I don't know if I'll get in trouble for plugging another publisher here on our official organ, but good gravy: our esteemed colleagues at Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern have put nearly all of their available back issues (including the Chris Ware-edited all-comics #13) on sale for just $5 each through tomorrow.

Let me tell you something: babies and blogging don't mix. Guess which takes a backseat? But I'll be getting back on track here soon. In the meantime, here's a special July 4th weekend treat for you, an original, unpublished comic strip by Chris Ware. I am not worthy. 

Just received today: the breathtaking wraparound cover, designed by Chris Ware, for the final volume in our Krazy & Ignatz series (that is, until we start re-printing the early Eclipse volumes -- more info on that in this previous Flog post). The book is due later this year. Click the image for a closer look.

Congrats to our pal Chip Kidd on the release of his second novel, The Learners. And how many people could get Charles Burns and Chris Ware to work on their cover? 

More from the files...

A couple of rejected panels by Al Columbia: 

  
 

A 1997 WonderCon jam sketch by Jaime Hernandez and Daniel Clowes:

Another 1997 WonderCon jam sketch pencilled by Gilbert Hernandez & inked by me:

A 1991 convention sketch I obtained from Dan Clowes while I was in college, three years before working at Fanta:  

A 2004 wedding present from Chris & Marnie Ware:

The back:

A beautiful Chuckling Whatsit pin-up scored at APE several years ago from Richard Sala:

Evan Dorkin's recent, generous blog posts sharing convention sketches he's collected from the likes of Los Bros and Clowes have inspired me to share some small stuff I have at home in my studio that will fit on my teensy scanner and otherwise might just sit in here until I die and my wife or daughter sell it all on eBay.

First up, here's a card Evan himself gave me on the legendary Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Cruise, which has been on my bulletin board ever since.

I will collect one day.

Here's a piece I picked up at Comicon a few years ago for $30 (!). A "Li'l Abner" daily panel from 1951, mercilessly separated from its family by a greedy art dealer who thought he could get more for four pieces than one.

Here's a Charles Burns pencil rough for a panel in Black Hole:

And two panels edited out of Chris Ware's final Jimmy Corrigan edit (I think he just changed the wording slightly - "Reed" to "Dad", as I recall, but I haven't compared it for a few years):

The New Yorker has announced a contest inviting cartoonists to design their own version of the magazine's mascot, Eustice Tilly (originally designed in 1925 by Rea Irvin for the very first issue). My favorite Tilly probably has to be the above Crumb version, which was perceived as a blasphemous betrayal of the mag's proud tradition by some of its more calcified subscribers when originally published in 1994. Now it's a decade and a half later and folks like Crumb, Aline Kominsky, Chris Ware (see his Tilly below), Adrian Tomine, and Daniel Clowes are fairly regular contributors to the mag. Mouly and Spiegelman, what hath thou wrought?!

Acme Novelty Library #18
By Chris Ware

In keeping with his athletic goal of issuing a volume of his occasionally lauded ACME series once every new autumn, volume 18 finds cartoonist Chris Ware abandoning the engaging serialization of his "Rusty Brown" and instead focusing upon his ongoing and more experimentally grim narrative , "Building Stories."

Collecting pages unseen except in obscure alternative weekly periodicals and sophisticated expensive coffee table magazines, The ACME Novelty Library #18 re-introduces the characters which New York Times readers found "dry" and "deeply depressing" when one chapter of the work (not included here) was presented in its pages during 2005 and 2006. Set in a Chicago apartment building more or less in the year 2000, the stories move from the straightforward to the mnemonically complex, invading character's memories and personal ambitions with a text point size likely unreadable to human beings over the age of 45. Reformatted to accommodate this different material, readers will be pleased by the volume's vertical shape and tasteful design, which, unlike Ware's earlier volumes, should discreetly blend into any stack or shelf of real books.

56-page full-color 8" x 10.75" hardcover $18.95
Order Now!



Acme Novelty Datebook Vol. 2
By Chris Ware

Straggling behind the mild 2003 success of cartoonist Chris Ware's first facsimile collection of his miscellaneous sketches, notes, and adolescent fantasies arrives this second volume, updating weary readers with the last ten years of Ware's clichéd and outmoded insights.

Working directly in pen and ink, watercolor, and white-out whenever he makes a mistake, Ware has cannily edited out all legally sensitive and personally incriminating material from his private journals, carefully recomposing each page to simulate the appearance of an ordered mind and established aesthetic directive. All phone numbers, references to ex-girlfriends, "false starts," and embarrassing experiments with unfamiliar drawing media have been generously excised to present the reader with the most pleasant and colorful sketchbook reading experience available. Included are Ware's frustrated doodles for his book covers, angry personal assaults on friends, half-finished comic strips, lengthy and tiresome fulminations of personal disappointments both social and sexual, as well as his now-beloved drawings of the generally miserable inhabitants of the city of Chicago. All in all, a necessary volume for fans of fine art, water-based media, and personal diatribe. Hardcover, attractively designed, and easy to resell.

208-page 7" x 9.5" full-color hardcover $39.95
Order Now!

... regarding Chris Ware's recent output. From the aforementioned publications earlier this week, to the recent film poster for The Savages, and now to obscure midwestern literary journals, he continues to shame underachievers everywhere. More here. Tip 'o the Floghat to reader A.T.

In the last two or three weeks, I've acquired not one, not two, not three, but FOUR brand new Chris Ware books. WTF?!? First ACME 18, then the ACME 18.5 portfolio, then the second ACME Datebook. Then, yesterday I get the new issue of Virginia Review Quarterly, which features an all-new strip called "Jordan W. Lint," which continues the all-new Ware piece in the new Zadie Smith anthology that Jacob wrote about two posts back. How does he do it? Pact with the devil? Sweatshop? Computers? You know, when you have a child, your output is supposed to decrease, Chris. By my count, Ware is working on at least three graphic novels simultaneously these days: Rusty Brown, Building Stories, and Jordan W. Lint. And that doesn't even count all of the other shorter pieces he manages to put out. Anyway, right now is an embarrassment of riches for us Ware fans out there. Lap it up.