#chrisware

[unfoldingmoments]

The Debt That All Cartoonists Owe to Peanuts

Even the least critical reader can sense falseness and fakery on the part of an unskilled—or, worse, dishonest—cartoonist. And, because the comic strip is a valueless throwaway, the cartoonist must win the reader’s trust without benefit of critical backing, museum walls, and monied collectors. The best comic strips present the cartoonist laid bare on the page; they are a condensed sum-uppance of the artist’s notions of, ideally, what makes life funny, but also of what makes it worth living. This artistic effort has to occur not over a career punctuated by a handful of masterpieces but every single day. The skeptical reader arrives cold to a little slice of comic-strip newsprint and gives the cartoonist four, maybe five, seconds: “O.K., make me laugh.” It’s no wonder that Charles Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts,” woke up feeling funereal, or like he had a term paper due every morning. Or, as he also said, “In a comic strip, yesterday doesn’t mean anything. The only thing that matters is today and tomorrow.”

It’s not the skill of the drawing, or the lines, or the lettering, or the funny words that make a strip work. Timing is the life force of comics. Without a sensitivity to the rhythms and the music—a.k.a. the reality—of life, a comic strip will arrive D.O.A., nothing more than a bunch of dumb pictures. When the comic-strip reader moves through those four panels containing those little repeating hieroglyphs, the characters must come alive on the page with as much ferocity and resonance as the people in one’s own life and memory. The reader doesn’t just look at Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and Snoopy but reads them as musical notes in a silently heard composition of hilarity, cruelty, and occasional melancholy.

Due to an essential tremor in Schulz’s drawing hand, as the result of a quadruple-bypass surgery in 1981, this distillation felt shakier in later years; he sometimes even steadied his drawing arm with the other, to reduce the tremors to a minimum. But this difficulty did not change the strip’s essence, or Schulz’s devotion to drawing it: “I am still searching for that wonderful pen line that comes down—when you are drawing Linus standing there, and you start with the pen up near the back of his neck and you bring it down and bring it out, and the pen point fans out a little bit, and you come down here and draw the lines this way for the marks on his sweater, and all of that . . . This is what it’s all about—to get feelings of depth and roundness, and the pen line is the best pen line you can make. That’s what it’s all about.”

Schulz’s mind, and then hand, transmuted the “Peanuts” characters onto the paper and then into the eyes and minds of millions of readers, and he knew those readers trusted him to “make the best he could make.” He never gave up on them. Besides, no one else could have done it; despite the deceptive simplicity of a “Peanuts” drawing, faking one—let alone four of them in a row—is impossible. If there is one accomplishment in the art of cartooning for which Schulz should be credited, it’s that he made comics into a broader visual language of emotion and, more importantly, empathy. For this, all cartoonists—especially those of us who have attempted “graphic novels”—owe Schulz, well, everything.

This excerpt is drawn from “The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life,” out this October from the Library of America. Ref: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-debt-that-all-cartoonists-owe-to-peanuts Written by Christ Ware, New Yorker

[doronjosama]

Today's eBay spotlight (Seller ID: RadioIndy)! Acme Novelty Library V.14 from 2000! Classic indie weirdness by Chris Ware from Fantagraphics! #comics #acmenoveltylibrary #chrisware #fantagraphics #2000 #IndieComics #VintageComics #ComicCollector #comicdealer #auctions #ebay #RadioIndy #DownsizingMyCollection #EverythingMustGo #buymystuff

[moviesandmania]

FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND Jerry Warren abomination - trailer, free online and reviews

‘Humans controlled by an alien brain!’ Frankenstein Island is a 1981 sci-fi horror film about a group of male balloonists stranded with alien Amazon women amidst bizarre experiments. Written [as Jaques Lecouter], co-produced, edited and directed by Jerry Warren (The Wild World of Batwoman; Creature of the Walking Dead; Face of the Screaming Werewolf; Teenage Zombies). The Cerito Films-Chriswar…

[interactiondesignrsm]

Chris Ware’s Monograph. An extraordinary book. A review from Cartoonist Kayfabe    

[thirdeyecomics]

It’s #newcomicwednesday — and @imagecomics #hedra is a slice of #chrisware meets #moebius inspired amazing that you gotta get!!!! This one-shot is one of the most fun things we read this week & we can not recommend enough! That good!! Want to reserve or preorder this or other items? Here’s how: 1. Email ✉️ steve@thirdeyecomics.com or DM us here. 2. ‼️ Make sure to include: the item, your name, your phone # or email address, and whether it’s for in store pick up (pls include the Third Eye location) or mail order! 3. We’ll get you paid up & it’s yours! #comics #comicbooks #comiccollector #comiccollectors #newcomicday #newcomicbookday #buythirdeyeordie (at THIRD EYE COMICS) https://www.instagram.com/p/CDO1APehQCK/?igshid=1jradohn0sddt

[williamjoyce]

My dear, kind and deliciously droll friend Chip Kidd (who to my mind the is greatest book designer of our time)just opened an amazing show on Batman and his many incarnations at the Society of Illustrators in New York. Here he is last night at the opening with my son Jack. Both Jack and I did Batman covers for Mr Kidd and they are in the show. Mine hangs beneath a cover by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast who has been a hero of mine for many years. I am abashed and proud to be hanging next to her. There are many other heroes and colleagues in the show and even some beloved former Moonbots. Frank Miller, Alex Ross, Chris Ware, Tony Millionaire, Vanessa Del Rey but I’m most proud to be hanging with my son Jackson Edward Joyce. If you scroll along you’ll see one of the many portraits he’s done of me as well a surreal image we collaborated on and one of his paintings that was featured recently by the Saatchi gallery of London. High toned stuff that. He is a fine lad, a killer cook, and a talented artist. Thank you Chip for including us. For me this is a most happy Sunday. May everyone’s be just as dandy. . . . . . . #batman #batmanart #illustrationart ##batmancomics #batmancollection #chipkidd #saatchi_gallery @jackson.e.joyce #vrdelrey #chrisware #tonymillionaire #societyofillustrators #frankmiller #alexross #rozchast @chip_kidd (at Society Of Illustrators) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzEAFeHlKrh/?igshid=tru2zxblbdtl

[drawdownbooks]

LAST COPIES! Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe / Available at www.draw-down.com / The #comicbook universe is adventurous, mystifying, and filled with heroes, villains, and cosplaying #ComicCon attendees. This book by #graphicdesigner #TimLeong (formerly art director for Complex, Fortune and Wired, currently creative director at #EntertainmentWeekly) traverses the #graphic world through a collection of pie charts, bar graphs, timelines, scatter plots, and more. #SuperGraphic offers readers a unique look at the intricate and sometimes contradictory storylines that weave their way through comic books, and shares advice for navigating the pages of some of the most popular, longest-running, and best-loved comics and graphic novels out there. From a colorful breakdown of the DC Comics reader demographic to a witty Venn diagram of #superhero comic tropes and a #ChrisWare sadness scale, this book charts the most arbitrary and monumental characters, moments, and equipment of the wide world of comics. (at Hollywood) https://www.instagram.com/p/BsEBPwlAxml/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1f6vqgvpa3azq

[fatgardengnome]

Color fun in clip studio. #comics #drawing #inspiration #robertcrumb #chrisware #noahvansciver #danielclowes #edpiskor #charlesburns #chesterbrown #seth #art #humor #funny #darkhumor #dark #dating #love #romance #lowbrowart #lowbrow# popsurrealism #sketch #artistsofinstagram #artshow#surrealart https://www.instagram.com/p/BuAX7vzADuI/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1qsms431cacms

[docnad]

The New Yorker, Febrary 15 & 22, 2010 Natural Selection:  Chris Ware Preliminary New Yorker Cover Art https://attemptedbloggery.blogspot.com/2023/02/natural-selection-chris-ware.html #ChrisWare #TheNewYorker https://www.instagram.com/p/Co3bpzSsp2A/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[intellectures]

»Ich schreibe immer wieder die Geschichte meiner Eltern«

Der kanadische Comiczeichner Seth alias Gregory Gallant im Gespräch über die Ungenauigkeit der Erinnerung, die Last der Nostalgie und seine Erwartung, in der Bedeutungslosigkeit zu versinken. In diesen Tagen erscheint sein lang erwartetes, neues »Palookaville«-Album. Read the full article

[sdcastro]

#chrisware (em Centre Pompidou) https://www.instagram.com/p/CiNuJurDGhGRCDEj56YpKXY5PsefSt-pL4wBtQ0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[perez29b-blog]

Immanquable #chrisware #comicbooks #masterpiece @centrepompidou https://www.instagram.com/p/ChiTRiErYFf/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[itspolii]

Chris Ware 🖌 en el Pompidou!! 🟦⬜️🟥 . . . . . #chrisware #pompidoucentre #graphicart #graphicnovels #modernartist #france #paris #museum #museumart (en Centre Pompidou) https://www.instagram.com/p/ChcTeSYuuu2/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[juniperscribe]

Finished this earlier this summer. By #bookcover #designer #chipkidd. A sequel to his 1st #novel The Cheese Monkeys. A novel I read when it first came out. I vaguely remember the broad strokes – coming of age story of a boy that attends a state college & enrolls in design curriculum. Takes place in the 50s(?). While I don’t remember the details, I do remember it being utterly charming & very readable. This one is very much in the same vein. Follows our young designer newly graduated into his 1st job for a mom & pop ad agency in New Haven, CT. #Design by Chip Kidd (of course), with cover #illustration by #charlesburns and #lettering by #chrisware – a real murderer’s row of talent. #graphicdesign #advertising #typography #summerreading (at Bedford-Stuyvesant) https://www.instagram.com/p/CfVPbgwOACK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[lipscomics]