Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth [Hardcover]

Chris Ware (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2000

This first book from Chicago author Chris Ware is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally-impaired "everyman" (Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth), who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time. An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890's Chicago and 1980's small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands of colored illustrations and diagrams, which, when read rapidly in sequence, provide a convincing illusion of life and movement. The bulk of the work is supported by fold-out instructions, an index, paper cut-outs, and a brief apology, all of which concrete to form a rich portrait of a man stunted by a paralyzing fear of being disliked.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Ware's hero is a doughy, middle-aged loser who retreats into fantasies that he is "The Smartest Kid on Earth." The minimal plot involves Jimmy's tragicomic reunion with the father who abandoned him in childhood. In abruptly juxtaposed flashbacks, Ware depicts previous generations of Corrigan males, revealing how their similar histories of rejection and abandonment culminated in Jimmy's hapless state. What makes the slight story remarkable is Ware's command of the comics medium. His crisp, painstaking draftsmanship, which sets cartoonish figures in meticulously detailed architectural settings, is matched by his formal brilliance. Ware effectively uses tiny, repetitive panels to convey Jimmy's limited existence, then suddenly bursts a page open with expansive, breathtaking vistas. His complex, postmodern approach incorporates such antiquated influences as Windsor McCay's pioneering Little Nemo strips and turn-of-the-century advertising, transforming them into something new, evocative, and affecting. His daunting skill transforms a simple tale into a pocket epic and makes Jimmy's melancholy story the stuff of cartoon tragedy. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"This haunting and unshakable book will change the way you look at your world. Ware captures landscapes made to flatten emotion--a clinic shrouded in snow, a sterile apartment complex--and yet shows the reader the meaning and even beauty in every glimpse from a highway, every snippet of small talk." --Time magazine

"JIMMY CORRIGAN pushes the form of comics into unexpected formal and emotional territory." --Chicago Tribune

"Graphically inventive, wonderfully realized…[JIMMY CORRIGAN] is wonderfully illustrated in full color, and Ware's spare, iconic drawing style can render vivid architectural complexity or movingly capture the stark despondency of an unloved child." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Ware's use of words is sparing, and at times maudlin. But the real joy is his art. It's stunning. In terms of attention to detail, graceful use of color, and overall design--Ware has no peer. And while each panel is relentlessly polished--never an errant line or lazily rendered image--his drawings, somehow, remain delicate and achingly lyrical." --Dave Eggers, in the New York Times Book Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 380 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; First Edition edition (September 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375404538
• ISBN-13: 978-0375404535
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 1.5 x 6.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (144 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #57,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

CHRIS WARE is the author of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and the annual progenitor of the amateur periodical the ACME Novelty Library. An irregular contributor to The New Yorker and The Virginia Quarterly Review,Ware was the first cartoonist chosen to regularly serialize an ongoing story in The New York Times Magazine, in 2005-2006. He edited the thirteenth issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern in 2004 as well as Houghton Mifflin's Best American Comics for 2007, and his work was the focus of an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2006. Ware lives in Oak Park, Illinois, with his wife, Marnie, a high-school science teacher, and their daughter, Clara.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emotionally distant and affecting..., May 19, 2003

By 

James Hiller (Beaverton, OR) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Hardcover)

I've never done this before. Buy a book. Can't stand it. Return it a few days later. Buy it back a few hours later. Fall in love with it. Such is my journey with Chris Ware's graphic book, "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth". Let me tell you first why I returned it, and what redeemed it.

I came across this book after a brief EW mention of it, rating it very high. Intrigued, I purchased a copy, and attempted to delve into its layers. Instead of intrigue, I found frustration, mainly because I simply didn't know how to look at the book. I didn't know where my eyes were supposed to go, so many of the early pages were difficult to read. Plus, the characters constant and sudden lapses into their daydreams made for early confusion.

So, I returned it, happy of my decision. And then, I attended a live version of "This American Life" that prominently featured the work of Ware. His artwork captivated me, enough to rebuy the book and try again. What I found was an entralling, captivating tale, multi-layered, and worth all the work to learn the language of his drawings.

It's the story of Jimmy Corrigan, an everyman without much of a life at all, who is contacted by his long lost father for a Thanksgiving reunion. Jimmy agrees to attend, which leads him on a retrospective journey of his life and his family. The story is both moving and rich, full of layers upon layers. Once you learn Ware's language, and what he tries to communicate, the story begins to shine like a lighthouse beacon through the pages. I was surprised to find myself crying at certain parts of the book; my brain was telling me this is simply a comic story, but my heart was breaking along with the characters. That alone is impressive.

Ware's drawings are incredible. He communicates so much through each drawing, you need to "read" this slowly, and internalize the story. Whereas you tend to want to skip the less important drawings, quite often they will give you the most information. This book is not one to read quickly, but enjoy, like a fine, fine wine.

I look forward to more work from Chris Ware. His artist's eye is impressive, but his storytelling is even more so.

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take this seriously, March 9, 2001

By 

Jeff Hodges (Denton, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Hardcover)

When people see you reading Jimmy Corrigan, you will get quite the gamut of reactions. Some people snicker to themselves and mumble something about a long comic book and wonder where "Flash-man" is. Others will take an interest, read the first ten pages, and put it down in emotional and intellectual frustration. Then you have a few people who will widen their eyes and say solemnly "are you serious...?"

This work realizes the dream of Scott McCloud's literary graphic novel in a way that has no precedent that I have found. It is both accessible and intellectual. Its the story of an emotionally destitute and pitiful character named Jimmy Corrigan (actually a couple of them, if you want to get technical) and his search for a meaningful relationship with his/thier father(s). To tell any more than that (even that is too much) will destroy the story for you. Its a story that unwinds over the course of its reading, yet is present from the very first page.

Things to think about as your read: The lack of female faces actually shown in any given frame, the significance of misshapen and flawed objects, changes in text, the irony of the title, and the pervasive exploration of the father-son relationship as is stands in the late 20th-early 21st century. Notice, also, how these presentations could not have been made as effective in traditional all-text presentation.

Even more interesting is the presentation of the character(s) of Jimmy Corrigan. In Scott McCloud's first book, he talks about the popularity of cartooning, and how we relate to cartoon characters because their features are so simple. To put it another way, the more details a character has, the less it is us and the more it is someone else. All the Jimmy Corrigan characters, but especially the main one, are drawn super-simply. If they resemble anything, they seem infantile (and an ugly infant at that).

One type 2 person (the book-putting-down type) told me that they had to take a break because they were "starting to feel like Jimmy Corrigan". Hmmmm.............

If you are familiar with the graphic novel, this is the one. It could be studied. However, even if you don't like "comics", I would suggest trying this as an introduction, although I would hardly call it comic. Jimmy Corrigan represents the insecure child in all of us that reaches out for help in any form it can find and recoils when the help is hard and cold. If you ever wanted to put your head in you hands and cry because you thought no one liked you, Jimmy Corrigan is floating around in your psyche. Make sure he knows he's not alone.

42 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant -- Perhaps the first true graphic "novel", September 16, 2000

By 

Michael S. Manley (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Hardcover)

Having been entranced by Ware's "The Acme Novelty Catalog" (a meticulously produced comic book containing the Jimmy Corrigan novel and extras, plus other pieces and marginalia that rivals even that of Dave Eggers) for a long time, and having followed a great deal of this book's story in Chicago's NewCity paper, I was no less impressed and moved by encountering the entire story here in one collection. While the abject loneliness of Jimmy Corrigan is more deeply rendered through the extra vignettes in Acme Novelty Co., this book brilliantly captures the evolution of a strain of melancholy across generations (from the dispossesed Irish immigrant/veteran to the abused orphan to the ignored/smothered Jimmy), beautifully counterpointed by the promise of real family assembled from the fragments of others (Jimmy's father and sister). The epilogue (which, frankly, would resonate even more if some of the aforementioned vignettes had been included in this book) lends Jimmy's story a saving grace the likes of which I've not read in a novel -- text or graphical -- in ages. Chris Ware is an artist in more ways than one, and this book lends great hope to the maturation of the comic as serious literature.