Next week, on Thursday, October 25 at 7pm, we’ll welcome graphic novelists Chris Ware and Charles Burns to the store for a conversation that is, we can easily say, one of the most highly anticipated events among our staff EVER. Ware’s new book, Building Stories, is an incredible storytelling feat – a tall box containing fourteen books, pamphlets, newspapers and magazines that tell the story of a Chicago apartment building.
Shappy, who wrote a great post about his relationship with Ware’s work, had the opportunity to ask him a few questions about his work
BookPeople: Was there a moment in your life when you realized you wanted to draw for a living or was it something that found you?
Chris Ware: I was eleven years old when I drew up a handful of what I considered “serious” comic book pages for a Charlton publication which, I believed, however wrongly or rightly, invited submissions from amateur artists. Though I never heard anything back from the editors, the act of doing it cemented in my mind the idea that I definitely, somehow, wanted to be a cartoonist. I remember sitting in the back seat of my Mom’s car thinking that if one day I could have my own comic book, I would be happy and would feel like I accomplished what I’d aimed for. So now I don’t know what to do.
BP: What made you decide to go to UT? How did you like Austin while you attended?
CW: The short answer is that I moved to San Antonio in the middle of my junior year of high school and it was cheap to stay in Texas. Though I wanted to attend the Kansas City Art Institute, I’m very glad now that I went to UT, as I received a much more well-rounded education that way, to say nothing of the experience working on The Daily Texan afforded, as well as the overall inspiring and encouraging atmosphere of the UT Art Department itself.
BP: Your work has a very strong nostalgic feel. What draws you to the graphic style of days gone by?
CW: Initially it was the warmth and honesty that these earlier comics seemed to exude, though more recently it’s probably more a function of my age; i.e. the older I get, the more “nostalgic” my stuff is going to appear to younger eyes. As well, there’s a less overt sexuality to earlier comics and design, which I find refreshing, though much of that has now trickled down into the general culture, which has surprised me. Industrial and graphic design has improved a hundredfold in the past decade, and I certainly never thought that would happen.
BP: What sort of comics did you read as a child? Do you still have any of them?
CW: I read and loved “Peanuts,” though I collected superhero comics and traced the pictures as a way of learning how to draw and of designing my own superhero costumes (all more or less covertly, because otherwise I would get jumped in the school hallways for being such a nerd.) Now, I still read “Peanuts” and find it every bit as funny and sophisticated as I did as a kid and the multiplexes are filled with blockbuster movies about superheroes, which I have no interest in seeing at all.
BP: Any opinion on the state of “alternative comics” today? Do digital reading devices make you sad?
CW: There are more good cartoonists working now than ever before, and no, digital comics don’t make me sad, I just prefer the panorama of print on paper when it comes to protecting and containing art intended for print. As far as art that’s not intended for print, and news and journalism especially, I really don’t see any reason to keep such things to newsprint; by definition once news is printed it isn’t new anymore. But art doesn’t have to be new to be good, it just needs defined boundaries and some way of being able to be seen by succeeding generations. Plus, not having to be plugged in is certainly a point in its favor.
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Copies of Building Stories are available on our shelves and via www.bookpeople.com. We are currently accepting orders for signed copies of Building Stories as well as Charles Burns’ new book, The Hive.
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