![]() ![]() The lid comes off to reveal 14 different books, pamphlets, posters and miscellanea which, when pieced together, form a multi-dimensional story about the inhabitants of a Chicago apartment block. Abandon yourself to the process and enlightenment gradually dawns. This creation of a luscious vista of words and pictures that the reader must decode using a variety of subtle threads and directions is typical of Ware. It takes a while to trace a path through the puzzle and reveal the hidden title: Building Stories. The work is presented in a large, rectangular box covered in seemingly random letters and fragments of images. Widely hailed as one of the foremost practitioners working in the medium today, his new book, if one can call it that without being reductionist, is a work of such startling genius that it is difficult to know where to begin.Īnd that is part of the point. ![]() ![]() Chris Ware, the 45-year-old American comic artist, is one of these. Just occasionally, a writer or artist, or both in one, emerges who is so astoundingly original that everything else suddenly seems like a facsimile of what has come before. Take a look at what he has to say about what we think is Ware’s magnum opus, Building Stories. We have brought novelist and broadcaster Jake Wallis Simons of The Telegraph along. We took a look at Chris Ware’s latest comic work and we became converts. If you are like us, you probably do not read comic novels. ![]()
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