I'm a cartoonist. I've spent my whole life studying this artform. I'd like to think I know more about it than most, and I don't like Ware, for perfectly logical reasons (to my mind, at least). Some people find that very hard to understand. For what it's worth, I've enjoyed discussing this with you, and I appreciate your point of view. And I do wonder if someday I might change my mind about this- if I do, it'll be partly because of this part of your comment: "life doesn’t always have such a clear structure, and we are often scrambling to put one on it in hindsight. Ware illustrates that beautifully for me, and in a way that I maintain could only be accomplished through the comics medium."

That does make me think.

###

Jack, first of all, with regards to regards to the "taking statements personally" thing, Julian claimed to actually be personally insulted by my having a diferent opinion from him, and you accused me (by implication) of holding the opinions I do in order to stroke my own ego, along with a few other insulting potshots, which you still haven't entirely quit. If that's not taking things personally, what is?

And Jack, we're talking about comics on the internet. By definition, every single comment made here is a subjective response (although I'll admit the occasional pretentious and/or elitist academic might argue otherwise). I didn't feel the need to make this clear in the language of my original comment, because I thought it was obvious. Yes, I said the "the reader". Perhaps I should have inserted "at least those with similar tastes to myself" or some other thing, but I thought it would be redundant to do so. I was also typing in a hurry (I was at work when I posted my previous comments).

And if you had responded with a "speak for yourself", what a lot of typing we'd have saved; since I'd have replied with "I am, sorry if it sounded otherwise", and we'd have been done. Instead you responded with a "you're just f*cking wrong". And well, I'm not- I am speaking the absolute truth of my own experience.

"The actual meat of the conversation at last."

Not really. The actual meat of the conversation is that, in spite of your recent protestations of "hey it's all just people's opinions", I still object to the lack of that same sentiment implicit in saying "that element of choice for the reader, is entirely absent" .

I don't expect everyone to begin every sentence with mealy-mouthed sentiments of "just my opinion, of course", but with "the reader" instead of "me" or even "many readers" in place of the universal "the reader" you're claiming to speak for, I really had to respond with a "speak for yourself."
Same with the humour issue. If you argue that different people have different senses of humour, then you're obligated to admit that if anyone else laughs at it then it couldn't have "forgotten to include much in the way of actual humour."

Again, nothing you have said has changed my opinion of the wrongness of that "lack of choice" statement, which is itself a rejection of the "subjective response" argument you've turned to.

I would counter though that life doesn't always have such a clear structure, and we are often scrambling to put one on it in hindsight. Ware illustrates that beautifully for me, and in a way that I maintain could only be accomplished through the comics medium. You couldn't translate pages like those to prose without sacrificing the choices the reader must make for themselves how to construct the narrative order on those pages, even Calvino had a more rigid authorial voice in that regard. Likewise, while Ware's animations obviously share stylistic similarities, they do not come close to approaching the kind of narrative cartography that his comics have accomplished. Moreover, most of his layouts are not nearly so complex and while they can certainly seem daunting the first time you encounter them, once you have become accustomed to them you can indeed read through them pretty quickly. Anyways, while they are obviously not your thing, and that's fine, I think it's another thing entirely to say that they would work better if they weren't comics or that they don't have a place in the medium.

First of all, Julian, thank you for presenting the first argument that actually works to counter what i actually wrote. My response boils down to a matter of taste- unlike yourself and Jack, I take little in the simpler read of Ware's work, and don't feel it merits the praise it gets- and as I say, that's down to taste. Which is why, in my very first post, I used the words "in my personal opinion".

I think that great art is art that functions, and functions well, on every level. I think That Ware's art functions very well at the deeper levels, but very poorly at the surface. You clearly disagree, and enjoy the surface elements a lot more than I do.

That's okay, you know. We're both right. Art's funny like that.

Jack...

“You’re talking there about the order in which you absorb various pieces of information, not the amount of that information you can choose to take in.”
Irrelevant. I still enjoyed the slight initial read; sure, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been motivated to go further, but your “absolutely everything or nothing at all” argument is still nonsense.

What's irrelevant? I talked about the way people can choose to read the work, by taking in varying amounts of the information they were presented with; and you responded by quoting yourself telling someone else what order they should read the panels in. That's irrelevant.

And as I said to Julian above, I don't enjoy the superficial elements of Ware's work. That you do is great. Bully for you.

“…that Ware so obviously wants you to…”
Total projection.

As is any other interpretation of any other author's intent by anyone who doesn't actually know them. What's your point?

“…forgets to include much in the way of actual humour…”
Bullshit, plain and simple.

Hey, interesting fact: different people have a different sense of humour, and find different things funny. When I say I don't find Ware's comics funny, I'm not bullshitting, it's absolutely true. I don't. Sorry if that offends you.

“…never has a satisfying conclusion…”
Completely unimportant, even if it were true.

Actually, it's absolutely vital to what I'm talking about, since if (superficial readings of) Ware's stories did have satisfying conclusions to them, then they'd work better on that level for the casual reader. And I'd consider them better comics.

“…concerned with the terrible anguish of being a white, middle class american suburbanite.”
Another non-point. For the same reason that a lot of mainstream literature is about the angst of middle aged Lit. professors, it’s just a matter of being concerned with the anguish of being human in general, filtered through what the author knows, which is clearly closer to middle class American suburban existence, rather than, say, a life in another part of the world or level of wealth which you could then stoke your ego by saying
he got wrong.

To use your own pharse: total projection. I don't want Ware to focus on other types of character so I can say he's got it wrong- but it would sure help me identify with his characters. What with being a working class brit from inner London. One of the barriers to enjoying Ware's work for me is that I have zero empathy for his characters. Their lives, and their concerns, bear so little relation to my own life and experiences that there's no "in" for me.

Interesting that you feel the need to get that ego stroke line in there, though. Am I making you feel inadequate in some way?

“…since, remember, we’re not talking about the deeper elements here…”
None of these elements are totally separable. Even the lightest superficial reading gives at least a *feel* of the deeper elements, of the gist of what’s being said on the larger level. Again, you don’t get “nothing at all” when you skim the surface, you just get more when you delve deeper, which is completely up to the reader, which is why I objected to your statement “that flexibility, that element of choice for the reader, is entirely absent” as being totally, completely wrong. And wrong-headed.

...here we go. The actual meat of the conversation at last. I agree that a slight, superficial reading gives the feel that there are deeper elements to the work; my problems are that firstly, I think I'm highly unlikely to be alone in not getting much else from such a reading; and secondly, that this feeling is altogether a little too strong. It's not like, oh I don't know, let's say Watchemen, where one knows on the first reading that you will get more from the second. No, reading Ware's comics casually feels like being in the room when people are having a conversation about something that happened when you weren't there.

...To me. Again, as I said to Julian, this part of the argument is fundamentally about taste. You obviously find Ware's comics funny, and have more empathy for his characters than I do. So for you, they work better. That's nice for you.

Doesn't change my opinion, though. Again, sorry if that offends you, although I confess to being puzzled as to why it should.

"...that Ware so obviously wants you to..."
Total projection.

"...forgets to include much in the way of actual humour..."
Bullshit, plain and simple.

"...never has a satisfying conclusion..."
Completely unimportant, even if it were true.

"...concerned with the terrible anguish of being a white, middle class american suburbanite."
Another non-point. For the same reason that a lot of mainstream literature is about the angst of middle aged Lit. professors, it's just a matter of being concerned with the anguish of being human in general, filtered through what the author knows, which is clearly closer to middle class American suburban existence, rather than, say, a life in another part of the world or level of wealth which you could then stoke your ego by saying
he got wrong.

"...since, remember, we’re not talking about the deeper elements here..."
None of these elements are totally separable. Even the lightest superficial reading gives at least a *feel* of the deeper elements, of the gist of what's being said on the larger level. Again, you don't get "nothing at all" when you skim the surface, you just get more when you delve deeper, which is completely up to the reader, which is why I objected to your statement "that flexibility, that element of choice for the reader, is entirely absent" as being totally, completely wrong. And wrong-headed.

You obviously disagree with me. Guess what? That's fine with me. I'm not insulted by that. I'm not even insulted by you saying I'm full of crap. We disagree, and we use different measures to define the value of a work of art in a particular medium. There's nothing at all wrong with that. Why do you take the fact that I think differently from you as a personal insult? That's fucked up.

And yes, Ware is meticulous in his page structure. I don't think he sets the bar, though. As far as I'm concerned, that's still Eisner. But than I obviously have very different standards to you. Again, this is not something I'm doing on purpose to offend you.

You're talking there about the order in which you absorb various pieces of information, not the amount of that information you can choose to take in. So I don't see what that has to do with my own comments.

And okay, I'll grant you that if you treat Ware's work superficially, and don't bring the full level of analasys to bear that Ware so obviously wants you to, you will get a story out of it. A dull, predictable and highly generic black comedy that forgets to include much in the way of actual humour, never has a satisfying conclusion (since that element of the story is invariably buried in the details) and is (usually) concerned with the terrible anguish of being a white, middle class american suburbanite. Which seems to me to be so very far away from Ware's larger narratives, and is so utterly unoriginal in and of itself (since, remember, we're not talking about the deeper elements here), that it hardly counts for anything.

To counter your counters, you misunderstood what I meant by linearity. Certainly Vonnegut and Thompson are just two examples of a long tradition of non-linear narratives, but the direction of prose is strict: left to right (depending on cultural convention) lather, rinse, repeat. There are very few authors who have successfully messed with the structure of a sentence; even Jabberwocky followed the rules to a t. Find me a prose equivalent to pages like these and we'll talk: http://www.adambaumgoldgallery.com/Ware,%20Chris/2005_3.htm

Note that I didn't say that Chris Ware is the only comics creator that works the page as a gestalt, simply that he did it remarkably well. Of course there are others: Morrison and Quitely, Steranko, David Hellman, the list could go on. My point though is that Ware more or less sets the bar in this regard. Again, you may not like him, but I would hope you could agree that a Ware is meticulous in his page structure.

As for your final point? I have read Jimmy Corrigan going on five times now, and each time I find something new. A small detail in a panel off to the side, an offhanded epithet's connection to a surreal dream many pages back, or even a new way to read a page that offers new insight into these mens' lives. I loved Jimmy Corrigan from my first read through, so this assertion that every layer of the work has to be absorbed to get something from the work isn't exactly true. Sure, you can't breeze through the book in the span of a few hours, but don't need to dissect every minuscule detail on your first read through either.

You may not like the man's work, I don't begrudge you that. Aesthetics are anything but objective. It's disappointing, though, that you would say that its a bad work because it doesn't suit your particular palate. I'm never going to be able to sit through Raging Bull but that doesn't make it any less brilliant of a cinematic achievement. What really bothers me though, is your assertion that intricate and detailed works don't have a place in comics. I have no kind words for that philosophy and can only say to that: you sir, are full of crap.

"You have to read and absord (sic) everything on every page of a Chris Ware strip if you want to get anything out of it."
Wrong again. You might get more if you do, but you certainly don't get *nothing* if you don't. Again, check my previous comment to someone who found it impenetrable:
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/12/17/my-top-ten-comics-of-2008/#comment-697570

"Which is my point."
I understood you the first time. I still say your point isn't one.

No, no, no. I'll respect your right to like or dislike whatever you want, everyone's entitled to their opinion etc. etc., but on this one point above all others you could possibly have mad, I have to quote Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson in a scene from 24 Hour Party People when I say "You're just f**king wrong!"
(Only mention the actor and movie because it has to be imagined in that exact tone with that exact facial expression.)

You're actually insulted that I use a different measure for what makes a good comic than you do?

Also, to counter a couple of your points- linearity is in no way intrinsic to the medium of prose. Read Catch 22, Finnegan's Wake, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and any number of other books for proof of that; and Ware is by no means unique in his use of the page as a whole to convey information rather than just the traditional panel to panel method. Off the top of my head I can think of work by Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Jonathan Hickman, Paul Grist and Will Eisner that all do just that to a greater or lesser extent.

I only made an observation & given the fact that the big 2 share a lot of the market place in unit & volume, it just simply seemed logic.

I didn't say that those comics weren't good or anything like that.

'Twas crap I tell thee.

Furthermore, I'm insulted by the idea that Ware's work belongs in a different medium because it requires a more active audience. While I love Mignola's work on Hellboy and adore Kirby's space operas, I have to say that after Ware I have found the great majority of comics to be unengaging. Not that all comics should be as intricately constructed, but outside of the rare We3, old Jim Steranko comic, or Dresden Codak strip it can be hard to get my fix for such exquisite page constructions.

*:okay, you've got Danielewski and Barthelme but still