How to use this Page

Watch this on The Scene. Chris Ware is neither a luddite nor a technophobe. He’s created computer apps and hearing him talk about his ideas for the technology, it seems that the cost of doing what he wanted is the sticking point for is vision. HE’s also made a few animations, in celebration with Jon […]

It seems that Chris Ware, the genius behind Building Stories and other structural comics masterpieces, and Hajime Isayama, the Attack on Titan creator we wrote about a few posts ago, share some of the same things: low self esteem as the lot of the cartoonist. Ware has as piece called “Why I Love Comics” in […]

Or rather, his 10-year-old daughter Clara does. In commentary on his cover for this week’s New Yorker the Building Stories master—and the graphic novelist whose name is most often connected to the word “genius— discusses the game the way any parent over a child in the 4-14 range does.

Clara has spent hours, days, weeks of the past two years building and making navigable block worlds fuelled from the spun-off fizz of her accreting consciousness: giant ice-cream-layered auditoriums linked to narrow fifty-foot-high hallways over glass-covered lava streams, stairs that descend to underground classrooms, frozen floating wingless airplanes, and my favorite, the tasteful redwood-and-glass “writer’s retreat.” (It has a small pool.) She made a meadow of beds for my wife—a high-school teacher who craves unconsciousness—and a roller coaster to take her there. Though Clara mostly “plays” Minecraft by herself, the game allows her friends to drop into these worlds, too, and I’ve even spent some strange virtual afternoons as a floating block-self, guided by my angelic block-hammer-wielding block-daughter, zipping around a dreamscape that feels, really, less like life and maybe more like death, but in a sweet sort of way. If architecture somehow mirrors the spaces we carve in our memories and make in our minds, then something pretty interesting is going on here.

The Guardian is serializing a new Chris Ware comic, called The Last Saturday. If there was a contest to chose the most Chris Ware-like title for a new Chris Ware comic “The Last Saturday” would be near the top. According to the site:

A brand new graphic novella by the award-winning cartoonist Chris Ware, tracing the lives of six individuals from Sandy Port, Michigan, published in weekly episodes. A new instalment will appear on this page every Saturday.

Viewing on mobile? Scroll down to the thumbnail image and use the red, touch-controlled viewfinder to navigate around the full strip

Anyway this looks amazing, duh.

Tweet

Photo: Nicolas Guerin/Contour

Chris Ware is only the second cartoonist to get the Paris Review interview treatment—Robert Crumb was the first—and it’s said to be one of his longest and most revealing interviews ever. With scholar Jeet Heer doing the interviewing, how could you expect less. But in a surprise twist, you can only read the whole thing by purchasing a copy of The Paris Review! However there is an online excerpt just to set the table:

Television was probably my first real drug. I have little doubt that it fired off the same dopamine receptors in my brain that marijuana later did. Specific hours of my childhood day would be tonally defined by what was on. Monday through Friday at three-thirty meant Gilligan’s Island, and so that particular half hour always took on a sense of bamboo and Mary Ann’s checkered shirt, later to be replaced by the tweed and loafers of My Three Sons. I was sensitive to the broadcast vibe of ABC versus CBS versus NBC versus PBS and to how their particular programs made me feel, even how the particular resolution of each channel was different.

So yeah, go buy a copy of The Paris Review already.

Photograph: Nicolas Guerin/Contour

I consider myself a big nerd and comics seem to go hand in hand with the social status. I never really got into comics (or graphic novels) and when I did attempt I never knew where to start. There are millions of reboots and story arcs for the thousands of different superheroes out there but which ones are good and where do I start? It was Scott Pilgrim that started my journey into graphic novels and with Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Seconds recent release, I thought now would be a perfect time to talk about the graphic novels I love.

As an easy way to distinguish between comics and graphic novels, I call single issues (30-40 pages) a comic and a graphic novel is the anthology that contains a full story arc (normally 4-5 single issues). What I find really interesting about a graphic novel is that it is simply a new way to tell a story. It is not always about the superhero, graphic novels can explore high concepts in a whole new way.

Take the only graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, Maus by Art Spiegelman. In this story we read about Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, it is biography of living and surviving Hitler’s Europe. The graphic novel not only addresses the holocaust and life in a war torn country it does it in a unique way. Exploring the reality and fears of surviving in a visual way, the Jews are depicted as mice and the Nazi’s hunting them as cats.

There is also the autobiographic story of Marjane Satrapi  in Persepolis, a coming of age story of a girl living in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution. The whole concept of cultural change works really well in this graphical depiction. There is even an animated adaptation which is worth checking out (even if it is exactly the same). If you prefer a more quasi-autobiographical story maybe try Ghost World by Daniel Clowes or even something by Chris Ware like Jimmy Corrigan or Building Stories.

Finally, if you prefer your graphic novels to be about superheros or people coming to terms with their new found powers, I have some suggestions for you as well. Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon by Matt Fraction is the first story arc in this new Hawkeye series and explores a life of a superhero outside fighting crime and saving the world. Also by Matt Fraction, with the help of Chip Zdarsky is the weird and wonderfully dirty Sex Criminals. This is a story of a woman that discovers that time freezes after an orgasm and the shenanigans she can get up to with so much quiet time. This graphic novel will not be for everyone; if you want something very different that is full of dirty visual puns then I would recommend it.

I would love to recommend more comics but some of my suggestions are not yet released as a complete story arc yet. If you are interested in more graphic novel suggests let me know in the comments below. I hope this will give you some suggestions if you have never tried a graphic novel before. I’m also happy to take more recommendations in the comments below. Happy reading.

The finalists for the 33rd annual Los Angeles Times Book Prize have been revealed, and we’ve collected free samples of all their books below–some of the best books released in 2012. Here’s more about the awards:

“The winners of the L.A. Times book prizes will be announced at an awards ceremony April 19, the evening before the L.A. Times Festival of Books, April 20-21. Held on USC’s campus in Bovard Auditorium, the awards are open to the public; tickets will be made available in late March.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This claims to be a video but only the audio is working for me. However either way you slice it acclaimed novelist Zadie Smith and cartoonist Chris Ware talking about story at the New York Public Library is a fascinating team up. For those who cannot absorb audio, there's a write up of their December chat here.

The ninth annual Morning News Tournament of Books (ToB) will commence in March 2013.

So far, 15 finalists have been revealed. Three titles from the “pre-tournament playoff round” are currently in the running for the sixteenth and final slot. We’ve included the two lists below.

Here’s more from the announcement: “The ToB is an annual springtime event here at the Morning News, where 16 of the year’s best works of fiction enter a March Madness-style battle royale. Today we’re announcing the judges and final books for the 2013 competition as well as the long list of books from which the contenders were selected.”
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

I've been waiting for this book to come out for at least five years, and this magnificent edition exceeded all my expectations (and they were big ones)! I can't even begin to imagine a book more intricately constructed than Building Stories. I show it to everyone who visits my house, and we all marvel at [...]

Daniel Clowes is in the news! So much going on.

§ HBO is developing a half-hour comedy created by Clowes called “The Landlord”, which he’s co-exec producing with John Lesher. The logline: “After inheriting a shabby apartment building in a remote California town, a volatile college professor with Utopian delusions drags his family into the unforgiving netherworld of small-town America.”

Yeah, we can see Ice Haven as an HBO show. The Little Miss Sunshine duo of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris is interested in directing. “We just looked over the script and it’s still very early, but we’re excited by trying to do something in TV, particularly at a place like HBO, where you can have nine hours instead of two,” Dayton told Variety.

Despite being the king of the literary comics world, Clowes has had a fruitful time in Hollywood. In addition to the GHOST WORLD and ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL films, Clowes has been hired to write several screenplays. And of course Alexander Payne, poet laureate of alienated losers, is developing a film based on Clowes’ graphic novel WILSON, the ultimate portrait of an alienated loser. Talk about a perfect match of material. Will they promote it at Comic-Con?

§ For a chance to see Clowes and fellow genius Chris Ware together, the two are in conversation TOMORROW at the Oakland Museum of California in conjunction with the soon-to-close Art of Daniel Clowes exhibit.

In a talk moderated by guest curator Susan Miller and Senior Curator of Art René de Guzman, Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware will be speaking at OMCA’s James Moore Theater on Friday, July 27, 2012 from 7-8:30pm. Seating will be limited and is expected to fill up quickly.

§ Finally, this Proust questionnaire-like “interview” with Clowesat The Guardian was subject to more than the usual editing:

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

ANSWER:
I’d like to think I’d go kill Hitler or verify the divinity of Christ, but really I’d like to see what my neighbourhood was like when my house was built in 1912. Or perhaps to hang out in Bodega Bay while Hitchcock was shooting The Birds.

PRINTED: 
I like to think I’d go kill Hitler. 

spx:

Chris Ware’s beautiful poster art for the 2012 Small Press Expo.

I have no words.

The mega sized version lives here.

Chris Ware’s breathtaking poster for this year’s Small Press Expo. Just look at that lineup of names, and that’s not even getting into the titular “small press” exhibitors, which the show is ostensibly about. And which number includes not one but three Drawnists.

Here’s Chris Ware being interviewed on a short arts program called Fear No Art. There are a few moments of awkwardness between the chipper host and the slightly less chipper cartoonist, but we get some great shots of Chris Ware’s studio and get to watch him ink a drawing.

Tweets and blog posts made it clear over the weekend, but Pantheon Books has spelled out what Chris Ware told attendees of the CPAP meeting in Chicago. BUILDING STORIES, his highly anticipated new book, will be a boxed set of small volumes. Or as tweeter Kathleen Dunley put it:

Ware reveals the form of Building Stories- many little books in a beautiful box: audience in awe. #comicscon twitter.com/KathleenDunley…

— Kathleen Dunley (@KathleenDunley) May 19, 2012

And here are more pictures:

BUILDING STORIES comes out in October and it’s certain to be at the top of the list for graphic novel readers — and for those who want to give a beautiful, unique book as a Christmas gift.

This week’s theme is “The Money Issue.”

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

Yes! Every time I see one of these animated shorts designed by Chris Ware, I can’t help but note how faithful they are to not just his artwork, but also his pacing and nuanced way of telling stories with pictures. Here’s the latest, produced for the recent This American Life–Live! event. Music by Andrew Bird, animation by John Kuramoto.

Can we have a while series of Quimby animations now? Please?

Previously:
Chris Ware: This American Life
More Chris Ware animation for This American Life

Drawings for New York Periodicals:
Adam Baumgold Gallery, February 1 - March 15, 2008

I chose this picture, though it has nothing to do with Santiago. It does have a lot to do with being willing to venture to unfamiliar places both without and within. Thank you, Mother Eve, for taking the first bite to a realized life.

We have been in Chile for just over a day. I'm sitting in an upstairs lobby of La Caja Roja, a hostel full of mostly young people from all over the world. Loud music is blasting from downstairs. Voices of guests eating their dinners on the patio blend in, along with clinking plates and laughter. Here, it doesn't feel I'm half a world away from winter, where the bells of my school ring, and my commute is driving up a mountain road. The Germanic orderliness that the United States possesses isn't found in Chile.

Bill and I stayed at this hostel for two of the weeks we spent here in July, so coming back felt like coming home in many ways. Out on the streets of the city, though, walking among the blankets spread full of bolsas and zapatos for sell, the crazy traffic, having a poor mother sing a song for some pesos to feed her baby, the reality that I have made a commitment to a strange new life is impossible to ignore.

Ice cream is a real highlight. It's simply wonderful, very similar to gelato. Most of the pastries, on the other hand, are heavy and unappealing-- which is a good thing because I have a weakness for them. I'd rather spend my dessert calories on the helados.

Took a trip to Vina del Mar today to rent a house that we found out about back home. Outside of Santiago, it becomes desert-like, similar to the few un-watered parts of southern California that remain. We passed chapparal and chemise, vineyards in the Casablanca Valley, slums on Valparaiso's hills.

Chile is a poor country with an expanding "middle class," however you might define it, and the wealthy whose homes could be anywhere in tonier areas of the states. Our new house is where a purse being snatched won't be out of the question, but that's probably the worst of worries. I wish my work clothes had deeper pockets to hide my i.d. and what little money I'll carry. I'll travel by bus or taxi to St. Margaret's, which has a gate models on Buckingham Palace, teaching girls who go home to fine houses, mas rica que mi casa.

I've stepped out of the "garden," of what I have always known, into a world where more knowledge and experience will be gained.

I need to work on my book, but so much nicer right now to put my thoughts here.

Tags: chile, hungry, la casa roja, teaching in foreign countries, vina del mar

According to the Hero's Cycle, heroes need to pass through obstacles that guardians place before them in order to prove the heroes' worthiness to enter into the special world where the story will unfold. Guardians can be other characters, circumstances, or objects (locked windows). I feel that Bill and I are passing through our share of these guardians. To be cliched (as I am using Joseph Campbell's ideas here), we're "following our bliss" in our preparations to move to Chile. Daily we're coming up against a variety of guardians, but somehow a mixture of sheer willpower and serendipity are helping to dissolve them.
Some of these have been:

Reducing a household to four suitcases and a dufflebag full of bedding.
Luckily, we're not horders and have less to get rid of than most people. We're leaving some things: photos, some books, a few of my winter clothes as we'll be living in late summer in just a few days. It feels wonderful to let go. There are no family things on my side and only a few on Bill's, so this has been a blessing.

Dogs
The hardest part has been deciding what to do with our dogs. We can't take them now because we don't really know if this is going to work. Will we stay in Chile a few months or the rest of our lives?

We were going to have Lily, our 90 percent Ausie and 10 percent mystery dog, be our Chile dog at first. Then, we decided not to bring any of them. Then all of them. Then . . . We found a wonderful organization called We Care Animal Rescue in St. Helena, California. Through them, Lily found a home with a wonderful couple in the Sacramento area. As traumatic as it was for us to say good bye, Lily was won over by a chicken sandwich. She hopped in her new mom's car and off she went. She's happy. Got her teeth cleaned. Playing lots of fetch and going on oodles of walks.

Lily was a thirty pound whirlwind that kept Dazie wound up and puppy-like for six years. There was an amazing transformation from the very first day. Dazie came into her own and wasn't as fidgety, not even wiggling when I tried to brush her. So . . . we said, "Let's keep Wiley and her!" Friends tried her out on a sleepover to see how she'd do until we figured out how to do this, but on a walk in the hills above Upper Lake she got away.

I was taking Wiley to Petaluma for a potential foster mom to meet him when another guardian came my way. My wallet was stolen before I got there, so I had to return home to cancel things out. I got the message about Dazie. I left Wiley with some food because I hadn't fed him that morning (he gets car sick)and drove the hour to Upper Lake. We spent hours looking for her. She'd run off the road up a hill that was full of chemise, coyotes who'd come out at night, and that led into a wilderness area. I called and called her name at the spot she disappeared. She didn't answer. She could have been anywhere in rugged terrain. Bill was stuck in an elevator during this time (did someone say Mercury Retrograde?) and when he got home, he brought Wiley who only had to bark once for Dazie to answer. She was at the same spot I had yelled for her, but dog-to-dog communication won her over. Bill and Kenn then had to climb the mountain, though, and Kenn had to use all his forest service training to get through the brush. She wouldn't budge when he found her. She weighs 60 pounds and he dragged her through about ten feet of the chemise with her pissing and . . . you get the picture. Once she saw Wiley, she got up and trotted down the mountain with him.

We contacted We Care again for Dazie because we decided the move would be too much for her. The next day heard from a wonderful woman in Yountville (Napa Valley). We took Dazie to her house yesterday. She now lives on a 48 acre vineyard in a 5,000 square foot house full of comfy pillows and gourmet food cooked just for her. She'll eat plenty of fruits, vegetable, New York steak cut just right, and gourmet doggy biscuits. She'll also be taken out to a restaurant that gives the diners plates for their dogs, and back at home has a bidet for her very own to be able to drink fresh flowing water. I'd have felt guilty NOT to let her live there. I've always thought that our dogs had it nice. It's been boot camp for them in comparison! Though she did break our hearts. The two nights she was with us, she climbed into a suitcase to sleep.

What is wonderful is that both of the new families will let us know how Dazie and Lily are doing. We even have an invitation to stay in Dazie's paradise when we're in northern California. And through Dazie's little adventure, the people who were going to take her are now taking Wiley until we can figure out things. He is now the official Chile dog in residence.

However, contacting airline customer service to figure this out has turned out to be the most formidable of the guards at the "gate". I ended up screaming I WANT TO TALK TO SOMEONE HUMAN! When we got the humans, it was still difficult. We're still not sure what to do.

Car
No one wanted a Corolla with a stick shift even though we were offering under blue book. What about gas economy????? We were amazed. We dropped the price to way under blue book, and a woman from Willits called us. She was thrilled that our car even had old fashioned roll up windows. We've sold it at the last minute.

House in Cobb
The first people to look at our house are making an offer. HOWEVER, whether their offer is something we'll accept is another matter. We're free here, though, because through a conversation at the Mountain High Coffee Shop, serendipity allowed us to find a renter we can trust if the house hasn't sold by the time the listing runs out.

Home in Chile
Another conversation, at the Cafe Vasquez in Lakeport this time, has given us a fully furnished house to rent (with washer and dryer) in Vina Del Mar, twenty minutes by bus from where I'll work at St. Margaret's.

Work Visa
Last hurdle. By the time we got the documents we need, it was too late to process the visa up here. It will take the FBI four months to process my "rap sheet." Ah, let's see . . . there was a ticket on my way to church a few years ago for going a few miles over the speed limit. That must be what is holding things up. So, we're hoping we can process what we need to do once we're in Santiago. I only have a few days before I begin work, but not being anxious about this is a good lesson for me. If it doesn't happen, our journey may take off on a different path as happens in many good stories.

HUNGRY
Sales have been "quiet" according to my editor. Which means if things remain the same, the book I'm halfway through writing won't be wanted. I worry about the effect of being in Chile will have on my writing career. A friend suggested I blog on my webpage as Deborah in Chile, which I think is brilliant . . . the country's name allowing for a lot of puns with eating. I just hope I have time to do this. Anyway, I just have to believe that bliss and prayer and as much attention as I can put into promoting the book from down south will work.

I haved managed to sneak in a couple school visits through all of this: Lu Sutton School in Novato, where I saw again how much kids connect with the book. Also, another presentation on the Mendocino Coast at Horicon School in Annapolis, and the Four-Eyed Frog Book Store in Gualala. Grandmother Pig's Butt, my alter ego, is still training recruits for the great invasion of Earth, complete with an alien make over of a very brave volunteer. I hope she can somehow keep the training going in Chile.

This is our phone, the one we use the most because we can actually hear people on it. We use our push button phone only when we need to. Bill found this in a shed at his mother's house about thirty years ago. Who knows how long it had been in there?

A friend's daughter wanted to call her dad one day and after she picked up the receiver she just stared at it, not knowing what to do. I realized that it's probably the equivalent to the pictures I saw of hand crank phones when I was a kid. I wish we could take this beauty with us!

I've been offered a job at St. Margaret's British School for Girls in Concon, Chile. A part of my day will be spent teaching high school English! Because the academic year in Chile starts in March, I'm hoping to leave my current job by mid-January and be in Chile sometime in early February.

Bill is working very hard to make our house look like a million dollars (we wish) to be ready for possible buyers. I'm trying to find a qualified teacher to finish out my contract year. We need homes for two of our dogs. We're bringing Lily, our oldest and most adaptable as our Chili dog. Our hearts are breaking over the other two. Dazie, though, will be happier in another home without the other two dogs bothering her. For some reason she offers a type of alure to both Willy and Lily. They never leave her alone! Willy is everyone's boyfriend. He's affectionate and goofy and totally loving (a quality Lily doesn't always possess).

We could be there a year, but we could also be there the rest of our lives (with trips home, of course.) We'll be living by the sea in a climate similar to Santa Barbara's. Vina Del Mar, a tourist destination, is only a few miles south and offers plenty of shopping opportunities if we need them and great food. Valparaiso is half an hour farther south and is a wonderfully atmospheric bohemian sort of place.

I have a dream of an ex-pat community of friends in Concon! We hope to receive many visitors over the years.

I wanted to write this entry earlier in the month, but I've finally got started on STARVED and didn't want anything to get in the way. Writing seems to be coming FINALLY, and the story that's emerging feels right.

We had great empanadas here!

I want to end my Chile journal with a view of the rocks in Coquimbo. Not far from here was the Escuela de Juan Pablo Segunda and the homes of its students.

People keep asking me about Chile. The strangest question was: Do Chileans sleep in beds? Duh.

Chile is TEMPERATE with little humidity, which as Californians we really appreciate. The country is striving toward modernity and is a first world nation in many aspects. In Santiago, we were told there's an effort to create medical facilities that equal Johns Hopkins. (Will everyone be able to use them? No. Does everyone get to go to Johns Hopkins in the United States?)

We just explored the north on this trip, as it was winter. As I'm sure you know, Chile extends far to the south where the terrain and climate match that of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Easter Island and Robinson Caruso Island far out into the Pacific also belongs to Chile. The Argentinians may disagree, but Chile claims the most southern city in the world, Punta Arenas. The country even has authority over a wedge of Antarctica!

Once again, I'll refer to what my husband says about the country: Chile is experiencing it's springtime as a nation. There are challenges, and I'm sure if we take the plunge and move we'll have many of our own. I'd like to thank my friend Debbie Southworth for writing, "You may be giving up things, but think of what you'll be gaining!"

Please come to visit when we're official residents of the southern hemisphere and discover for Chile for yourself.

Here is a view from the harbor in Coquimbo, looking across the bay to La Serena. If you squint, you can see the condos on the far shore. A lot of condos in Chile are in Soviet style, but a few, like those in Vina Del Mar, have more architectural flare.

So, this is where the pirate children live, the corsarios. Coquimbo has a Valpo feel, more frenetic than La Serena, a little more edge. Near the harbor, there's a section of town called El Barrio Ingles (sorry for no accent) where we were told great music was to be had.