A newly graphic ‘Candide’

A reclusive 21st century Chicago cartoonist and a charming 18th century French philosophe might seem strange bedfellows. But Penguin Books, which just released a new trade paperback of Voltaire’s “Candide” with a dazzling cover by underground comics wonder Chris Ware, is hoping the fit makes some kind of sense.

At the very least, Ware’s elaborate strip cartoon is an untraditional package for the irreverent novel that once scandalized Europe. But that may be fitting, says Penguin Executive Art Director Paul Buckley.

“When the publisher and editor briefed me on redoing ‘Candide,’ ” Buckley said via e-mail, “they kept talking about how funny and wacky a book this was -- they did not want anything too serious or staid.”

Ware, best known for his 2000 book “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth,” is one of 15 cartoonists whose work will be displayed at the upcoming Museum of Contemporary Art and Hammer Museum show “Masters of American Comics.” Buckley said he chose him because of a long appreciation.

The new “Candide” includes not only Ware’s typically witty, self-conscious cover but also inside flap drawings of the major characters, a cartoon on the Lisbon earthquake and what may be the first comic strip about the rivalry between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over the invention of calculus.

Buckley said he plans to do more classics, “using graphic novelists like Charles Burns, Art Spiegelman, Seth, Chester Brown and others.”

“I hope they take off, as we’d like to do many, many more; it’s great fun and most of the authors are dead, so no one bullies us into changes.”