Quimby the Mouse

Quimby the Mouse by Ware, Chris. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781560974550.

A one-mouse theater of the absurd. Quimby the Mouse is the second book from Chris Ware; his first book, Jimmy Corrigan (Pantheon, 2000), has been widely acclaimed as one of the mediums finest graphic novels in history and was the winner of the prestigious Guardian First Book Award for 2001. Cleverly appropriated old-fashioned animation imagery and advertising styles of the 1920s and 1930s are put to use in Quimby at the service of modern vignettes of angst and existentialism. As this cartoon silhouette of a mouse ignominiously suffers at every turn, the spaces between the panels create despair and a Beckett-like rhythm of hope deceived and deferred (but never quite extinguished), buoying Quimby from page to page. Like Wares first book, Quimby is saturated with Wares genius, including consistently amazing graphics, insanely perfectionist production values, cut-out-and-assemble paper projects, and the formal complexity of his narratives that have earned him the reputation as one of the most prodigious artists of his generation.