Chris Ware’s Building Stories leads chase for Eisner awards

Drawing praise … Chris Ware’s Building Stories, which is nominated for Eisner awards including best new graphic album

Graphic novel in 14 parts nominated for five Will Eisner Comic Industry awards, known as the Oscars of comics.

By Alison Flood

Chris Ware’s acclaimed graphic novel Building Stories, which comes in the form of 14 “distinctively discrete Books, Booklets, Magazines, Newspapers, and Pamphlets”, is leading the charge in the Will Eisner Comic Industry awards, known as the “Oscars” of comics.

San Diego Comic-Con International unveiled the contenders for this year’s prizes on Wednesday, with Ware’s entry – which follows the lives of the inhabitants of a three-story building in Chicago – up for five awards: best new graphic album, best writer/artist, best colouring, best lettering and best publication design. Ware’s previous graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, won the Guardian first book award in 2001, the American book award and the French comics award L’Alph Art

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A Life in A Box: Invention, Clarity and Meaning in Chris Ware’s ‘Building Stories’

By Calvin Reid

Chris Ware, the author of Building Stories, a new graphic novel to be published by Pantheon in October, is likely the most famous literary comics artist—graphic novelist if you prefer—that isn’t Art Spiegelman. He is the author of such works as The Acme Novelity Library, a critcally acclaimed continuing series of hardcover graphic anthologies he often uses to introduce characters and stories that eventually evolve into larger standalone graphic novels. He’s also the author of the equally critically acclaimed 2000 graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon). Both Acme Novelty Library and Jimmy Corrigan have received numerous prizes and awards including winning Eisner awards, the National Book Awards of the comics industry.

His works offer powerfully emotional stories, created through the slow accretion of physical detail, emotional incident and memory, all elucidated through complex visual layouts and inventive and engaging ways to insert text into them. Building Stories is no different. The “book” is actually a large box with 14 different kinds of archetypal print formats—among them a hardcover book, a paperback book, a children’s book, newspapers and magazines, mini-comics, a board game and more—all of which carry a story focused deeply on the life of a young women, an amputee, and her sense of herself, her past and her future. Readers can pick up any publication and enter the character’s story at any point—there is no strict sequence. Like all of Ware’s works, he manages to peer deeply into the life of his characters while offering readers new ways to embrace his narrative.

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Men in tights might make the coin, but diversity wins in comic book awards

Graphic novel "Daytripper" won a Harvey Award for best single issue or story

Editor’s note: Christian Sager is the creator of “Think of the Children” and “Border Crossings”. He has also written essays about the comics industry, punk subculture and national identity.

If you’re not a comic book reader, you probably already associate comics with powerful people punching each other. Your assumption wouldn’t be wrong. The rack at your local comic shop is filled with superhero comics, not romantic dramas or police procedurals.

Superheroes might own sales in the comic book world, but when comics professionals honor the best the industry has to offer they go fringe.

Non-superhero comic books won 75% of the winners at the 2011 Harvey Awards, held on August 21 in Baltimore, Maryland. The Harvey Awards are a respected annual awards ceremony hosted in conjunction with the Baltimore Comic-Con. Comic book professionals from across the industry attend this ceremony to celebrate their accomplishments. This year’s event featured big names like Stan Lee, “Thor” and “Hellboy”.

Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of Richard Stark’s crime novel “The Outfit” won two awards. Three awards went to comics featuring talking animals, “The Muppet Show,” “Blacksad” and “Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites.” Each of these is vastly different from the other, using humor, horror and noir with their anthropomorphic protagonists.

Reviewing the comic book sales of August 2011, only 2 of the top 100 selling comic books (“The Walking Dead” and “The Infinite”) were not about superheroes. Only 2%, compared to more than 75% of the Harvey Awards going to diverse material. That’s a huge discrepancy. The Harvey Awards’ Brad Tree wasn’t surprised by the statistics. In his experience, the Harveys always balance the mainstream and the fringe.

The San Diego Comic-Con Eisner Awards might be the Oscars of the comic book world, but Baltimore’s Harvey Awards are its Golden Globes. The Harveys are laid back, faster-paced and often irreverant.

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