Building Stories Unboxing

I recently purchased Building Stories by Chris Ware, and then promised an unboxing, so here we go.


Some background: Building Stories is a beautiful boxed set featuring new material as well as stories Ware has previously published in various and sundry locations, including Ware's own Acme Novelty Library #16 and #18, The New Yorker, nest magazine, Kramers Ergot, The Chicago Reader, Hangar 21 Magazine, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (and one story for McSweeny's iPad app), and The New York Times Magazine.

The stories are published in multiple formats within the box (and sometimes on the box itself), and while I could write a review for this (once I actually finish), it won't be as good as the one Douglas Wolk wrote for The New York Times, so just go read that instead (also, read Wolk's excellent academic work Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean because it's amazing and everybody should read it). I will say this: this is a demanding text. It is to superhero comics what William Faulkner is to Cherie Priest. It's not necessarily better or worse, just harder to digest and likely more rewarding (though I could certainly list a rather large number of demanding works that just plain sucked; I'm looking at you, Parzival).


But this is not a review, just a showcase of pictures of how pretty and intricate this thing is. Up above is the front of the box before I even took the shrinkwrap off.

This is the back of the box, detailing exactly what you will find inside, in pictograph of course. There is also the customary withering Ware copy back here. Of special note, I have just noticed I have the British version of this, as evidenced by the £30 price tag down in the lower right corner, just above the ISBN.

The box, just opened! All the books, magazines, newspapers, and various other ephemera are also shrinkwrapped inside, waiting for my grubby hands to tear them free.

The inside of the top of the box contains all the information one would usually find on the indicia page in a book.

A close-up of the two epigraphs:

"Don't forget to go out of the house every once in a while or you'll lose your source of pollination." - Clara Louise Ware (1905-1990)

"Everything you can imagine is real." - Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Yes, there are comics on the sides of the bottom of the box. This is kind of a Ware-ism, putting comics wherever he can fit them. His hardcover The ACME Novelty Library: Our Annual Report to Shareholders and Rainy Day Saturday Afternoon Fun Book has a comic on the inside of the belly band, as well as "The World's Smallest Comic Strip" on the edges of the front and back covers, because why not?

All the books, magazines, newspapers, and various other ephemera out of the box, right before I tear off that last bit of shrinkwrap.

The four smallest pieces: a 52-page wordless landscape booklet featuring the main protagonist (bottom), two double-sided accordion foldouts, also featuring the main protagonist (top left), and a 24-page comic book titled Branford: The Best Bee in the World, featuring the eponymous bee (top right; most likely the least depressing part of this collection).

Two 16-page comic books featuring different tenants of the same building the main protagonist lives in during her twenties.

  
Disconnect, a 20-page comic book featuring the main protagonist (left), and September 23rd, 2000, a 32-page hardcover book, created to look like a Little Golden Book from the 1940s (right). This book features stories from one day in the life of the apartment building the main protagonist lives in during her twenties. The building itself becomes a character, and talks about which tenants it likes and dislikes, and a bit of its history.

The Daily Bee, a fold-out newspaper featuring Branford the Bee (left) and a double-sided poster featuring the main protagonist (right). Both are folded in half box.

And last, but not least, the four biggest items in the box: a four-panel accordion-folded board featuring the various tenants of the main building, as well as the building itself again (top), a 4-page newspaper-sized broadsheet featuring the main protagonist (bottom left), a 52-page cloth-bound hardcover book with no markings on the front or back cover featuring the main protagonist (bottom center, opened to the inside front cover), and a 20-page newspaper-sized broadsheet featuring the main protagonist.

All in all, a pretty great box full of pretty great things. I have read nine of the fourteen texts (ten of fifteen if you count the box itself), and hope to finish it by tomorrow, at the latest. There is no set order to read this texts, so I've been reading from smallest to largest, also known as top to bottom in the order they were in when I took the shrinkwrap off (the smaller the dimensions on the x- and y-axis of the text, the earlier I read it). According to Ware himself, there is no "correct order" to read the texts, so read them however you wish when you open your box.

P.S. One last picture, of all the other things I purchased at the same time as Building Stories, just to give a small cross-section of comic tastes (though, superhero comics, which I dearly love, are oddly missing here).

P.P.S. I purchased Building Stories immediately after Singapore publishing house Epigram Books held their inaugural event for the graphic novels they had just published. After the event, while standing in line to pay, I managed to convince comic artists Koh Hong Teng and Sonny Liew to buy a copy each of Building Stories as well, so Books Kinokuniya Main Store, you're welcome.