Chris Ware (1967-)

Chris Ware, an Oak Park resident and artist, is an award-winning author. He was the first cartoonist chosen to serialize an ongoing story in the New York Times Magazine, and is a contributor to The New Yorker.  Ware moved to Chicago in the early 90s and began publishing in the pages of the Chicago alternative weekly New City and then until 2006, The Chicago Reader, which has formed the bulk of material that he's been collecting in his regular periodical, The ACME Novelty Library, since 1994. Offering both serialized stories and short experiments in comics form, a confusing collection of the same name was issued in a large-format hardcover by Pantheon Books in 2005. From both this strip and periodical emerged the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan — the Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon, 2000) which received an American Book Award in 2000, the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, and the obscure French comics award "L'Alph Art" in 2003. In 2009 Jimmy Corrigan was named as one of the “100 Best Books of the Decade” by The Times (London). Ware is also the author of The Acme Novelty Datebook Volumes 1 and 2 (Drawn & Quarterly, 2003, 2007), Quimby the Mouse (Fantagraphics, 2003), was the editor of the 13th issue of McSweeney’s (2005), and was the guest editor of Houghton-Mifflin's Best American Comics 2007. 

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000)
Lint (2010)
Building Stories (2012)

More works by Chris Ware