/lit/ - Literature

>>6071286

>>4877692
Are you referring to Chris Ware's style or content? I don't see much in common with Ware's style and Eisner's. The obvious connections to make with Ware's work are Little Nemo in Wonderland and Krazy Kat, and no one has done maximalism as well since.

I have to mention that I'm always impressed with Ware's writing. His prose is lyrical and analytic in a way that reminds me of Joyce. And the sheer quantity of text he produces per book is astonishing. Go through Quimby the Mouse and see how much fine print you have to read.

Jesus Christ, how has no one mentioned Chris Ware already?

You think Dostoyevsky can be bleak? Kafka? No way, Ware will make you want to kill yourself. We all know that "literature" just means "sad white people stories" and Chris Ware does it the best.

>>2409877 cont

Then we get what most of you are saying: that comics should be respected for what they are rather than being compared to not-graphic books, which would be unfair to both things. With that, I agree, but I don't think that excludes them as literature. And much like a visual reader can just take a good look at the pictures, a word reader can read a comic book from a literary point of view.

And going a bit further with it, sequential art shows that narrative and plot are possible without any verbal interference. So narrative and plot are also not literature, they are contained in literature just as they can be contained in images, acting, music, dance and movies, or any other artform that deals with time. I think it's amusing to recognize that because, just like learning a foreign language can help you understand your own, understanding that these things are not the core of literature can make you understand what the verbal language is really capable of, understand what literature can do that no others can. The same goes for understanding the power of images or the power of the illusion contained in a well edited piece of film.

The interesting thing about comic books is not in the words and it's not in the image either, it's in the illusion of time created by the juxtaposition of images or speech balloons or pieces of verbal narrative combined with still images, it's in the whole and the core of all of that.

Graphic novels and comic books are often described as imature and simplistic, with no real sensible criticism, only playing by "rule of cool" and for this, not as artistic or versatile as literature or visual arts on their own.

Here are some recommendations I have for you that prove this notion wrong.

Asterios Polyp
by David Mazzuchelli
A very unusual take on the comic book form, with a perfect flow between image and text. A story about how we all have different interpretations of the world and how persistent our personality is. It questions the opposites: belief and knowledge, sensibility and reason, what is art? Is expertise real?

Watchmen
by Alan Moore and David Gibbons
You probably heard of this before or even saw the film. Please ignore all of that. Praised for the story, Watchmen's real value is within the details, the meaningful relationship between past and present, between politics and people, between atoms and galaxies. Existential and, to some point, down to Earth, the superhero context is there only as a background that smiles at us with smugness: "so you think this is about that?"

Jimmy Corrigan - The Smartest Kid on Earth
by Chris Ware (pic related, it's his, but not from this book)
Probably the most incredible study of the sequential art form, almost a hard read for those who are not use to comic books. Playing with time like it was made of butter, back and forth a very emotional story over three generations of Jimmy Corrigans. Powerful and unexpected, absolutely great text combined with an incredible sense of design.