World Famous Comics: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
By: Chris Ware Publisher: Pantheon Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Pantheon Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 380 Publication Date: April 29, 2003 Release Date: April 29, 2003
Product Description: 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.
Jimmy Corrigan: Lamest Man on Earth As most people state, the artwork is very interesting, and the layout is innovative. Sometimes figuring out what panel to read next is half the battle. I definitely agree with the people who have no sympathy for the title character. I like Anton Chigurh more than I like Jimmy Corrigan, and Anton Chigurh is a heartless homicidal maniac who may or may not symbolize evil incarnate. But unlike the others, I don't hold this against the book or against the author. This book reminds me of the mumble-core movies popularized by Andrew Bujalski. It makes you want to shake the crap out of the characters, and tell them to wake the eff up. A book doesn't have to be judged on how likable its characters are. This book tells a story of a family who deserves to be forgotten, but who will instead be remembered.
Decent art, abysmal story and characters The art is interesting, in a retro style. The architectural drawings are the best part of the book, but the drawings of the characters are extremely simplistic and uninteresting.
The story is where this completely falls apart. The main characters are losers, in every sense of the word. I'm not joking when I say that the main thing Jimmy says is "Uh". He's completely pathetic and I had absolutely no sympathy for him or anyone else in this book.
The pace of this book is absolutely ridiculous, too. "Slow" doesn't even scratch the surface - this is pure tedium.
It's all hype. There are so many great graphic novels out there - skip this and find something decent like "Watchmen".
A wacky yet insightfull journey Comics are more profound than you remember. They are an effective means to tell a narrative and in these pages you will feel emotions that you thought not possible within this medium. Be patient and yes, read the instrucctions before you begin.
Nice size, paper It can be difficult to read the title of this book by looking at the front cover (you might not have picked it out in a real bookstore), but it is not unattractive. The dust jacket is functional, both as a dust jacket and a cut-out paper doll.
Without the dust jacket, the book feels cheap, for a hardcover, but it is stately and a bit more scrutable than the dust jacket. The spine on mine is weak, and the binding has come loose. This is most bothersome.
The paper has a good weight to it, and the ink is nicely done. There are cut-outs and activities similar to the one in the dust jacket throughout the book, as well as helpful instructions toward the most effective enjoyment of the book.
Mostly, the binding at the spine seems annoyingly defective.
There's another parade I must rain on... Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon, 2003)
I don't think it would be overreaching to say that, even if it is not, Charis Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth has been touted as the single book that ignited the renaissance of popularity (and social acceptability) in graphic novels in America; it was almost certainly the first to be widely discussed in entertainment magazines and on National Public Radio. It took me a while to get round to it, and I'm thankful for that; I am sure that had I started reading graphic novels again with this, instead of in the places I did, I would not have continued on (and discovered books like Charles Burns' Black Hole and Jeff Smith's Bone, which actually deserve all the praise-- and more-- heaped upon Jimmy Corrigan).
This is the first graphic novel that's ever taken me more than two weeks to read. Why? Because every time I put it down, I felt no desire to pick it up again; I forced my way through the last two hundred pages. Even now that I've embraced the fifty-page rule, I can't bring myself to abandon a graphic novel; it seems like cheating. That said, I've never even come close to abandoning one before. I was treading the line the entire time I read this one.
There is a plot: the life of four Jimmy Corrigans, from great-grandfather on down. None of them is in any way sympathetic. And while the episodic, dragging nature of the novel was probably not helped by the fact that it did start its life as a comic strip, there have been many graphic novels that began as serial work that have done it much, much better. (The aforementioned Bone is one obvious example, but many others are out there.)
I'm sorry, I guess I'm one of those who just didn't get it. *
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