Chris Ware

<p><Virtuoso Chris Ware (b. 1967) has achieved some noteworthy firsts for comics. The Guardian First Book Award for <em>Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth</em> was the first major UK literary prize awarded for a graphic novel. In 2002 Ware was the first cartoonist included in the Whitney Biennial.</p><p>Like Art Spiegelman or Alison Bechdel Ware thus stands out as an important crossover artist who has made the wider public aware of comics as literature. His regular <em>New Yorker</em> covers give him a central place in our national cultural conversation. Since the earliest issues of <em>ACME Novelty Library</em> in the 1990s cartoonist peers have acclaimed Ware’s distinctive meticulous visual style and technical innovations to the medium. Ware also remains a literary author of the highest caliber spending many years to create thematically complex graphic masterworks such as <em>Building Stories</em> and the ongoing <em>Rusty Brown</em>.</p>