Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth [Hardcover]

Ware's graphically inventive, wonderfully realized novel-in-comics follows the sad fortunes of four generations of phlegmatic, defeated men while touching on themes of abandonment, social isolation and despair within the sweeping depiction of Chicago's urban transformation over the course of a century. Ware uses Chicago's World's Colombian Exposition of 1893, the great world's fair that signaled America's march into 20th-century modernity, as a symbolic anchor to the city's development and to the narrative arc of a melancholic family as haplessly connected as are Chicago's random sprawl of streets and neighborhoods. In 1893, nine-year-old Jimmy Corrigan is abandoned atop a magnificent fair building by his sullen, brutish father ("I just stood there, watching the sky and the people below, waiting for him to return. Of course he never did"). Nearly a century later, another Jimmy CorriganDthe absurdly ineffectual, friendless grandson of that abandoned childDreceives a letter from his own long-absent, feckless father, blithely and inexplicably requesting him to come and visit. Ware's surprisingly touching story recounts their strange and pathetically funny reunion, invoking the emotional legacy of the great-grandfather's original act of desertion while presenting a succession of Corrigan men far more comfortable fantasizing about life than living it. The book 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. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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
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"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

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.

"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

Chris Ware was born in 1967 in Omaha, Nebraska, and currently lives in Chicago. He is the author and creator of the beloved 'Acme Novelty Library' series of children's guidebooks, game pamphlets and picnic song-sheets, irregular organs through which the bulk of this work passed. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.