Dubbed the Emily Dickinson of comics by one fan, cartoonist Chris Ware is the creative force behind several comic strips, including "Quimby the Mouse," "Big Tex," "Rocket Sam," and "Jimmy Corrigan--The Smartest Kid on Earth," all of which have been collected from their original publication in various newspapers and subsequently published in self-designed periodicals. The Corrigan strips were also collected for the 2000 book Jimmy Corrigan--The Smartest Kid on Earth, the first graphic novel ever to win a major British literary award when it earned the Guardian First Book Award in 2001. Ware's precisely detailed, warmly colored artwork has been compared to Islamic miniatures, Maya glyphs, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. "The pictures are ideograms," Ware told Beth Nissen writing for CNN.com, "drawn words, if that makes any sense. The pictures tell the story--I'm a terrible writer." A meticulous draftsman, Ware has commented that creating just two pages of story takes...