He also meets Amy, his father’s adopted African-American daughter. One day Jimmy is contacted by his absent father and he travels from Chicago to Waukosha, a small town in Michigan to meet him for the very first time. His main escape from this drab existence is fantasies that he is ‘The Smartest Kid on Earth’ admired by all, and best friends with Superman–or at least, Super-Man, an all-powerful, ultimate father figure who has a sinister barely hidden contempt for humanity. Jimmy Corrigan immerses us in the near-unbearable life of the titular character, a lonely, socially-awkward middle-aged white North American man who lives alone and works in an anonymous office cubicle, with no friends and little meaningful human contact except a suffocating relationship with his overbearing mother. There is, then, no shortage of irony in the fact that although many thousands of people own a copy of this book a surprising number of them see no real need to read the whole thing, being satisfied merely to own this beautiful object and enjoy looking at the detail of its intricately crafted surfaces, the diagrams, cut-out models and dioramas to assemble, fake ads, charts, Victoriana, extravagant lettering and painstakingly rendered architectural backdrops.
Time magazine nominated Jimmy Corrigan one of the ten best English language graphic novels ever written.
The tremendous impact this book had on the literary establishment made Chris Ware the most celebrated graphic novelist since Art Spiegelman with Maus.
It uses its size, complex repeating structure and a seemingly endless supply of sub-textural asides, editorial commentary, teeny tiny marginalia and notes to demand a reader’s fullest attention in order to interact with it. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth is a hugely ambitious, hugely challenging, and at 380 multi-panelled pages, huge in stature piece of work.
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