October 18-22, 2006

Ware is a 'Headliner.'

"Chris Ware is the Emily Dickinson of comics," says the distinguished poet J. D. McClatchy, one of the artist's many fans. As one of today's most renowned cartoonists, Ware is widely considered an artist of genius. Combining innovative comic book art, hand lettering, and graphic design, Ware's uniquely appealing work is characterized by ceaseless experimentation with narrative and graphic forms. The publication of his graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth in 2000 inspired a near avalanche of praise from critics and readers alike. According to a 2004 scholarly monograph on the cartoonist from Yale University Press, Jimmy Corrigan "has sold 80,000 copies to a worldwide audience, most of whom would never set foot in a comics shop." For its experiments in graphic form-including pullout, three-dimensional inserts-and its non-chronological narrative, the novel earned numerous honors, among them the Guardian First Book Award, presented for the first time to a comic book. Ware's unique art form extends beyond the world of graphic novels into the broader worlds of literature, graphic art, and popular culture, and challenges traditional definitions of all three. Ware is the first cartoonist to be serialized in The New York Times Magazine's "Funny Pages," which debuted in 2005.

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