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In Chris Ware’s comic strip “Building Stories,” the protagonist is a 30-year-old woman who is an amputee and sometimes wears a prosthetic limb. Ware’s description strangely elides disability as a characterization of the woman, relegating it to a de-privileged position in his account of the narrative. This chapter examines the ways in which Ware represents the woman in “Building Stories,” with the goal of demystifying her physical difference by situating her within an aesthetic of the ordinary. After discussing the politics underlying images of bodies and disability as a politicized identity, it considers Ware’s aesthetic of ordinariness and narrative structure. The chapter then argues that Ware imagines the disabled experience to be not radically different from the daily rituals of the other inhabitants of the building, thus opening a space for the protagonist that the chapter refers to as “idiosyncratic belonging.”

In 2002, the New York Times Magazine began publishing Chris Ware’s serialized comic strip, “Building Stories,” which introduces readers to a three-story row house in the Chicago neighborhood of Humboldt Park. The building is represented as a character that struggles to interpret the motives of a woman who examines it from across the street. Focusing on Humboldt Park, this chapter explores Ware’s concerns about the process of gentrification and the effects it has on Chicago’s architectural and human terrains. It analyzes “Building Stories” in the context of current debates about gentrification in Chicago and other major U.S. cities, arguing that the comic strip is a critique of gentrification and a defense of urban historic preservation. The chapter interprets Ware’s attention to the inner life of the row house as a tribute to historic buildings and an attempt to inculcate in his readers an appreciation for them.

Cartoonists are aware of how comics can be easily forgotten, and thus have addressed “memory” as a central trope for discussing how their medium works, not only on the page but also in the minds of readers and creators. For example, Scott McCloud has argued that the power of cartooning stems from a mimetic similarity between the iconography of comic art and the contents of human memory. Chris Ware has also formalized the notion that “comics is about memory.” This chapter examines how memory is constructed in his comic strip “Building Stories,” focusing on the interplay between episodic, experiential, and narrative memory. It argues that memory is central to Ware’s comics, in which it is formally anatomized and re-encoded as a “feeling.” The chapter discusses remembering as a felt experience and how it resonates with Ware’s assertions about his artwork and its relation to readers’ psychological states. It also considers Ware’s central techniques for representing remembering in the 2003 strip titled “Paper Dolls.”