He’s one of the world’s greatest graphic artists. Here’s why he’s laying himself bare in series of sketchbooks

American illustrator Chris Ware is considered one of the greatest artists working in comics today. His draftsmanlike precision has made his work instantly recognizable, and his art has graced the covers of The New Yorker on 25 occasions. The recipient of multiple Eisner Awards and Harvey Awards, the highest honours in American comics, Ware has also been recognized internationally with his Guardian First Book Award win for his book “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth” and the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême lifetime achievement award.
On Nov. 27, 2024, Ware will be launching the final instalment of his “Acme Novelty Datebook” series at the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library in conversation with comic critic Jeet Heer. The capstone of a multi-volume sketchbook project with diaristic elements and ironic newspaper-style strips, “Acme Novelty Datebook Volume 3” depicts the travails of the jobbing artist, depression, parenting, and the maturation of Ware’s daughter Clara, who left Chicago for Toronto to pursue post-secondary studies.
What was the attraction of doing a long-form project that would lay bare your artistic methodology?
My notebooks weren’t originally intended to be published. I began keeping them in 1986 while in art school at the University of Texas at Austin as a way to improve my drawing ability and thinking. It wasn’t until 2003 that a crazy Dutch publisher, Hansje Joustra, asked if he could publish my sketchbooks. Montreal-based Drawn & Quarterly, headed then by the talented and unaccountably honest Chris Oliveros, paired with Hansje as co-publisher. Despite all this, it was ultimately a dumb decision. As a private tool for the questioning of one’s most embarrassing, humiliating and personal thoughts, publishing a notebook immediately torpedoes its utility. Live and learn, I guess.
Some of the strips in the book deal with the insecurities artists face about being discardable by the public. Can you talk about the role that self-doubt plays in your artistic process, and how you are able to move past it?
The published books condense 13 books down to three, spanning from when I was 18 to my daughter turning 18 and leaving home, and while I tried to keep as much of the whiny self-doubt out of them, it’s such an ever-present part of my daily — and even sleeping — life, it would be unbalanced to completely torch it all. I realize that it seems unsightly for someone who might be perceived as “successful” to still be so crippled by uncertainty as I am, but despite all my best efforts, I simply can’t get over it. I hope that by admitting this struggle, it might make things just a little easier for other artists who feel similarly. As for those artists and writers who don’t ever experience self-doubt, lucky you.
Did working on these strips over the years clarify or even challenge your previously held ideas about coming of age, especially while witnessing Clara’s transition into adulthood?
I found myself surprised and amazed on a daily basis by her developing intellect and humour and especially her generosity as she grew up, and I tried to capture as much of it as I could. Being an unemployed cartoonist and the default stay-at-home-mom — my wife works as a public high school science teacher — I felt lucky to be able to be there, and it counts at this point as the best time of my adult life. Clara has grown up into someone who still says and thinks things that regularly amaze, startle and humble me, plus she’s also funnier than I am, which is sort of annoying.
You lament the way that some parents make decisions based on whether their actions promise a lack of conflict. Is this “path of least resistance” something you and your wife have struggled against in your parenting style?
My wife and I weren’t hands-off parents, but we also didn’t try to shove Clara in one direction or another. I think one trick to being a good parent is to regard your children with the interest and curiosity that they deserve. This said, if they do something stupid or mean, then you should definitely discipline them, but they’ll understand you’re disciplining them because they did something stupid or mean, not just because you’re the parent and they’re the child. I also learned to think of parenting like a fun game that you’ll never get to play again, which it is. Then again, Clara was always so kind and nice, I think my wife and I got extremely lucky. Some of the kids I saw on the playground indeed seemed to be true nightmares.
How has your relationship to the city changed on account of Toronto being Clara’s adopted home? Have the differences in American and Canadian culture proved to be a source of amusement or vexing concern?
Clara is now a history student here, a choice born of a nagging sense that America has been in trouble for a while now, brought most into focus when her aunt and uncle and cousins ran from bullets at the 2022 Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, where 48 people were wounded and seven killed. On that day, Clara decided, even though she got into most of the American colleges to which she applied, to seriously consider the University of Toronto. She ended up loving it here and we love visiting. I can feel the distrust and anger of America dissipate when we step off the plane.
The most recent American election has confirmed our worst fears. Canadians’ endemic trust, humility and civility are to be cherished, not made fun of. We both live in nations where compromise and comity are key to functioning, but over the past two decades in America, media algorithms have moved increasingly towards the stock profits of division and outrage — and Trump, using the oldest trick in the book, has amplified these as a means of conquering. A society cannot function with these two forces at odds.
You muse about the rise of totalitarianism in the book, in particular how “the fear of always being under surveillance … of being on the ‘wrong side’ of things within one’s isolated and demarcated group” can lead to a closing of the mind. If one openly courts this kind of conformism, do you believe that art and its reception inevitably suffer?
I believe the old saw that we have much more in common than we don’t, and that art is where this should live. Art should never be a tool of power, and if there’s one awful thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that there’s a human inclination to try to always have someone under one’s boot, whether racially or sexually or in the workplace or in a marriage or even between a parent and a child. One has to fight this, consciously, every day. Over the past 20 years or so, the taint of academic obfuscation, fashion, and worst of all, investment, has largely seized the art world. It seems to me we should be looking for something that just makes us feel better about being alive. I’ve tried to stay lashed to the latter, knowing that making work which is essentially disposable is something of an uphill climb, but I value the trash-like nature of comics as it keeps the relationship between the artist and reader as direct as possible. Also, it makes moving apartments much easier.