Collected recently, three New Yorker cartoonists producing graphic fiction, graphic memoirs, etc. (often lumped together as graphic novels, though only some of these works are novels in the traditional sense; novel has developed a widespread new sense as ‘book’.) Roz Chast, who’s appeared in postings here a number of times; Chris Ware, who’s appeared here just once, with a New Yorker cover for Mothers Day; and Adrian Tomine, new to this blog.
Roz Chast. From an Alex Witchel NYT review on 6/1/14, “Drawn From Life: Roz Chast’s ‘Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?’”:
“Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” is Chast’s graphic memoir of her parents’ final years: Her father, George, died at 95; her mother, Elizabeth, at 97. This is a beautiful book, deeply felt, both scorchingly honest about what it feels like to love and care for a mother who has never loved you back, at least never the way you had wanted, and achingly wistful about a gentle father who could never break free of his domineering wife and ride to his daughter’s rescue. It veers between being laugh-out-loud funny and so devastating I had to take periodic timeouts.
Just a bit from the book, on the hassles of dealing with medical bills and insurance:
(#1)
Chris Ware. Back on 6/30/13, an omnibus posting on New Yorker covers on same-sex relationships; Ware’s was #8.
On the cartoonist, from Wikipedia:
Franklin Christenson Ware (born December 28, 1967), known professionally as Chris Ware, is an American and cartoonist, notable for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth and Building Stories. His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. His works tend to use a vivid colour palette and are full of realistic, meticulous detail.
Hre’s a note about a Thanksgiving cover for the magazine:
Chris Ware provided the cover for the November 27, 2006 issue of The New Yorker. Or rather, he provided no less than 4 covers, which form a comic when combined.
The New Yorker gracefully made all covers available on their website, and added a fifth page, which, in true Ware fashion, completed the comic by continuously cramming more panels on a single page.
Here’s one of the original, showing the social isolation Ware so often depicts:
(#2)
Adrian Tomine. From Wikipedia on Tomine, who’s a fourth-generation Japanese-American, though you usually can’t tell that from his drawings:
Adrian Tomine (born May 31, 1974), a popular contemporary cartoonist, is best known for his ongoing comic book series Optic Nerve and his illustrations in The New Yorker.
The Optic Nerve comics have been collected into several books: Sleepwalk and Other Stories, Summer Blonde, Shortcomings; at least the last of these is customarily classified as a graphic novel. Meanwhile, his collection New York Drawings was published in 2012, largely drawing on his New Yorker work, for example, his moving “Missed Connections” of 2004:
(#3)
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