younger creators of the Kickstarter/webcomics generation. This is entirely for the best.
posted by Artw at 3:51 PM on November 5, 2017

The entire Fantagraphics/D+Q/Pantheon/artsy comics crowd have very rapidly faded from relevancy. They haven't had any big hits in years. I guess Building Stories was the last one, 5 years ago, and even that was incredibly niche. Dan Clowes had a comic this year that was basically ignored. The "old guard" have either slowed down to making one major comic per decade or just disappeared. The publishers have failed to replace them with exciting new talent, most of their <40 year old cartoonists are either impenetrable or rehashing similar themes from the 90s crowd. The whole industry has basically walled itself off for the past 15 years with very little to show. The most exciting thing related to "print indie comics" in the past few years was Pepe the Frog.

It's upsetting, since I enjoy the work these publishers tend put out. I wish they had been more involved with the webcomics crowd (which has its own similarly incestuous problems) and fostered some of those creators' talent more.
posted by bittermensch at 4:16 PM on November 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

The most exciting thing related to "print indie comics" in the past few years was Pepe the Frog.

Jesus, how depressing.
posted by Artw at 4:28 PM on November 5, 2017

Bittermensch: Have you read My Favorite Thing is Monsters?
posted by pxe2000 at 5:55 PM on November 5, 2017

Watch This Video on The Brilliant Page Design of Art Spiegelman's Maus
posted by Artw at 1:12 PM on November 26, 2017