A few years ago I saw a ‘Peanuts’ tribute strip by Chris Ware somewhere. This past January, when I wanted to find it again, I couldn’t remember where it originally appeared. I figured there would be some easy way to check a database of comic book works online and come up with the source, but it turns out I had overestimated the present state of such databases on the internet. I found good starting points in the CBDB Comic Book Database, the Lambiek Comiclopedia, and the Grand Comic Book Database; but none of them listed the work I was looking for. I decided to start compiling a bibliography of Chris Ware works as I hunted, and as I seemed to stumble upon new works every day, I ended up spending three months building up a mammoth listing. Finally, in early May, I found what I was looking for – ‘Top Shelf Asks the Big Questions‘ contains the Peanuts strip and an essay by Ware.

     Many fans of the work of Chris Ware are already aware of the href=”http://quimby.gnus.org/warehouse/”>Acme Novelty Warehouse – an earlier site that set out to keep track of where Mr. Ware’s works appeared.

     The Warehouse hasn’t been updated in ages, so I plan on keeping an unofficial, updated record here. I’ve imposed a loose order on my findings thus far, but i’m open to suggestions in that department. In addition to the sources listed above, I’ve borrowed liberally from the original Warehouse site which was put together by Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen, with help from Gus Mastrapa, Anthony Perna, Todd Morman; Michael Rhode’s href=”http://www.rpi.edu/~bulloj/comxbib.html”>Comics Research Bibliography; the Fantagraphics Website; and various listings that appeared in the newsgroups years ago.

     I don’t claim to own even 20% of the material listed here, so I have no doubt that the listings are rife with errors. I’ll be keeping the comments on this post open indefinately so that anyone who has further details, an addition, a correction, a clarification, a link, or an image can simply post a comment below. If you have images to send, you can email me here. I’ve bought a domain to make it easier for people to navigate to this bibliography: acmenoveltyarchive.org (should redirect here in the next few days), and I’ll probably come up with some dopey little icon to denote that the information has been confirmed with an actual copy of the item in question.

     A technical side-note: I know I went about coding this in a backwards sort of way, from a usability standpoint, at least. If anyone out there is knowledgable in some sort of database protocol that would make this easier to maintain, and wants to help out, by all means, let me know.

All images (unless otherwise noted) are copyright 1987-2004 Chris Ware.

Thanks: Chris Hope, Chris Merritt, Ken Parille, Alvin Buenaventura.