Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth

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The cover to the collected hardcover edition of Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware
The cover to the collected hardcover edition of Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth is a widely-acclaimed graphic novel by Chris Ware, published in 2000. The story, previously serialized in the pages of Ware's comic book Acme Novelty Library (and, previous to that, in the alternative Chicago weekly New City), is about Jimmy Corrigan, a meek and lonely man in his late thirties who meets his father for the first time in a Michigan town over Thanksgiving weekend. Jimmy is an awkward and cheerless character with an overbearing mother and a very limited social life. Jimmy attempts to escape his unhappiness via an active imagination that sometimes gets him into awkward situations.

The story explores themes of discontent and alienation, especially within families. Elements of the novel seem autobiographical, particularly in passages about Jimmy's estranged relationship with his father (Ware only met his father once in adulthood, during the period he was working on this book, and has remarked that his father's attempts at humor and casualness were not unlike those he'd already created for Jimmy's father in the book). However, it should not be read as a direct account of Ware's personal life. There are also many flashback scenes, including a substantial narrative set in the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. The 1893 sections follow Jimmy's grandfather as a lonely little boy and his difficult relationship with an abusive father (Jimmy's great grandfather). As several elements from the past and the present eventually intersect, albeit subtly, it can be said that the book is also a Corrigan family chronicle.

Ware's novel, like his other work, is heavy with symbolism and visual storytelling, exploring and demonstrating the potential of the comics medium. Many pages are devoid of text, and some contain complex iconic diagrams. Notable leitmotifs in Jimmy Corrigan include the robot, the peach, the miniature horse, and the flawed Super-man figure (seen also as a father figure and as God).

In addition to the graphic novel, the character of Jimmy Corrigan has appeared in other Ware comic strips, sometimes as his imaginary child genius character, sometimes as an adult. Corrigan, in fact, began as a child genius character in Ware's early work, but as Ware continued, the child genius strips appeared less frequently as we increasingly followed Corrigan's sad, adult existence.

Occasional, more realistic flashback strips showing Jimmy as a lonesome child of divorce suggest that this was Jimmy's "real" childhood, while his "Smartest Kid on Earth" adventures are his fantasies... although, Jimmy being Jimmy, even his fantasies tend to end in disaster.

The earlier "Acme Comic Library" strips complicate the totality of the award-winning graphic novel. Some contend that The Acme Novelty Library serialized Jimmy Corrigan alongside strips featuring other dark, surreal Ware characters like "Big Tex", "Rocket Sam" and "Quimby the Mouse," and these characters could also be taken as extensions of Jimmy's fantasy life. Others suggest that this is an "apocryphal" take on the character of Jimmy, when Ware was more interested in revising nostalgic or retro themes with his dark humor.

[edit] Recognition

Jimmy Corrigan has been lauded by critics. Also, it has been recognized with:

Additionally, an article in the October 17, 2005 issue of The New Yorker cited Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth as "the first formal masterpiece of (the) medium."

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