If you don’t know the world of comics you may not know his name, but Chris Ware is a star of the sector. For the same reason, if you’re not in the world of fanzines, maybe you don’t know Fatbottom (Carrer de la Lluna, 21), a hole in the deep Raval that has been providing the most indie comics and fanzines possible to any fan looking for alternative drawn art in Barcelona for 15 years.
Maybe that’s why this news didn’t tell you much at the beginning, but I should tell you now. And the fact is that it not only serves to discover one of the most important contemporary comic authors in the world, but also a secret of the Raval, that Fatbotton that is a mecca for the connoisseurs of the subject but an unknown bookstore for the general public and that you could pass by without noticing it.
Perhaps that is also why it makes so much sense that a cult author, Ware, has stopped by a bookstore like this one and commented to its owner Nico Rodríguez(and later in an interview in the newspaper Ara) that he considers this to be the best bookstore in the world. For his part, Rodriguez explains the joy and surprise of hearing the statements and the admiration he feels for the author, with whom he chatted the day he visited the bookstore.
Chris Ware and Fatbottom
Chris Ware has been the guest of honor of the 43rd edition of the Saló del Còmic. Moreover, to get to know him, now the CCCB is dedicating to him the exhibition “Chris Ware. Drawing is thinking”, with drawings, audiovisuals and objects of the artist that could be seen until November 9.
He is the author, among others, of books such as Jimmy Corrigan: the smartest boy in the world or Rusty Brown, as well as being the author of covers for magazines such as The New Yorker.
Fatbottom defines itself as “a small bookstore dedicated mainly to self-publishing, comics and graphics”, but anyone initiated in the world of self-publishing in Barcelona knows that the bookstore is a real center of gravity for the sector, hosting fanzines of all kinds and comics, and organizing the Gutter Fest, one of the main self-publishing festivals in the city.