Chris Ware (Monographics Series)

This title pairs the most talented postmodern comic artist alive (Chris Ware, author of the justly lauded Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth with perhaps the best writer on contemporary comics, Daniel Raeburn. So little decent writing exists on comics that Raeburn, editor of the fanzine The Imp,has to go back to the very birth of the form to get started, and his writing is always fluent and accessible (with the exception of his insistence on using silly terms like "comixscenti"). Raeburn clearly loves Ware's work with an infectious intensity and it's not bothersome that he is obviously close pals with the subject. To adhere to the strictures of the series, the book seems at times forced to emphasize Ware's graphic design. Ware is first and foremost an insanely adept pillager of early 20th century advertising and comics forms; but it's as a story-teller that Ware is known and celebrated. Raeburn emphasizes Ware's "emotional" use of color and form and decries an art museum's placement of a single page of comic art taken from a larger work on its walls as tantamount to "cutting a paragraph from a short story and framing it." But his book does the very same thing throughout. The book is excellent, although slightly maddening. If only there were more illustrations and Raeburn did not feel such an insistence on staking claims on the very tired highbrow vs. lowbrow divide, this would be a perfect work. --Mike McGonigal