The Comics of Chris Ware

Contents

v I I Contents Introduction: Chris Ware and the “Cult of Difficulty” Martha B. Kuhlman and David M. Ball ix Contexts and Canons Inventing Cartooning Ancestors: Ware and the Comics Canon Jeet Heer 3 Masked Fathers: Jimmy Corrigan and the Superheroic Legacy Jacob Brogan 14 The Limits of Realism: Alternative Comics and Middlebrow Aesthetics in the Anthologies of Chris Ware Marc Singer 28 Chris Ware’s Failures David M. Ball 45 Artistic Intersections Chris Ware and the Burden of Art History Katherine Roeder 65 In the Comics Workshop: Chris Ware and the Oubapo Martha B. Kuhlman 78 Comics and the Grammar of Diagrams Isaac Cates 90 The Urban Landscape On Modernism’s Ruins: The Architecture of “Building Stories” and Lost Buildings Daniel Worden 107 Chris Ware’s “Building Stories,” Gentrification, and the Lives of/in Houses Matt Godbey 121 v I I I C o N T E N T S Reading History Confronting the Intersections of Race, Immigration, and Representation in Chris Ware’s Comics Joanna Davis-McElligatt 135 Public and Private Histories in Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan Shawn Gilmore 146 Autobiography with Two Heads: Quimby the Mouse Benjamin Widiss 159 Everyday Temporalities Chris Ware and the Pursuit of Slowness Georgiana Banita 177 Imagining an Idiosyncratic Belonging: Representing Disability in Chris Ware’s “Building Stories” Margaret Fink Berman 191 Past Imperfect: “Building Stories” and the Art of Memory Peter R. Sattler 206 Appendix: A Guide to Chris Ware’s Primary Works 223 Selected Bibliography 225 Contributors 231 Index 235 ...