Comic Notes: Jimmy Corrigan

December 19th, 2006

Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware

Comics Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Boy On Earth by Chris Ware is the closest to a recent comic masterpiece I’ve read. There’s so much perfect about it.

With many otherwise outstanding graphic novels, there’s something that slips a bit from perfection, such as mesmerizing art but a slightly lacking story (Blankets, Gemma Bovery) or the opposite is true (Persepolis). Chris Ware on the other hand, has an exacting, detailed style and designs his layouts so carefully that his work seems to have been created on computer by a team of graphic designers and illustrators (which it isn’t). His stories are similarly crafted, with multiple interpretations, visual symbolism, and a disjointed narrative that seems certainly plotted out beforehand by a team of writers (which it probably wasn’t, either). It’s astounding to realize this 380 page work is a one-man production.

The plot centers around Jimmy Corrigan, your basic urban loser, who spends the majority of his time alone in a crappy office job, fielding phone calls from an overprotective, nagging mother. Jimmy however has a reasonably active imagination plus the common introvert’s problem that he’s feebly incapable of communicating his fantasies to anyone, let alone women he’s interested in.

Jimmy receives a letter from his long-forgotten father, whom he doesn’t know a thing about. He travels just before Thanksgiving to meet this unknown mystery-man. Over the course of the awkward visit (during which Jimmy runs away and is hit by a car between meals at fast-food joints), his father slowly warms to Jimmy as does his grandfather and step-sister.

The story sounds a bit mundane, but Ware makes it mesmerizing through outstanding art and visual symbolism. For example, the iconic yet tragic Superman makes a recurring appearance, representingÂ the concept of a flawed “super man” - a father figure. The first pages document Jimmy’s mother’s affair with a Superman actor at an autograph signing. In this short sequence, we’re introduced to several of the themes explored in the work: a mother that is less than stellar, an uncomfortable loneliness eased by fantasy, betrayal by a father, uncomfortable sexual situations, and a childhood disillusionment with the adult world. The “super man” can be seen a childhood ideal that is often dashed to bits (in darkly humorous ways).

The book is full of decidedly non-super father figures. In addition to Jimmy’s dad, we meet his grandfather who’s own lonely childhood is conveyed through ornate flashbacks to turn-of-the-century Chicago. In turn, his father is a strict disciplinarian who stifles the imagination of the Corrigan patriarch. In the present day, this abused boy has become a walker-shuffling skinny old man shopping for a little boy’s toilet seat so he can sit down and not fall into the toilet. He also bears the convenient, aged privilege of speaking his mind without fear of offense - the exact opposite of Jimmy who is afraid to say anything out of fear of embarrassment.

In yet another fairly brilliant visual metaphor, the women of Jimmy Corrigan never show their faces, appearing either slightly out of frame, from behind, or hidden behind hair or hands. I interpret this as a visual representation of how Jimmy is unable to look females in the eye - he’s deathly afraid of them. The only two female characters that ever show their faces are Jimmy’s step-sister and his mother - both near the novel’s end.

This estrogen-phobia is evoked by panels subtly representing Jimmy’s point of view. In one sequence, Jimmy is seated on the plane next to a particularly forward and intense girl, whose face isn’t shown, but her long legs and breasts are noticeably on display. After telling Jimmy that he shouldn’t eat the airline food and that his father must be a jerk, she barks at him for staring at her breasts. Of course, we know that Jimmy may have been sneaking a peek, since that’s what we’ve been forced to notice about this lady through the art. This sequence of panels serves to have us empathize with Jimmy and we know what he’s thinking although it’s not explicitly presented from his viewpoint.

Yet at other times, images are specifically shown from Jimmy’s stance: before he meets his long-lost father, we’re shown several identically-sized panels of old men with their eyes blacked out. Each is an imaginary father in Jimmy’s mind as he tries to predict what his dad will look like. It’s a daring assumption that the reader will “get” this sequence, and the book is full of bold decisions like this.

Unfortunately, I can only scratch the surface here. I’ve read Jimmy Corrigan several times, discovering new things on each return visit. I think if you give it a chance, you’ll be surprised at the masterful way Chris Ware utilizes the comics medium. There are so many neat things going on that experiencing it is like deconstructing Citizen Kane and analyzing all the bits and pieces of visual technique that work on the subconscious. Yeah, it’s that good.

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