676 WARE, CHRIS
propaganda imagery that appeared immediately in the wake of 9/11. One Captain
America miniseries, Th e Chosen (2007) was written by David Morrell, author of First
Blood (1972) and creator of Rambo. It is set in Afghanistan and follows a U.S. Marine
who seems to be hallucinating that he can see Captain America at times of stress.
In recent years there have been an increasing number of comics that have tackled the
subject of war and have taken an anti-war stance from the perspective of non-American
characters, notably Maus (1972–91) by Art Spiegelman , Barefoot Gen (1973–85) by
Keiji Nakazawa, and Palestin e (1993) by Joe Sacco. Th ese comics have told the story
of traumatic events in war from a civilian point of view, something that war comics too
often ignore.
Selected Bibliography: Goulart, Ron. Comic Book Culture. Portland: Collector’s Press,
2000; Jones, Gerard, and Jacobs, Will. Th e Comic Book Heroes. Rocklin, CA: Prima
Publishing, 1997; Wright, Bradford. Comic Book Nation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2003; Wright, Nicky. Th e Classic Era of American Comics. London:
Prion Books, 2000.
Chris Murray
WARE, CHRIS (1967–). Among the most celebrated contemporary American comics
artists, Chris Ware has been crucial to the widespread recognition of comics as works of
literary and artistic merit. Ware’s cutting-edge work derives from his immersion in the
early history of American comics (and commercial graphic design), resulting in some of
the most elaborately crafted and formally complex comics in the history of the medium.
Ware is best known for his ongoing series of intricately designed publications Th e Acme
Novelty Library (1994–present, with #1–15 published by Fantagraphics before Ware
began self-publishing subsequent issues) and his award-winning, semi- autobiographical
graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan , the Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon, 2000). He has
also worked as an illustrator, designer, and editor, helping to shape the appreciation of
both historical and contemporary comics as an art form.
Ware was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and began publishing comics in the student
newspaper while he was enrolled at the University of Texas, including the mock sci-
ence fi ction strip Floyd Farland: Citizen of the Future , published in 1988 by the Marvel
off shoot Eclipse as a prestige format comic. (Th e notoriously self-critical Ware is dismis-
sive of the strip and has not allowed it, or much other early work, to be reprinted since.)
In the same period, he also drew a number of increasingly complex strips (often word-
less, or foregrounding language as a visual element) featuring the characters Quimby
the Mouse and Sparky the Cat (in fact only a cat head). Th ese early strips (collected in
Quimby the Mouse from Fantagraphics in 2003) announce many of Ware’s later, ongoing
concerns, employing nostalgic infl uences (the funny animals that populate early comic
strips and animated cartoons) in the service of grim irony and highly inventive formal
play. Th e direction of his future work was also signaled when Ware was invited to con-
tribute to the fi nal issues of the prestigious anthology RAW , edited by Art Spiegelman
