He is considered by some critics and fellow notable illustrators and writers, such as Dave Eggers, to be among the best currently working in the medium; Canadian graphic-novelist Seth has said, "Chris really changed the playing field.

[3] His earliest published strips appeared in the late 1980s on the comics page of The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin.

The series featured a combination of new material as well as reprints of work Ware had done for the Texan (such as Quimby the Mouse) and the Chicago weekly paper Newcity.

Beginning with the 16th issue of Acme Novelty Library, Ware began self-publishing his work while maintaining a relationship with Fantagraphics for distribution and storage.

The New York Review of Books described it as "a grand tomb in the Egyptian mold, whose contents will tell anyone who breaks into it what this person’s life was like," adding that "it seems almost an invasion of privacy to enter this crypt.

Ware's art reflects early 20th-century American styles of cartooning and graphic design, shifting through formats from traditional comic panels to faux advertisements and cut-out toys.

Ware has spoken about finding inspiration in the work of artist Joseph Cornell[7] and cites Richard McGuire's strip Here as a major influence on his use of non-linear narratives.

I try to use the rules of typography to govern the way that I "draw", which keeps me at a sensible distance from the story as well as being a visual analog to the way we remember and conceptualize the world.

I figured out this way of working by learning from and looking at artists I admired and whom I thought came closest to getting at what seemed to me to be the "essence" of comics, which is fundamentally the weird process of reading pictures, not just looking at them.

Unfortunately, as a result, I guess sometimes readers get a chilled or antiseptic sensation from it, which is certainly not intentional, and is something I admit as a failure, but is also something I can't completely change at the moment.

[9]Although his precise, geometrical layouts may appear to some to be computer-generated, Ware works almost exclusively with manual drawing tools such as paper and ink, rulers and T-squares.

Quimby was presented in a series of smaller panels than most comics, almost providing the illusion of motion à la a zoetrope.

In fact, Ware once designed a zoetrope to be cut out and constructed by the reader in order to watch a Quimby "silent movie".

Installments later appeared in a number of publications, including The New Yorker, Kramer's Ergot, and most notably, the Sunday New York Times Magazine.

[14][15][16] The boxed set holds 14 different works, in various sizes and forms, weaving through the life of an unnamed brown haired woman.

Ware's latest project, The Last Saturday, a "comic novella," began appearing online every Friday at the website of the UK newspaper The Guardian, starting in September 2014.

[27] The cover, featuring the circle-shaped humans common in Ware's more broadly socially satirical comic-strips, turned the numbers 500 into skyscrapers looming over the continental United States.

Below, among signs reading "Credit Default Swap Flea Market," "Greenspan Lube Pro," and "401K Cemetery," a helicopter scoops money out of the US Treasury with a shovel, cars pile up in Detroit, and flag-waving citizens party around a boiling tea kettle in the shape of an elephant.

[27] In 2011, Ware created the poster for the U.S. release of the 2010 film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

This being a poster, however—and even worse, me not really being a designer—I realized it also had to be somewhat punchy and strange, so as to draw viewers in and pique their curiosity without, hopefully, insulting their intelligence.