#407 Should “Building Stories” be condemned?

buildingstoriesChris Ware’s 2012 work Building Stories attracted a lot of attention because of its unusual format: a box of 14 publications of varying shapes and sizes, which can be read in any order. Ware says the work is about memory, in various ways, and reading the story in various non-chronological ways can give us different points of view on how its characters remember (or mis-remember, or forget) various things.

While Tim finds the examination of memory to be interesting in itself, and feels that the format enhances that, Kumar is less patient with it, wondering what the conclusion is, why all the characters seem so miserable, and whether the work’s form has any relationship to the content. This week, they discuss whether the work deserves a “historical landmark” plaque, or a wrecking ball.

AV Club review of “Building Stories”

#278 “Jimmy Corrigan”, the Densest Comic Book on Earth

Jimmy CorriganChris Ware‘s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth started as a jokey, weird, serialized comic and evolved into a densely packed tale of betrayal, loss, and recovery. Not only that, but Ware’s extraordinary cartooning captures the mundane moments of everyday life as well as it utilizes symbolism on multiple levels. And not only that… Well, unlocking everything gathered into this 380-page tome is a task that can’t be completed in a one-hour podcast, but Tim and Kumar do their darnedest to cover all the bases.