@Patrick Ford. Chris Ware didn’t design The Kat Who Walked in Beauty book. That was Jacob Covey. But in general, a designer has to work with the publisher to figure out decisions about how many strips per page, etc. It’s both an art and a commerical job, like designing a building.

Let’s hope Bruce Mau doesn’t silp into comics. I like architecture books & all that but jeez

Jeff Smith’s Walt Kelly reprint covers could also be mentioned. The OUR GANG covers I just glanced at over on the Fantagraphics site appear to be a completely original illustrations, though obviously Kelly-inspired. And yet, perhaps since OUR GANG has its own history and iconography, I find myself not particularly bothered by them.

But overall, I think we’re all going to have to learn to agree to disagree on this issue. Some people see these books as Ware/Seth/Tomine/Kidd imposing their sensiblities on old or dead cartoonists. I just can’t agree with that. For me, those books are clearly love letters, and a chance (to pick one example) to share in Seth’s love of Schulz. Since Seth knows more about cartooning than I ever will and has long lingered over Schulz’s work, a chance to share in Seth’s viewpoint helps deepen my own understanding of Peanuts. The same applies to Ware, Tomine, Kidd (and probably some others I’m forgetting). What some people see as arrogance I see as a form of sharing.

I think Evan Dorkin hit the nail right on the head regarding Seth, all the books he designs end up looking like Seth books, regardless of who actually drew them.

What I find maddening about the Seth PEANUTS books in particular is that his “design” work goes so far as to alter the original drawings. I’ve never understood the need to add shading/modelling to flat comic strip images. He might as well be drawing moustaches on the characters’ faces.

But Chris Ware’s KRAZY KAT books bother me even more. At least with Seth’s PEANUTS designs, we can see the influence of Schulz on Seth. Despite the addition of shading/modelling, the covers still at least seem to occur in the Peanuts universe. But it’s difficult for me to see what relation there is between Chris Ware’s KRAZY KAT designs and Herriman’s work. For example, I’m looking at the 1931-1932 volume “A Kat a’Lilt With Song”, which seems to be designed to resemble old sheet-music. I’m aware that old sheet music is one of Ware’s interests, but what exactly does this have to do with KRAZY KAT? Even the covers where Ware includes vaguely southwestern/Native American designs seem wildly inappropriate to me even though I understand what he’s getting at with the design, attempting to echo Herriman’s own use of Native motifs. It’s troubling, because I admire Chris Ware tremendously. But at the same time, I find those covers so annoying that I’ve actually considered removing them and having the books rebound in single volumes.

That said, I’m not really bothered at all by Ware’s designs for the Walt & Skeezix books where his approach seems much more directly influenced by the look of original strips. The Walt and Skeezix books seem like a genuine extension of Frank King’s cartooning. I look at these books and think “Frank King”. I look at his KRAZY books and think “Chris Ware”.