Art & Creativity Quote by Chris Ware

Ware is doing something sly here: praising comics by insulting the ecosystem that usually legitimizes art. Calling periodical comics "almost entirely free of any pretense" reads like a compliment, but it also carries a sting. Pretense is what galleries, grants, reviews, and marketable "importance" often demand. Comics, he suggests, slip under that radar, not because they lack ambition, but because the gatekeepers never fully built a door for them.

The subtext is a defense of intimacy. "The critical world of art hardly touches them" isn’t just a grievance about snobbery; it’s a claim that criticism can distort the maker-audience relationship. Periodical comics were historically cheap, disposable, mailed or bought at a corner store. That distribution model builds a different kind of contract: the work meets you in your everyday life, not in a sanctified room with wall text. Ware is pointing to a medium that can be aesthetically rigorous while still feeling unguarded.

"100% personal" is the kicker, and it’s not naive. Ware knows comics are produced within constraints - deadlines, page counts, print costs - yet those constraints can intensify voice. When you draw every panel and letter every word, authorship is literally handmade. His line also reflects the late-20th-century rise of alternative and autobiographical comics, where "personal" became both subject matter and ethic: make the work like a confession, publish it like a zine, let sincerity do what institutional validation can’t.