Rocket Sam in "Tis the Season of Giving on Planet X-38"

Ware, who studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1991 to 1993, is one of the foremost writers and designers of graphic novels, creating serials and one-off panels that he has described as an “art of the people.” This drawing, from the artist’s Rocket Sam series, is an example of the large-panel comics that Ware drew for the Chicago Reader. In this episode a profoundly lonely spaceman builds a robot and instructs it to give him a Christmas present; the final sequence reveals the scheme’s comic ending. Influenced by Charles Schulz’s treatment of his characters in Peanuts, Ware strives to make the reader “feel through the character” in his work.