Description: "Introduction by Jeet Heer, with Chicago research notes by Tim Samuelson."--Page 7, volume [1].
Brief description:
Chris Ware is a writer and artist and has contributed graphic fiction and thirty-two covers to The New Yorker since 1999. The author of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, which won the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, and Building Stories, which was chosen as a Top 10 fiction book by both the Times and Time in 2012, his most recent Rusty Brown was finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein award and named among the New York Times' top 100 Books of 2019.
His work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York and the Galerie Martel in Paris. In 2021, Ware received the Grand Prix de la Ville d'Angoulême and a solo retrospective of his work was presented at the Centre Pompidou in 2022, traveling on to venues in Switzerland, Italy, Holland and Spain, before making its only US appearance in May 2026 at the Billy Ireland Library and Museum in Columbus, Ohio.Review Quotes:
"Walt Before Skeezix [is] a charming road trip to the past." --NPR
"Even before Skeezix, this volume reveals Frank King as an ambitious cartoonist eager to burst beyond the limitations of a weekly single-panel car strip." --AV Club "This latest volume demonstrates that King had mastered that easy cadence and benevolent outlook even before Skeezix arrived, when the strip still centred around a cast of automobile enthusiasts who congregated in a Chicago back alley... King instills the proceedings with his signature brand of kindly, leisurely warmth, and true fellow-feeling." --The Globe & Mail