Graphic novel

200px Will Eisner's A Contract with God (1978). Eisner is often credited with having popularized the term "graphic novel".
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A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art, either in an experimental design or in a traditional comics format.^[1] The term is employed in a broad manner, encompassing non-fiction works and thematically linked short stories as well as fictional stories across number of genres.^[2]

Graphic novels are typically bound in longer and more durable formats than familiar comic magazines, using the same materials and methods as printed books, and they are generally sold in bookstores and specialty comic book shops rather than at newsstands. Such books have gained increasing acceptance as desirable materials for libraries, which were once ignored when titled or viewed as comic books.

Definition[link]

The term is not strictly defined, though one broad dictionary definition is "a fictional story that is presented in comic-strip format and presented as a book."^[3] In the publishing trade, the term is sometimes extended to material that would not be considered a novel if produced in another medium. Collections of comic books that do not form a continuous story, anthologies or collections of loosely related pieces, and even non-fiction are stocked by libraries and bookstores as "graphic novels" (similar to the manner in which dramatic stories are included in "comic" books). It is also sometimes used to create a distinction between works created as stand-alone stories, in contrast to collections or compilations of a story arc from a comic book series published in book form.^[4][5]

Whether the Japanese form manga, which has had a much longer history of both novel-like publishing and production of comics for adult audiences, should be included in the term is not always agreed upon. Likewise, in continental Europe, both original book-length stories such as La rivolta dei racchi (1967) by Guido Buzzelli,^[6] and collections of comic strips have been commonly published in hardcover volumes, often called "albums", since the end of the 19th century (including Franco-Belgian comics series such as "The Adventures of Tintin" and "Lieutenant Blueberry", and Italian series such as "Corto Maltese").

History[link]

As the exact definition of graphic novel is debatable, the origins of the artform itself are open to interpretation. Cave paintings may have told stories, and artists and artisans beginning in the Middle Ages produced tapestries and illuminated manuscripts that told or helped to tell narratives.

The first Western artist who interlocked lengthy writing with specific images was most likely William Blake (1757–1826).^{[citation needed]} Blake created several books in which the pictures and the "storyline" are inseparable, such as Marriage of Heaven and Hell.^{[citation needed]}

The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, the 1837 English translation of the 1833 Swiss publication Histoire de M. Vieux Bois by Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Töpffer, is the oldest recognized American example of comics used to this end.^[7] The United States has also had a long tradition of collecting comic strips into book form. While these collections and longer-form comic books are not considered graphic novels even by modern standards, they are early steps in the development of the graphic novel.^{[citation needed]}

1920s to 1960s[link]

The 1920s saw a revival of the medieval woodcut tradition, with Belgian Frans Masereel cited as "the undisputed king" of this revival.^[8] His works include Passionate Journey (1926).^[9] American Lynd Ward also worked in this tradition, publishing the first wordless, woodcut-picture novel, Gods' Man, in 1929 and going on to publish more during the 1930s.^{[citation needed]}

Other prototypical examples from this period include American Milt Gross' He Done Her Wrong (1930), a wordless comic published as a hardcover book, and Une Semaine de Bonté (1934), a novel in sequential images composed of collage by the surrealist painter Max Ernst.

The 1940s saw the launching of Classics Illustrated, a comic-book series that primarily adapted notable, public domain novels into standalone comic books for young readers. The 1950s saw this format broadened, with popular movies being similarly adapted. By the 1960s, British publisher IPC had started to produce a pocket-sized comic-book line, the "Super Library", that featured war and spy stories told over roughly 130 pages.^[10]

In 1950, St. John Publications produced the digest-sized, adult-oriented "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust, a film noir-influenced slice of steeltown life starring a scheming, manipulative redhead named Rust. Touted as "an original full-length novel" on its cover, the 128-page digest by pseudonymous writer "Drake Waller" (Arnold Drake and Leslie Waller), penciler Matt Baker and inker Ray Osrin proved successful enough to lead to an unrelated second picture novel, The Case of the Winking Buddha by pulp novelist Manning Lee Stokes and illustrator Charles Raab.^[11][12] In 1955, EC Comics devised the label "Picto-Fiction" when it attempted to graduate from the conventional comic book format to typeset graphic stories with a line of experimental magazines—Confessions Illustrated, Terror Illustrated, Shock Illustrated and Crime Illustrated.

By the late 1960s, American comic book creators were becoming more adventurous with the form. Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin self-published a 40-page, magazine-format comics novel, His Name is... Savage (Adventure House Press) in 1968 — the same year Marvel Comics published two issues of The Spectacular Spider-Man in a similar format. Columnist and comic-book writer Steven Grant also argues that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's Doctor Strange story in Strange Tales #130-146, although published serially from 1965–1966, is "the first American graphic novel".^[13]

Meanwhile, in continental Europe, the tradition of collecting serials of popular strips such as The Adventures of Tintin or Asterix had allowed a system to develop which saw works developed as long form narratives but pre-published as serials; in the 1970s this move in turn allowed creators to become marketable in their own right, auteurs capable of sustaining sales on the strength of their name.

By 1969, the author John Updike, who had entertained ideas of becoming a cartoonist in his youth, addressed the Bristol Literary Society, on "the death of the novel". Updike offered examples of new areas of exploration for novelists, declaring "I see no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic strip novel masterpiece".^[14]

Modern era[link]

Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin's Blackmark (1971), a science fiction/sword-and-sorcery paperback published by Bantam Books, did not use the term originally; the back-cover blurb of the 30th-anniversary edition (ISBN 978-1-56097-456-7) calls it, retroactively, "the very first American graphic novel". The Academy of Comic Book Arts presented Kane with a special 1971 Shazam Award for what it called "his paperback comics novel". Whatever the nomenclature, Blackmark is a 119-page story of comic-book art, with captions and word balloons, published in a traditional book format. It is also the first with an original heroic-adventure character conceived expressly for this form.

The first six issues of writer-artist Jack Katz's 1974 Comics and Comix Co. series The First Kingdom were collected as a trade paperback (Pocket Books, March 1978, ISBN 978-0-671-79016-5),^[15] which described itself as "the first graphic novel". Issues of the comic had described themselves as "graphic prose", or simply as a novel.

European creators were also experimenting with the longer narrative in comics form. In the United Kingdom, Raymond Briggs was producing works such as Father Christmas (1972) and The Snowman (1978), which he himself described as being from the "bottomless abyss of strip cartooning", although they, along with such other Briggs works as the more mature When the Wind Blows (1982), have been re-marketed as graphic novels in the wake of the term's popularity. Briggs notes, however, "I don't know if I like that term too much".^[16]

First self-proclaimed graphic novels: 1976-1978[link]

In 1976, the term "graphic novel" appeared in print to describe three separate works. Bloodstar by Richard Corben (adapted from a story by Robert E. Howard) used the term to define itself on its dust jacket and introduction. George Metzger's Beyond Time and Again, serialized in underground comics from 1967 to 1972, was subtitled "A Graphic Novel" on the inside title page when collected as a 48-page, black-and-white, hardcover book published by Kyle & Wheary.

The digest-sized Chandler: Red Tide (1976) by Jim Steranko, designed to be sold on newsstands, used the term "graphic novel" in its introduction and "a visual novel" on its cover, although Chandler is more commonly considered^{[citation needed]} an illustrated novel than a work of comics.

The following year, Terry Nantier, who had spent his teenage years living in Paris, returned to the United States and formed Flying Buttress Publications, later to incorporate as NBM Publishing (Nantier, Beall, Minoustchine), and published Racket Rumba, a 50-page spoof of the noir-detective genre, written and drawn by the single-name French artist Loro. Nantier followed this with Enki Bilal's The Call of the Stars. The company marketed these works as "graphic albums".^[17]

Similarly, Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species by writer Don McGregor and artist Paul Gulacy (Eclipse Books, August 1978) — the first graphic novel sold in the newly created "direct market" of United States comic-book shops^[18] — was called a "graphic album" by the author in interviews, though the publisher dubbed it a "comic novel" on its credits page. "Graphic album" was also the term used the following year by Gene Day for his hardcover short-story collection Future Day (Flying Buttress Press).

Another early graphic novel, though it carried no self-description, was The Silver Surfer (Simon & Schuster/Fireside Books, August 1978), by Marvel Comics' Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Significantly, this was published by a traditional book publisher and distributed through bookstores, as was cartoonist Jules Feiffer's Tantrum (Alfred A. Knopf, 1979)^[19] described on its dustjacket as a "novel-in-pictures".

Adoption of the term[link]

Hyperbolic descriptions of longer comic books as "novels" appear on covers as early as the 1940s. Early issues of DC Comics' All-Flash Quarterly, for example, described their contents as "novel-length stories" and "full-length four chapter novels."^[20]

In its earliest known citation, Richard Kyle used the term "graphic novel" in CAPA-ALPHA #2 (November 1964), a newsletter published by the Comic Amateur Press Alliance, and again in Kyle's magazine Fantasy Illustrated #5 (Spring 1966).^[21] Kyle, inspired by European and Japanese graphic albums, used the label to designate comics of an artistically "serious" sort.^[22] Following this, Bill Spicer, with Kyle's acknowledgment, edited and published a periodical titled Graphic Story Magazine in the fall of 1967.^[21] The Sinister House of Secret Love #2 (Jan. 1972), one of DC Comics' line of extra-length, 48-page comics, specifically used the phrase "a graphic novel of Gothic terror" on its cover.^[23]

The term "graphic novel" began to grow in popularity months after it appeared on the cover of the trade paperback edition (though not the hardcover edition) of Will Eisner's A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories (October 1978). This collection of short stories was a mature, complex work focusing on the lives of ordinary people in the real world,^{[citation needed]} and the term "graphic novel" was intended^{[citation needed]} to distinguish it from the traditional serialized nature of comic books, with which it shared a storytelling medium. Eisner cited^{[citation needed]} Lynd Ward's 1930s woodcuts (see above) as an inspiration.

The critical and commercial success of A Contract with God helped to establish the term "graphic novel" in common usage, and many sources have incorrectly credited Eisner with being the first to use it. These included the Time magazine website in 2003, which said in its correction, "Eisner acknowledges that the term 'graphic novel' had been coined prior to his book. But, he says, 'I had not known at the time that someone had used that term before.' Nor does he take credit for creating the first graphic book."^[24]

One of the earliest contemporaneous applications of the term post-Eisner came in 1979, when Blackmark's sequel — published a year after A Contract with God though written and drawn in the early 1970s — was labeled a "graphic novel" on the cover of Marvel Comics' black-and-white comics magazine Marvel Preview #17 (Winter 1979), where Blackmark: The Mind Demons premiered — its 117-page contents intact, but its panel-layout reconfigured to fit 62 pages.

Following this, Marvel from 1982 to 1988 published the Marvel Graphic Novel line of 10"x7" trade paperbacks — although numbering them like comic books, from #1 (Jim Starlin's The Death of Captain Marvel) to #35 (Dennis O'Neil, Mike Kaluta, and Russ Heath's Hitler's Astrologer, starring the radio and pulp fiction character the Shadow, and released in hardcover). Marvel commissioned original graphic novels from such creators as John Byrne, J. M. DeMatteis, Steve Gerber, graphic-novel pioneer McGregor, Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz, Walt Simonson, Charles Vess, and Bernie Wrightson. While most of these starred Marvel superheroes, others, such as Rick Veitch's Heartburst featured original SF/fantasy characters; others still, such as John J. Muth's Dracula, featured adaptations of literary stories or characters; and one, Sam Glanzman's A Sailor's Story, was a true-life, World War II naval tale.

Writer-artist Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus (1986), helped establish both the term and the concept of graphic novels in the minds of the mainstream public.^{[citation needed]} Two DC Comics book reprints of self-contained miniseries did likewise, though they were not originally published as graphic novels: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986), a collection of Frank Miller's four-part comic-book series featuring an older Batman faced with the problems of a dystopian future; and Watchmen (1987), a collection of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' 12-issue limited series in which Moore notes he "set out to explore, amongst other things, the dynamics of power in a post-Hiroshima world".^[25] These works and others were reviewed in newspapers and magazines, leading to increased coverage.^[26] Sales of graphic novels increased, with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, for example, lasting 40 weeks on a UK best-seller list.^[27]

Criticism of the term[link]

Some in the comics community have objected to the term "graphic novel" on the grounds that it is unnecessary, or that its usage has been corrupted by commercial interests. Writer Alan Moore believes, "It's a marketing term... that I never had any sympathy with. The term 'comic' does just as well for me... The problem is that 'graphic novel' just came to mean 'expensive comic book' and so what you'd get is people like DC Comics or Marvel Comics—because 'graphic novels' were getting some attention, they'd stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover and call it The She-Hulk Graphic Novel...."^[28]

Author Daniel Raeburn wrote, "I snicker at the neologism first for its insecure pretension — the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a 'sanitation engineer' — and second because a 'graphic novel' is in fact the very thing it is ashamed to admit: a comic book, rather than a comic pamphlet or comic magazine."^[29]

Writer Neil Gaiman, responding to a claim that he does not write comic books but graphic novels, said the commenter "meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening."^[30] Responding to writer Douglas Wolk's quip that the difference between a graphic novel and a comic book is "the binding", Bone creator Jeff Smith said, "I kind of like that answer. Because 'graphic novel'... I don't like that name. It's trying too hard. It is a comic book. But there is a difference. And the difference is, a graphic novel is a novel in the sense that there is a beginning, a middle and an end."^[31]

Some alternative cartoonists have coined their own terms to describe extended comics narratives. The cover of Daniel Clowes' Ice Haven (2001) describes the book as "a comic-strip novel", with Clowes having noted that he "never saw anything wrong with the comic book".^[32] The cover of Craig Thompson's Blankets calls it "an illustrated novel." When The Comics Journal asked the cartoonist Seth why he added the subtitle "A Picture Novella" to his comic It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, he responded, "I could have just put 'a comic book'... It goes without saying that I didn't want to use the term graphic novel. I just don't like that term".^[33]

See also[link]

• Artist's book
• Collage novel
• Comics studies
• Graphic nonfiction
• List of award-winning graphic novels
• Tankōbon
• Trade paperback (comics)
• Underground comix
• Visual novel

Footnotes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know by Paul Gravett
• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud

References[link]

• Arnold, Andrew D. "The Graphic Novel Silver Anniversary", Time, November 14, 2003
• Tychinski, Stan. Brodart.com: "A Brief History of the Graphic Novel" (n.d., 2004)
• Couch, Chris. "The Publication and Formats of Comics, Graphic Novels, and Tankobon", Image & Narrative #1 (Dec. 2000)

External links[link]

• The Big Comic Book DataBase
• "Welcome to Columbia University's Graphic Novels Page", Columbia University

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Chris Ware
Born	(1967-12-28) December 28, 1967 (age 44)
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Cartoonist, Letterer, Colorist
Notable works	Acme Novelty Library Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth
Awards	Eisner Award, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2008 Harvey Award, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006 National Cartoonists Society Award, 1999 Guardian First Book Award, 2001 USA Hoi Fellow grant, 2006

Franklin Christenson Ware (born December 28, 1967),^[1] known professionally as Chris Ware, is an American comic book artist and cartoonist, notable for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression.

Career[link]

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Ware resides in the Chicago area of Illinois.^[2] His earliest published strips appeared in the late 1980s on the comics page of The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to numerous daily strips under different titles, Ware also had a weekly satirical science fiction serial in the paper titled Floyd Farland: Citizen of the Future. This was eventually published in 1988 as a prestige format comic book from Eclipse Publishing, and its publication even led to a brief correspondence between Ware and Timothy Leary. Now embarrassed by the book, which he considers amateurish and naive, Ware is reportedly purchasing and destroying all remaining copies.

While still a sophomore at UT, Ware came to the attention of Art Spiegelman, who invited Ware to contribute to RAW, the influential anthology magazine Spiegelman was co-editing with Françoise Mouly. Ware has acknowledged that being included in the prestigious RAW gave him confidence and inspired him to explore printing techniques and self-publishing. His Fantagraphics series Acme Novelty Library defied comics publishing conventions with every issue. The series featured a combination of new material as well as reprints of work Ware had done for the Texan (such as Quimby the Mouse) and the Chicago weekly paper Newcity. Ware's work appeared originally in Newcity before he moved on to his current "home", the Chicago Reader. Beginning with the 16th issue of the Acme Novelty Library, Ware is self-publishing his work, while maintaining a relationship with Fantagraphics for distribution and storage. This is an interesting return to Ware's early career, when he self-published such books as Lonely Comics and Stories as well as miniature digests of stories based on Quimby the Mouse and an unnamed potato-like creature.

In recent years he has also been involved in editing (and designing) several books and book series, including the new reprint series of Gasoline Alley from Drawn and Quarterly; Walt and Skeezix, the on-going reprint of Krazy Kat by Fantagraphics; and the 13th volume of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, which is devoted to comics. He was the editor of The Best American Comics 2007, the second installment devoted to comics in the Best American series.

In 2007, Ware curated an exhibition for the Phoenix Art Museum focused on the non-comic work of five contemporary cartoonists. The exhibition, titled "UnInked: Paintings, Sculpture and Graphic Works by Five Cartoonists," ran from April 21 through August 19.^[3] Ware also edited and designed the catalog for the exhibition.

Style[link]

Ware's art reflects early 20th-century American styles of cartooning and graphic design, shifting through formats from traditional comic panels to faux advertisements and cut-out toys. Stylistic influences include advertising graphics from that same era; newspaper strip cartoonists Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland) and Frank King (Gasoline Alley);^[4] Charles Schulz's post-WWII strip Peanuts and the cover designs of ragtime-era sheet music. Ware has spoken about finding inspiration in the work of artist Joseph Cornell^[5] and cites Richard McGuire's strip Here as a major influence on his use of non-linear narratives.^[6] Ware has said of his own style:

I arrived at my way of "working" as a way of visually approximating what I feel the tone of fiction to be in prose versus the tone one might use to write biography; I would never do a biographical story using the deliberately synthetic way of cartooning I use to write fiction. I try to use the rules of typography to govern the way that I "draw", which keeps me at a sensible distance from the story as well as being a visual analog to the way we remember and conceptualize the world. I figured out this way of working by learning from and looking at artists I admired and whom I thought came closest to getting at what seemed to me to be the "essence" of comics, which is fundamentally the weird process of reading pictures, not just looking at them. I see the black outlines of cartoons as visual approximations of the way we remember general ideas, and I try to use naturalistic color underneath them to simultaneously suggest a perceptual experience, which I think is more or less the way we actually experience the world as adults; we don't really "see" anymore after a certain age, we spend our time naming and categorizing and identifying and figuring how everything all fits together. Unfortunately, as a result, I guess sometimes readers get a chilled or antiseptic sensation from it, which is certainly not intentional, and is something I admit as a failure, but is also something I can't completely change at the moment.^[7]

Although his precise, geometrical layouts may appear to some to be computer-generated, Ware works almost exclusively with manual drawing tools such as paper and ink, rulers and T-squares. He does, however, sometimes use photocopies and transparencies, and he employs a computer to color his strips.

Recurring characters and stories[link]

Quimby the Mouse[link]

Quimby the Mouse was an early character for Ware and something of a breakthrough. Rendered in the style of an early animation character like Felix the Cat, Quimby the Mouse is perhaps Ware's most autobiographical character. Quimby's relationship with a cat head named Sparky is by turns conflict-ridden and loving, and thus intended to reflect all human relationships. While Quimby exhibits mobility, Sparky remains immobile and helpless, subject to all the indignities Quimby visits upon him. Quimby also acts as a narrator for Ware's reminiscences of his youth, in particular his relationship with his grandmother. Quimby was presented in a series of smaller panels than most comics, almost providing the illusion of motion à la a zoetrope. In fact, Ware once designed a zoetrope to be cut out and constructed by the reader in order to watch a Quimby "silent movie". Ware's ingenuity is neatly shown in this willingness to break from the confines of the page. Quimby the Mouse appears in the logo of a Chicago-based bookstore "Quimby's", although their shared name was originally a coincidence.^[8]

Rusty Brown[link]

Ware's Rusty Brown is ostensibly about an action-figure-collecting manchild and his somewhat-troubled childhood, but which, in Ware's fashion, diverges into multiple storylines about Brown's father's early life in the 1950s as a science fiction writer (Acme Novelty Library #19) and his best friend Chalky White's adult home life.

Building Stories[link]

Ware's Building Stories first appeared as a monthly strip in Nest Magazine. Installments later appeared in a number of publications, including The New Yorker, Kramer's Ergot, and most notably, the Sunday New York Times Magazine. Building Stories appeared weekly in the New York Times Magazine from September 18, 2005 until April 16, 2006. A full chapter was published in Acme Novelty Library, number 18. The entire story will be published as a book by Pantheon in fall 2012.^[9]

The Super-Man[link]

The Super-Man is an antihero who wears a similar caped costume to Superman but also has a domino mask and receding hairline. Ware has said in interviews^{[citation needed]} that he imagines that if the fictional superhero Superman were real, he would be much like Ware's Super-Man.

The Super-Man originally appeared as God in Ware's early work, wreaking vengeance on people who annoyed him. The Super-Man later turned up in Ware's Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. In one scene, Jimmy sees the Super-Man standing on the cornice of a skyscraper. Seeing Jimmy, he waves, to Jimmy's delight. The Super-Man then crouches as if to take off flying but instead falls to his death.

In a series of strips appearing in the Chicago Reader, the Super-Man is seen walking about naked, eating a live deer, stealing money, killing people who annoy him, gambling, and kidnapping a young girl and living with her in the wild until she grows up, whereupon he impregnates her, grows bored with her and the child, then flies off. He then spends the next several million years in one spot, pondering it all even as the Earth falls away about him. His last thought remains of the girl and his child.

These strips have been compiled and published in 2005 as part of a book, The Acme Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders and Saturday Afternoon Rainy Day Fun Book. However, they are not listed in the table of contents.

Non-comics work[link]

Ware is an ardent collector of ragtime paraphernalia and occasionally publishes a journal devoted to the music titled The Ragtime Ephemeralist.^[10] He also plays the banjo and piano. The influence of the music and the graphics of its era can be seen in Ware's work, especially in regard to logos and layout. Ware has designed album covers and posters for such ragtime performers as the Et Cetera String Band, Virginia Tichenor, Reginald R. Robinson, the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra and Guido Nielsen.

He has also designed covers and posters for non-ragtime performers such as Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire and 5ive Style. [1] In October 2005 Ware designed the elaborate cover art for Penguin Books' new edition of Voltaire's Candide.

In 2003-04, Ware worked with Ira Glass of This American Life and Chicago historian Tim Samuelson to illustrate and design Lost Buildings about Samuelson and the preservation of Chicago's old buildings, particularly Louis Sullivan's buildings.^[11][12] Originally produced for a live "Lost in America" stage show in 2003, Lost Buildings was later published as a book and DVD.^[13] In 2007-08, he produced animations for the This American Life television series on Showtime^[11] and also contributed to the show as a color consultant. Ware created poster art for Tamara Jenkins' film The Savages (2007).

Mural for 826 Valencia[link]

Dave Eggers commissioned Ware to design the mural for the facade of San Francisco literacy project 826 Valencia.^[14] The mural depicts "the parallel development of humans and their efforts at and motivations for communication, spoken and written."^[15] The 3.9m x 6m mural was applied by artisans to Ware’s specifications.^[14] Describing the work, Ware said "I didn’t want it to make anyone 'feel good', especially in that typically muralistic 'hands across the water' sort of way,"..."I especially wanted it to be something that people living in the neighbourhood could look at day after day and hopefully not tire of too quickly. I really hoped whomever might happen to come across it would find something that showed a respect for their intelligence, and didn’t force-feed them any 'message'."^[14]

Fortune 500 cover[link]

In 2010, Ware designed the cover for Fortune magazine's "Fortune 500" issue, but it was rejected.^[16] Ware had mentioned the work at a panel at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo on April 16, as first noted in an April 20 blog post by Matthew J. Brady.^[17] The cover, featuring the circle-shaped humans common in Ware's more broadly socially satirical comic-strips, turned the numbers 500 into skyscrapers looming over the continental United States. On the roofs, corporate bosses drink, dance, and sun themselves as a helicopter drops a shovelful of money down for them. Below, among signs reading "Credit Default Swap Flea Market," "Greenspan Lube Pro," and "401K Cemetery," a helicopter scoops money out of the US Treasury with a shovel, cars pile up in Detroit, and flag-waving citizens party around a boiling tea kettle in the shape of an elephant. In the Gulf of Mexico, homes are sinking, while hooded prisoners sit in Guantanamo, a "Factory of Exploitation" keeps going in Mexico, China is tossing American dollars into the Pacific, and the roof of bankrupted Greece's Treasury has blown off. A spokesperson for the magazine only said that, as is their practice, they had commissioned a number of possible covers from different artists, including Ware.^[18] Brady wrote in his blog that Ware said at the panel he "accepted the job because it would be like doing the [cover for the] 1929 issue of the magazine".^[17]

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives[link]

In 2011, Ware created the poster for the U.S. release of the 2010 Palme d'Or winning film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul.^[19] Describing the poster, Ware said "I wanted to get at both the transcendent solemnity of the film while keeping some sense of its loose, very unpretentious accessibility... This being a poster, however—and even worse, me not really being a designer—I realized it also had to be somewhat punchy and strange, so as to draw viewers in and pique their curiosity without, hopefully, insulting their intelligence."^[20]

Awards and honors[link]

Over the years his work garnered several awards, including the 1999 National Cartoonists Society's Award for Best Comic Book for Acme Novelty Library.

In addition, Acme Novelty Library won the 1996 and 2000 Eisner Awards for Best Continuing Series, as well as the 2000 Eisner for Best New Graphic Album. Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth won the 2001 Eisner for Best Reprint Graphic Album. In 2008, Ware won the Best Writer/Artist: Drama Eisner for Acme Novelty Library 18. Ware has won the Best Colorist Eisner four times, in 1996, 1998, 2001, and 2006. His publication design has been awarded the Eisner six times, in 1995–1997, 2001–2002, and 2006.

Ware has won the Harvey Award for Best Letterer four times, in 1996, 2000, 2002, and 2006. He has won the Best Colorist Harvey Award in 1996–1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. He also won the Best Cover Artist Harvey Award in 2000. Ware won the Harvey Award for Excellence in Production/Presentation five consecutive years, from 1995–2000. In addition, Acme Novelty Library won the Best Continuing Series Harvey Award in 1995, and the Best Continuing or Limited Series in 1995–1996. Acme Novelty Library also won the Best Single Issue or Story Harvey Award in 1997 and 2000. The Jimmy Corrigan book won the 2001 Harvey Award for Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work. In 2006, Ware was awarded the Harvey for Best Cartoonist.

In 2002, Ware became the first comics artist to be invited to exhibit at Whitney Museum of American Art biennial exhibition.^[21] With Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb and Gary Panter, Ware was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007.^[22][23] His work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2006 and at the University of Nebraska's Sheldon Museum of Art, in 2007.^[21]

Ware's graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth won the 2001 Guardian First Book Award, the first time a graphic novel has won a major United Kingdom book award.^[24] It also won the prize for best album at the 2003 Angoulême International Comics Festival in France.

In 2006, Ware received a USA Hoi Fellow grant from United States Artists.^[25]

References[link]

Sources[link]

External links[link]

• The Rag-Time Ephemeralist. Periodical written and published by Ware
• Acme Novelty Archive: Unofficial database of the works of Ware
• NNDB profile
• Acme Novelty Toy Gallery
• Stripped Books: A Comics Panel - comics-form adaptation of a panel featuring Chris Ware, Seth and moderator Ivan Brunetti
• Interview and evaluation of Ware by designer Chip Kidd
• Building Stories - the introduction by Chris Ware - The Independent
• Chris Ware's mural for 826 Valencia's facade

Marjane Satrapi
Born	(1969-11-22) 22 November 1969 (age 42) Rasht, Iran
Nationality	French[1][2] and Iranian
Area(s)	Artist & Writer
Notable works	Persepolis Embroideries Chicken with Plums
Awards	full list

Marjane Satrapi (Persian: مرجان ساتراپی) (born 22 November 1969 in Rasht, Iran) is an Iranian-born French^[1][2] contemporary graphic novelist, illustrator, animated film director, and children's book author. Apart from her native language Persian, she speaks English, Swedish, German, French and Italian.^[3]

Biography[link]

Satrapi grew up in Tehran in a family which was involved with communist and socialist movements in Iran prior to the Iranian Revolution. She attended the Lycée Français there and witnessed, as a child, the growing suppression of civil liberties and the everyday-life consequences of Iranian politics, including the fall of the Shah, the early regime of Ruhollah Khomeini, and the first years of the Iran–Iraq War. She experienced an Iraqi air raid and Scud missile attacks on Tehran. According to Persepolis, one Scud hit the house next to hers, killing her friend.

Satrapi's family are of distant Iranian Azerbaijani ancestry and are descendants of Nasser al-Din Shah, Shah of Persia from 1848 until 1896. Satrapi said that "But you have to know the kings of the Qajar dynasty, they had hundreds of wives. They made thousands of kids. If you multiply these kids by generation you have, I don't know, 10-15,000 princes [and princesses]. There's nothing extremely special about that."^[4] She added that due to this detail, most Iranian families would be, in the words of Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian, "blue blooded."^[5]

In 1983, at the age of fourteen, Satrapi was sent to Vienna, Austria by her parents to flee the Iranian regime. There she attended the Lycée Français de Vienne.^[6] According to her autobiographical graphic novel, Persepolis, she stayed in Vienna through her high school years, staying in friends' homes, but spent two months living on the streets. After an almost deadly bout of pneumonia, she returned to Iran. She studied visual communication, eventually obtaining a master's degree from Islamic Azad University in Tehran.^[7]

During this time, Satrapi went to numerous illegal parties hosted by her friends, where she met a man named Reza, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War. She married him at the age of 21, but divorced him roughly three years later. Satrapi then moved to Strasbourg, France.

Satrapi is married to Mattias Ripa, a Swedish national. They live in Paris.^[5]

Career[link]

Graphic novels[link]

Satrapi's career began in earnest when she met David Beauchard, a French comics artist who became her mentor and teacher.^[8] Satrapi became famous worldwide because of her critically acclaimed autobiographical graphic novels, originally published in French in four parts in 2000–2003 and in English translation in two parts in 2003 and 2004, respectively, as Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which describe her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe. Persepolis won the Angoulême Coup de Coeur Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Her later publication, Embroideries (Broderies) was also nominated for the Angoulême Album of the Year award in 2003, an award which was won by her most recent novel, Chicken with Plums (Poulet aux prunes).^[9][10] She has also contributed to the Op-Ed section of The New York Times.^[11]

Films[link]

Marjane Satrapi at the premiere of Persepolis

Persepolis was adapted into an animated film of the same name which debuted at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival in May 2007 and shared a Special Jury Prize with Silent Light (Luz silenciosa) by Carlos Reygadas.^[12] Co-written and co-directed by Satrapi and director Vincent Paronnaud, the French-language picture stars the voices of Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, and Simon Abkarian. The English version, starring the voices of Gena Rowlands, Sean Penn, and Iggy Pop, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in January 2008.^[13]

Persepolis was a very successful film both commercially (with over a million admissions in France alone) as well as critically, winning the Best First Film at the César Awards 2008. As such the film reflects many tendencies of first-time filmmaking in France (which makes up around 40% of all French cinema each year), notably in its focus on very intimate rites-of-passage, and quite ambivalently recounted coming-of-age moments.^[14]

Satrapi and Paronnaud continued their successful collaboration with a second film, a live-action adaptation of Chicken with Plums, released in late 2011.^[15][16]

Public appearances[link]

Following the Iranian elections in June 2009, Marjane Satrapi and Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf appeared before Green Party members in the European Parliament to present a document allegedly received from a member of the Iranian electoral commission claiming that the reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi had actually won the election, and that the conservative incumbent Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had received only 12% of the vote.^[17]

Works[link]

French[link]

• Persepolis (2000), Paris: L'Association, ISBN 2-84414-058-0
• Persepolis v2, (2001), L'Association, ISBN 2-84414-079-3
• Persepolis v3, (2002), L'Association, ISBN 2-84414-104-8
• Persepolis v4, (2003), L'Association, ISBN 2-84414-137-4
• Sagesses et malices de la Perse (2001, with Lila Ibrahim-Ouali and Bahman Namwar-Motalg, Albin Michel, ISBN 2-226-11872-1)
• Les monstres n'aiment pas la lune (2001, Nathan Jeunesse, ISBN 2-09-282094-X)
• Ulysse au pays des fous (2001, with Jean-Pierre Duffour, Nathan Jeunesse, ISBN 2-09-210847-6)
• Adjar (2002, Nathan Jeunesse, ISBN 2-09-211033-0)
• Broderies (2003, L'Association, ISBN 2-84414-095-5)
• Poulet aux prunes (2004), Paris: L'Association, ISBN 2-84414-159-5
• Le Soupir (2004, Bréal Jeunesse, ISBN 2-7495-0325-6)

English[link]

• "Persepolis" The Story of a Childhood (2003), New York: Pantheon Books, ISBN 978-0-375-42230-0
• "Persepolis" The Story of a Return v2, (2004), New York: Pantheon Books, ISBN 978-0-375-42288-1
• Embroideries (2005, Pantheon ISBN 978-0-375-42305-5)
• Chicken with Plums (2006), New York: Pantheon Books, ISBN 978-0-375-42415-1
• Monsters Are Afraid of the Moon (2006, Bloomsbury, ISBN 1-58234-744-1)
• The Sigh (2011, Archaia)

Awards[link]

• 2001: Angoulême Coup de Coeur Award for Persepolis^[18]
• 2002: Angoulême Prize for Scenario for Persepolis: Tome 2^[19]
• 2005: Angoulême Best Comic Book Award for Poulet aux prunes^[10]
• 2007: Jury Prize for Persepolis (tied with Silent Light), Cannes Film Festival^[12]
• 2007: Best Animation: Los Angeles Film Critics Association^[13]
• 2008: Cinema for Peace Award for "Most Valuable Movie of the Year"
• 2008: Gat Perich Award
• 2009: Doctor honoris causa both at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Université catholique de Louvain from Belgium^[20]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Chute, Hillary L. (2010). Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-15062-0. http://www.worldcat.org/title/graphic-women-life-narrative-and-contemporary-comics/oclc/496610090/viewport. Retrieved 6 September 2011. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Marjane Satrapi

	Biography portal
	Iran portal
	France portal
	Comics portal
	Literature portal

• Persepolis film (2008) official website, Sony Picture Classics
• Marjane Satrapi, author at Random House
• Marjane Satrapi biography on Lambiek Comiclopedia
• Persepolis: A State of Mind, reflections by Marjane Satrapi (2007)
• "Princess of Darkness", interview by Robert Chalmers, The Independent (1 October 2006)
• Marjane Satrapi interview at Bookslut (2004)
• Marjane Satrapi interview at Powells.com (2006)
• Marjane Satrapi interview at Reviewgraveyard.com
• "Bringing Iran To The West: Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis" at The Culturatti
• The Comic World of Marjane Satrapi: Yearnings for a Lost Homeland