To say Chris Ware lives in the past is like saying the Queen of England lives in a house. Ware turns the past into a palace. In 2000's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Ware ransacks the history of cartooning, borrowing from 19th century lithography, superhero comics and Sunday funnies to create a visual language in which panels twist across the page like a drunken conga line.
Quimby the Mouse (Fantagraphics; 68 pages) collects a series of comics from the early 1990s in which Corrigan's style and themes were formed. The alienated title rodent shares DNA with Disney's Mickey,...