Chris Ware

When Famous Artists Moonlight as Magazine Cover Designers

Chances are, when an art world big shot dabbles in cover design, something curious happens. Last year, Superflat art superstar Takashi Murakami covered POP Magazine, flinging a 28-year-old Britney Spears back into a school daze à la fuzzy lightning and manga-inspired styling. It was very awkward, yet gloriously so. Even though Damien Hirst can’t ever resist slapping his “signature” butterflies on everything, this year he had said “signature” butterfly tattooed on a most intimate region of a model volunteer for Garage Magazine. From vintage Dalí Vogue work to Chris Ware’s critical, brilliant and ultimately rejected Fortune cover, here are just some of the arty covers out there for you to flip through. Happy browsing! … Read More

Beautiful Hard Rock Cafe Ad Capitalizes on Eric Clapton’s Tragedy

We don’t really expect much out of the Hard Rock Cafe chain. Bad, overpriced food? Check. Second-tier music memorabilia? Yup. And who could forget the hippie-turned-yuppie-friendly playlist straight out of the Rolling Stone canon? But, in a story that’s been making the music-critic Twitter rounds today, Hard Rock has managed to impress us with the schlocky depths of their rock nostalgia.

As OC Weekly reports, Hard Rock’s Argentina branch has launched a theoretically cool ad campaign, in which the artists Damian Garofalo and Hugo Orita draw the comic-style stories behind classic songs like The Beatles’ “Let It Be” and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” It seems super-weird, however, that the company signed off on the ad below, which tells the tragic story of Eric Clapton’s alcoholism and his young son’s tragic death. Not only is it generally in poor taste to capitalize on the tale of a little kid who died by falling out a window, but we have a hard time believing it will put anyone in the mood to eat an overcooked burger while Pink Floyd blares in the background, either. See the poster here. … Read More

10 Awesome Indie Comics Tattoos

If we had a nickel for every superhero comic tattoo we saw, we’d be set for life. So, while DC and Marvel are great and all, it’s always much more exciting to spot an arm adorned with images inspired by an indie or web comic artist we love. After the jump, we’ve rounded up ten of our favorites, from Daniel Clowes and Adrian Tomine to Frank Miller and R. Crumb. … Read More

10 of the Year’s Most Buzzed About Comic Releases

When we saw Vulture’s post on the top 10 comics of 2010, we were surprised that many of our favorites didn’t make the cut. But obviously, a person’s taste in comic books can be extremely subjective. Forget the battle between DC and Marvel, some people only read graphic novels while others are devoted to manga. That’s why we thought it would be interesting to talk to Gabriel Fowler, owner of Desert Island in Williamsburg, about which new work created the most excitement among his regular customers this year. To be clear, this is not based on sales numbers, just the first 10 releases that came to his mind when we asked. And while you should consider the entire list required reading (or in certain cases, viewing) it’s in no particular order. Enjoy! … Read More

Check Out San Francisco Panorama, McSweeney’s Newspaper

Forget all this talk about the death of print for a moment. Tomorrow a newspaper launches in San Francisco. Issue 33 of McSweeney’s Quarterly will be a one-time-only, Sunday-edition sized newspaper — the San Francisco Panorama. Here’s what it will cover: “It’ll have news (actual news, tied to the day it comes out) and sports and arts coverage, and comics (sixteen pages of glorious, full-color comics, from Chris Ware and Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman and many others besides) and a magazine and a weekend guide, and will basically be an attempt to demonstrate all the great things print journalism can (still) do, with as much first-rate writing and reportage and design (and posters and games and on-location Antarctic travelogues) as we can get in there. Expect journalism from Andrew Sean Greer, fiction from George Saunders and Roddy Doyle, dispatches from Afghanistan, and much, much… Read More

McSweeney’s iPhone App Is Sticking It to Dan Brown

iTunes’ App Store is probably the only place on earth right now where Dan Brown is not number. one. for. ever. Although The Lost Symbol sold enough copies for every man, woman and child in Chicago in its first week alone, the Da Vinci Code author’s iPhone app is currently lagging at #18 in the Books section. The number one spot belongs to a new app by McSweeney’s. It promises new work by Spike Jonze, Chris Ware, and Jonathan Ames, which was enough to get us to stop fiddling with I Am T-Pain for a minute and check it out. Here’s what we… Read More