In 2012 cartoonist Chris Ware published his modern masterpiece Building Stories. Demonstrating his creative abilities, he set out to create a set of manuscripts which depict a story from multiple perspectives. The final product is a box set of various documents, some textual, some visual. The fourteen manuscripts include a children's book, posters, comic books, a newspaper, and more. All of these pieces together tell the tale, but they may be understood having been examined in any possible order. It's as if Ware gave his readers the contents of some long-lost relative's safe-deposit box.
Something about the tangible element of Building Stories makes it more impactful than otherwise the story would be by itself. Readers are invited to solve a sort of mystery by compiling the information from the various pages into a cohesive tale. Additionally all of the characters are unnamed, so readers are allowed to engage with the plot without destroying the illusion that all of these stories are plausible. For all anyone knows, these could be real people's stories. Of course they aren't, but the material aspect of Ware's medium allows for the suspension of belief to a certain degree.
The story revolves around this young woman who moves into an apartment building. She's a failing artist who generally works from home, so she interacts with her neighbors a great deal. When she starts dating this man, she realizes that she will never be a successful artist. It's a crushing blow from which she doesn't really recover. Not long after they get married and become pregnant. She's reminded of her previous relationship when she was a teenager. She got an abortion without telling her boyfriend, and when she finally told him he was furious and left her. As an adult, she struggles to justify the abortion and thus feels guilty for this second chance at motherhood. Additionally she still loves her ex and constantly compares him to her current husband, whom she starts to resent.
