“Whenever I try to script something, the moment I start drawing on the page all those plans go out the window.”

You often start drawing without a set script, letting the story emerge naturally. How do you navigate the uncertainty of this process?

CW: "Writing is always an act of improvisation and uncertainty, and in comics limiting oneself to only words ignores half of the thinking (i.e. drawing) itself. Besides, whenever I try to script something, the moment I start drawing on the page all those plans go out the window, because the things invoked by a remembered setting or person opens up so many more interesting possibilities and intuited pathways. I’ve found that the mind is an extraordinarily organized thing, governed by language, and it’s my role not to impose an order on it but to find an order that best suits it — or, even better (if this doesn’t sound too pretentious) to find the shape of the order itself.

This said, I get up and down from my drawing table several dozen times a day, consumed by despair, so who knows if I’m approaching it all correctly."

“I get up and down from my drawing table several dozen times a day, consumed by despair...”

“I tend to go half blind when doing comics. I try to use every inch of the page so the reader doesn’t feel ripped off.” 

The detail in your work is extraordinary, often requiring careful, repeated reading. What attracts you to such an intricate approach to storytelling? And how do you know when a page is ‘done’ or if it still needs more work?

CW: "Again, I work almost entirely instinctually and intuitively, trying to ‘listen’ to how something feels or looks rather than worrying whether it suited whatever imaginary reason I had for originally doing it, since those reasons are usually pretty shallow and silly. It’s fine to have these imaginary reasons, but they’re really only a prompt to work; once one sets into that work, then everything changes, and the real thing begins.

As for detail, I don’t want the reader to be disappointed and I’d like for my pages to have varying levels of texture; as a kid I’d climb trees in my grandparents’ yard and find myself fascinated by the leaves or horse chestnuts or the green worms that dangled from them, and I want my stuff to at least hint at that level of life, if possible. Though I am well aware that I push the limits of legibility, for which I feel badly. It’s not intended as torture, and I’m trying to be more sensitive to this and, well, legible."

"I have this compulsion to not cheat anyone, but it’s not intended to make it non-readable." 

You've often expressed a fascination with the book as an object. How does the physical form influence the way you tell stories? Have you ever considered working in a digital-only medium, and how might that change your creative approach?

CW: “This is sort of a dumb comparison, but the ‘return to vinyl’ in the world of recorded music points to a similar inclination: there’s something extremely unsatisfying and anxiety-provoking about only having a computer file of something. The physicality of a book points not only to the poetic uncertainty that we as humans harbor as souls trapped in bodies, but also seems to offer a slight, however false, reassurance of certainty as we all head towards our inevitable ends. I think it also has something to do with social awkwardness; lonelier-feeling people like me seem to tend to prefer something physical, maybe. i.e., we tend to be hoarders, insulating ourselves with things against — something.”

“I always forget whenever I sit down to work just how time-consuming and difficult it is, even though I’ve been doing it for 35 years.”

What do you find most challenging about maintaining creativity over long projects like ‘Building Stories’ or ‘Rusty Brown’? Are there specific routines or techniques that help you overcome creative blocks? 

CW: “I find that I have to trick myself into overcoming self-doubt and despair and sometimes this just means scribbling on the page and seeing what I find in it, or even, if I’m lucky, actually getting one panel drawn; both of these approaches can make a huge difference. I always forget whenever I sit down to work just how time-consuming and difficult it is, even though I’ve been doing it for 35 years. Also: the great cartoonist Kim Deitch has a method where he sets a timer as a sort of self-shaming mechanism to keep him in his chair, which I’ve found also works. Like anything, one has to stay focused, at least for a little while, until something catches, because there’s little to no ‘flow’ in writing comics, at least the way I do them — though believe me, I’ve tried.”

Your style is distinct, but clearly nods to classic comic traditions and other forms of art. You've been quoted saying: "Everything is inspired by Joost Swarte." Which other artists or storytellers have influenced you the most, and how do their influences manifest in your work? 

CW: “Joost’s clarity and precision is not just a style but seems to point to how we remember the world — as word-images that we sort of impose on our experience as a way of identifying and navigating reality, if that doesn’t sound too crazy. Of course he was preceded in this by Hergé and Saint-Ogan and Bateman — and Japanese art — but when I was a teenager and I first saw Joost’s work, something ‘clicked’ in my mind. 

As for other artists, I’ve answered that question so many times I’ve learned not to since I always leave out someone key; I’ve edited two comics anthologies which serve as good lists, though there’s a whole new generation of cartoonists now, and since we’re discussing European artists, I think Olivier Schrauwen’s ‘Sunday’ is a work of genius and couldn’t recommend it more highly.”

"Art has to have a life of its own."

Your narratives often feel raw and vulnerable, tackling personal or difficult themes. How do you cope with the vulnerability of sharing such personal stories with the world? 

CW: “An artist who isn’t willing to embarrass or mortify oneself is doing something that maybe is tangential to art (and, especially, life). What John Updike called ‘hidden secrets’ and Kubrick referred to as invoking affection in the viewer/reader is for what I aim — for better or for worse. Art has to have a life of its own. Anything else creative can live for as long as it has some sort of ancillary life-support, like fashion, but once that plug is pulled, it will either die — or maybe start to breathe on its own.”

The comic art landscape has changed significantly over the past few decades. How do you perceive the current state of comics and graphic novels? Are there any trends that excite or concern you? 

CW: “I’m impressed at how the last couple of cartoonist generations have shifted more towards the drawing / looking end of the spectrum but still make compelling and literate work, work which has a quality to it that someone like me, who thinks of a story as its core, misses out on. In some ways, the stuff is closer to what I was doing in my early twenties, and I’ve tried to allow a little of that back in, inspired by younger artists’ examples.”

“I can’t imagine AI wasting its time being ‘trained’ on comics”

AI tools are now capable of generating comics. Have you ever tried creating a comic ‘in the style of Chris Ware’ using AI, and what was your reaction?

CW: "At least for the moment, the best comics are AI-proof, whereas a comic page can be shallowly visually and textually imitated, the rhythms and gestures and ineffable sensations that literate and sensitive cartoonists evoke on a page through the reading of pictures — which I think is what the real life of comics is — are not. Though it doesn’t really matter since I can’t imagine AI wasting its time being ‘trained’ on comics anymore than the general human populace has been; we cartoonists do a very strange, outer-orbit thing, and in the planet’s larger trend towards becoming conscious and eventually getting rid of we worker-ant humans, comics play a laughably insignificant role."

“Sometimes I manage to recapture that sense I had as a kid gluing together pieces of construction paper in my grandmother’s basement…”

Has the creative process changed for you over time—does it ever get easier, or is it always the same grueling effort? And if it's still challenging, what motivates you to keep pushing through?

CW: “It doesn’t get easier, though I guess if it did, I’d be worried. Sometimes I manage to recapture that sense I had as a kid gluing together pieces of construction paper in my grandmother’s basement, but such sensations are always fleeting. Besides, I’m not even sure what I was thinking and feeling as a kid other than I didn’t have a lot to work against, which really is something of an advantage, because 99% of personal epiphany is (I think) born of ignorance. Mostly I find myself buoyed by surprise, i.e. something turning up on the page I least expected, no matter how horrible or damning; everything else is just self-deception.”