Manga comics... have ignited graphic novel sales around the world

A real treat for fans... an excellent translation as well as one of the most complete sets of reader notes I've ever seen on a manga

Highly recommended, not just because it's another fine effort from Ken Akamatsu, but also because of the inspired translation and excellent handling of sound effects

Both acerbic and hilarious.

This ripping yarn of murder, mystery and the machinating arms tycoon Baron Krapaud of Toad Hall is both irresistibly exciting and sumptuously designed.

Flynn’s book is full of satisfying twists, turns and shocks ... The art is stunning, the story ingenious, and the in-jokes delicious, as our badger hero visits Paris to solve a series of art murders, including the demise of a crow called Gustave Corbeau.

A blindingly beautiful crime adventure comic.

One of the most remarkable, thrilling and possibly important books of the year.

A heartbreaking work of staggering genius. The perfect gift for book lovers and design geeks… [A] beautiful testimony to the still-untapped potential of print and paper.

A wonderful achievement. It’s not only that it is so beautifully and attentively made – though in the age of the Kindle, and of all things disposable, Ware is certainly making a powerful statement. No, it’s the sense of belief that gets to you, the absolute commitment to the form. Building Stories does things no traditional novel can, or not without much lumbering effort; and it does things no comic has hitherto pulled off. No wonder, then, that opening it for the first time makes you feel like a child at Christmas. It’s a thing to be treasured, a box of delights.

Even without the astonishing formal experimentation, this is one of the best books about regular people I have ever read.

Prizes will no doubt descend on his new work, which comes in a huge, gorgeous box. There are 14 comics inside, which tell discrete stories of life in a turn of the century Chicago apartment building. Not like anything else you’ll read this year. Brilliant.

A thing of beauty.

This is more than a book: it’s a profusion of printed paper: a box full of pamphlets, comic books, newspapers, hardcovers, and even a folding screen. Together they present the tale of the occupants of a three-story building in Chicago, told in Ware’s instantly recognizable style, with panels so silent and perfectly composed they’re reminiscent of stained-glass windows.

Magnificent... It’s so far ahead of the game that it tempts you to find fault just to prove that a human made it.

Ware writes and draws with immense compassion... Building Stories is a thing to be experienced.

A tour de force of fine detail.

The houses are blocks of black studded with burning orange windows. It’s just a street with buildings on it with normal people living in them. But what Ware has told us about buildings turned each orange window into a frame.

Building Stories may be the most concerted and apparently counter-intuitive attempt in any graphic novel to take us inside the life, thoughts and emotions of one fictional, unnamed character and make us care. That he succeeds, without the manipulative heartstring-tugging of cinema or theatre but with comics, is all the more remarkable.

Masterful, beautifully constructed, beautifully drawn tales of domestic boredom, agony and bliss.

Ware's graphic restraint has impressive emotional force; this is a work to pore over, from an artist like no other.

Moving and indescribably accomplished graphic novel...sent my jaw south and my eyebrows north.

The sadness of the narrative is fractured by the fizziness of its construction: a gorgeous book full of overlapping stories.

So bleak, observant and meticulously crafted that it merits that usually empty old word: masterpiece.

Ten years of intricate, ingenious work captured in one hefty box packed with graphic novels, pamphlets and a cartoon newspaper. Ware brilliantly charts the everyday experiences of the various inhabitants of a three-storey Chicago building in forensic, melancholic detail.

A big, sturdy box containing hard-bound volumes, pamphlets and a tabloid houses Ware’s demanding, melancholy and magnificent graphic novel about the inhabitants of a Chicago building.

This is long worth the wait ... sumptuously printed and lovingly presented.

Both a beautiful object and a work of tremendous power, that sets new standards for the graphic novel form. I can't stop talking about it.

In both imagination and execution, his artistry is faultless. A song to lettering, line, ink, Chicago, hope, regret and the history of comics, the emotions he arouses will stay with you long after closing the box it came in.