Chris Wares, “Quimby the Mouse”
one page spread uses both the text and images simultaneously to convey the
story and meaning to the reader. He does
not stick to the conventional panels and borders that contain his work, but
instead makes the text a part of the Diagetic world that Quimby interacts
with. For example, when you first look
at the page, there is no title that is separate or emphasized outside of the
Diagetic world of the comic. Instead, Chris Ware portrays Quimby the mouse
painting the “I” in “I Hate You”, which could be seen as standing in place for
the title. We also see him climbing down
the letter A to get to the next tier of the comic, moving from the top to the
bottom, guiding the reader through the work.
It is not constructed in usual comic book format because there is that
absence of the border that contains the whole work, making bleed off the page
and giving it the borderless uncontained feel to it. The panels that would
collect and neatly organize the events occurring in the work vary across the
page, both in shape and size, allowing the readers eye to move freely across
the page and take the work as a whole.
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| Quimby The Mouse |
Chris Ware does not only play with
the conventions of panels and borders, but also includes a variety of textual
styles and colors. The letters in this work function as both images and text
that guides the reader through the work as well. We see this also in the case
of the letter A that guides the reader’s eye down to the next level, like
walking down the stairs. As Quimby moves
down the page, he interacts with not only the letters, but with the actual
panels, falling off panels and moving backward and forward across the page.
Chris Ware also does a great job in incorporating color and
varying font throughout his work. A lot of emphasis is put on color with
certain words. For example the word “I”, “Sure”, “Ever”, “Mystery” and “Do” are
in red. These words could be explaining how Quimby actually feels toward his
companion and connecting the color red to these words that connect to Quimby’s
actions and thoughts. There is also the example of the use of the color blue
with text to show transitions or connections. For example, the words “and”, You”,
“this time”, “N Fact”, “Besides”, “Now”, and so on, are all connect by the color
blue, allowing us consciously or subconsciously group these words together.
Another interesting use of colour that I noticed was the colors red and yellow,
in the words “I”, Hate, and “Sure”, where repeated in the middle bottom panel
where the two finally meet. These colors
could be representing red as the color for love and yellow for the color of
comfort. Chris ware doesn’t use these colors anywhere else for the landscape
and limits it to those certain words and the one panel, drawing the reader to
make a connection to this and find out what they are trying to tell us about
his feelings about the relationship.
1Chris Ware does a good job incorporating color, text and
image together to move out of the convention form of comics. He makes it visually
appealing and engages the reader in the work, making them following along and
pay specific attention to the varying texts and panels to understand what is happening
to Quimby
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