Chris Ware

Building Stories Chris Ware Pantheon: Boxed, unpaged, $50 Chris Ware has been asking us to rethink comics for a long time, since his early days drawing for Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly's RAW. He's best known for the 2000 graphic novel "Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth," a multilayered narrative that won several awards, as well as his ongoing comic book series the "Acme Novelty Library. " Still, it's no stretch to suggest that with his new work, "Building Stories," he has upped the ante, pushing comics in a new direction while paying tribute to their history.

My 14-year-old daughter, Sophie, is an indiscriminate reader. I don't mean in terms of what she reads - her taste ("Twilight," "Pretty Little Liars") is quite specific - but how: She moves from print to digital, phone to iPad to computer, without a second thought. I have to tell you that I love this, and not only because I love her. No, it's the fluidity that attracts me, the flexibility, the notion that she is oblivious to the boundaries, a digital native for whom "either/or" is irrelevant in a world where the more interesting and engaging choice is "and/both.

In the realm of alternative comics, few artists have had greater influence than Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Gary Panter and Chris Ware. With their library of cutting-edge titles -- among them "Maus," "Mr. Natural," "Jimbo" and "Quimby the Mouse," respectively -- the four can arguably be credited with ushering comics into their current era of literary and artistic respectability.

Building Stories Chris Ware Pantheon: Boxed, unpaged, $50 Chris Ware has been asking us to rethink comics for a long time, since his early days drawing for Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly's RAW. He's best known for the 2000 graphic novel "Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth," a multilayered narrative that won several awards, as well as his ongoing comic book series the "Acme Novelty Library. " Still, it's no stretch to suggest that with his new work, "Building Stories," he has upped the ante, pushing comics in a new direction while paying tribute to their history.

My 14-year-old daughter, Sophie, is an indiscriminate reader. I don't mean in terms of what she reads - her taste ("Twilight," "Pretty Little Liars") is quite specific - but how: She moves from print to digital, phone to iPad to computer, without a second thought. I have to tell you that I love this, and not only because I love her. No, it's the fluidity that attracts me, the flexibility, the notion that she is oblivious to the boundaries, a digital native for whom "either/or" is irrelevant in a world where the more interesting and engaging choice is "and/both.

The Partisan Review may have folded in the last year, but alienation and ennui are alive and well in American letters. Ironically, at the same time that comic-book protagonists have earned a new literary respect, they have lost the ability to transform themselves. Instead of going from estranged loner to confident superhero, they remain alienated nebbishes -- as estranged as any hero before he dons his cape.

I can't imagine a better editor for “The Best American Comics 2012” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 360 pp., $25) than Françoise Mouly . Co-founder (with her husband Art Spiegelman) of the legendary “comix” magazine RAW and long-time art editor of the New Yorker, she has been on the comics scene since before there was a comics scene, and is a key figure in the ongoing evolution of the form. As she explains in her introduction (itself a four-page strip that appropriates the styles of, among others, Maira Kalman , Roz Chast , Ben Katchor , Charles Burns and Lynda Barry : “When I started RAW magazine, in the '80s … there were mostly superheroes, a few children's comics … and the dirty, intentionally lowbrow, underground comix.

Fantagraphics Books, the Seattle publishing house that for nearly three decades has been the most stirring and cerebral force in graphic novels and cartooning, announced Thursday that it may soon be forced to close. Citing a distribution deal that soured badly and an overstocked warehouse, the company, owned by Gary Groth and Kim Thompson, posted a plea for fans to buy its books over the next month to avert a debt deadline that will shutter the doors.

BOOKS Gabriel Thompson The author of "Working in the Shadows" spent a backbreaking year laboring alongside Latino immigrants to gather material for his expose of the harsh underside of the American economy. He'll present and sign his book, which outlines the many struggles of the working poor. Book Soup, 8818 W. Sunset Blvd. 7 p.m. Free. (310) 659-3110. www.booksoup.com. Joel Kotkin Can you imagine an America with an extra East Coast's worth of people? Get ready, says author Kotkin in his book, "The Next Hundred Million," which lays out the many political, economic and resource challenges of dealing with such a fast-growing population -- and how the United States can use the extra numbers to its advantage.

Buoyed by last year's success, the First Amendment Project again will auction off character-naming rights in forthcoming works by prominent authors, including Carl Hiaasen, Lorrie Moore and Edward P. Jones. The 2005 online auction raised $150,000 for the Oakland-based nonprofit and thrilled nearly two dozen fans who paid to see their names in print, according to Executive Director David Greene. The project is dedicated to protecting and promoting freedom of information, expression and petition.

In the realm of alternative comics, few artists have had greater influence than Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb, Gary Panter and Chris Ware. With their library of cutting-edge titles -- among them "Maus," "Mr. Natural," "Jimbo" and "Quimby the Mouse," respectively -- the four can arguably be credited with ushering comics into their current era of literary and artistic respectability.

The Partisan Review may have folded in the last year, but alienation and ennui are alive and well in American letters. Ironically, at the same time that comic-book protagonists have earned a new literary respect, they have lost the ability to transform themselves. Instead of going from estranged loner to confident superhero, they remain alienated nebbishes -- as estranged as any hero before he dons his cape.

A reclusive 21st century Chicago cartoonist and a charming 18th century French philosophe might seem strange bedfellows. But Penguin Books, which just released a new trade paperback of Voltaire's "Candide" with a dazzling cover by underground comics wonder Chris Ware, is hoping the fit makes some kind of sense. At the very least, Ware's elaborate strip cartoon is an untraditional package for the irreverent novel that once scandalized Europe.

Cameron Carpenter, whom Times music critic Mark Swed has called "technically the most accomplished organist I've ever witnessed," will be playing the organ at Walt Disney Concert Hall at four concerts in April as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Brooklyn Festival. Carpenter, the first organist in residence at the Berlin Philharmonie, has become a rock star of the pipe organ with his combination of virtuoso technique, colorful outfits and his habit of not announcing his program before his appearances.