They're mostly awful, except for that one you like. The trouble is, everyone likes a different one. I think we can be done with Peanuts, but no. The Peanuts people probably hate Mr. Boffo, which is the only strip that makes me laugh. I read other strips and have an internal reaction that approximates indulgent mirth, but that's rare. Dennis the Menace? No. Beetle Bailey? No. After half a century it might be time to give the strips a gentle pat and say farewell.

Can the genre be saved? Well, Chris Ware is going to try.

I wish it wasn't this.

Those little-pictures-connected-by-lines are so much work. And the payoff, in this instance, is so slight. Before you scoff and shout PHILISTINE and tar me as someone who doesn't get Ware, I have Acme Novelty Library #2, which came out in 1996, and every volume since. You want to debate whether the Rusty Brown sequence is better than Jimmy Corrigan, let's go. You want to argue Big Tex vs. Rocket Sam: you're on. (Big Tex was better, and had that multi-panel homage to the old Sunday "Gasoline Alley," which told the story through a shifting prism of seasons; after all the hardy-har indignities Tex suffered at the hands of Paw, it was a sign of how Ware could nail you right in the heart without even showing a single character.) But I was dismayed by a lot of Building Stories, which seemed inert, laborious, and self-consciously packaged to celebrate Print in a way that couldn't compensate for the morose, colorless main character, but just ladled on the Sad with a trowel.

That said, it's bookmarked. I just hope he hasn't given up on Rusty Brown.

ARCHITECTURE Who's up for some ruins? The remains of Borscht Belt resort hotels. The Homowack bowling alley shot is almost painful. As for the Homowack itself - oh, stop snickering, this isn't 7th grade - here's a postcard I have from its glory days.

When was the last time you saw a hotel with a bowling alley?