http://edition.cnn.com/2000/books/news/10/03/chris.ware/index.html

I found this review/interview/ode to Chris Ware on CNN. While the article is informative with regards to Ware’s childhood and the process of making Jimmy Corrigan, what struck me about it was the author’s need to legitimize the book even though it’s a comic. A few choice quotes:

• It is unlike any comic book you have ever seen.

• “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth” (Pantheon, 2000) is a newly published “graphic novel” by cartoonist Chris Ware.

• The color printing was adjusted repeatedly — Ware’s choice of colors is as precise as his lines. Most cartoonists use the colors of kindergarten crayons; Ware uses the shades in the Crayola Big Box — Aquamarine, Goldenrod, Burnt Umber.

• The compact imagery, the compacted plot and subplots, make “Jimmy Corrigan” more akin to a novel by Faulkner or Dickens than to “The Adventures of Spiderman.”

I found it problematic that the writer felt the need to put down other comic writers/artists in order to put ware on a pedestal. I don’t know what the hell the writer is talking about, but Marvel and DC colorists don’t just use “kindergarten crayons.” Yes, Ware’s colors are impressive on that oh-so-soft paper, but he’s not the first person to pay attention to color scheme. (That and the Crayola analogy seems to demean the comic medium as a whole.)

It was frustrating that this fan wank review compared Ware to Faulkner and Dickens because that implies that other comic books don’t deserve praise for literary prowess. The writer put graphic novel in quotation marks as if to suggest that Jimmy Corrigan doesn’t truly belong in that genre because it’s literature. Regardless of my feelings on Jimmy Corrigan, it is most definitely a graphic novel. No one should apologize for its form. I understand that mainstream American society doesn’t always have the most respect for comics, but presenting Ware’s work as an exception isn’t the way to remedy that.