Cleverly appropriated old-fashioned animation imagery & advertising styles of the 1920s & 1930s are put to use in Quimby the Mouse at the service of modern vignettes of angst & existentialism. As this cartoon silhouette of a mouse ignominiously suffers at every turn, the spaces between the panels create despair & a Beckett-like rhythm of hope deceived & deferred (but never quite extinguished), buoying Quimby from page to page.
Like Ware's first book, Jimmy Corrigan, Quimby is saturated with Ware's genius, including consistently amazing graphics, insanely perfectionist production values, cut-out-&-assemble paper projects, & the formal complexity of his narratives that have earned him the reputation as one of the most prodigious artists of his generation.