Comics as Contemporary Literature

Acme - Jimmy Corrigan -The Smartest Kid on Earth

Chris Ware seems like a rather anti-social individual from the interview we watched of other contemporary artists we saw in class. He has a bad reputation with his absent father and that directly correlates to what he inspired to draw comics about. I mean, after all, just the very first page to Jimmy Corrigan states that he's missing his absent father and would like a replacement father. From there on its an ancestry line of awkward and failed living matters from this partially bald man-child and his terrible relations he had to his mother, his father, and to some of his friends. The whole comic is kind of a downer to read, but it provides shelter to those who have been through the same personal experience and would like to view it from another person's level. That's why it serves well on a contemporary level because issues like that still occur to this very day, and there is always depression lingering in individuals at some point of their life.

Ware's style is very shape-oriented and well organized. It almost looks machine or factory-made in a away, as you can tell there is no variation of line quality - just thick outlines and the same pressure of inner details. I guess it's what leads him up to how oddly he distributed these comics as a board game hardback, a newspaper clipping, a flip book, a map, and other unusual ways as seen provided in the class. He also adds atmosphere to the comic by not showing current events or characters in each panel - but the moody weather outside, the shadows of the furniture in a house, or how decently and spaced objects are in a room.