This
Wednesday we met to discuss Jimmy
Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), a graphic novel by Chris Ware.
The proper discussion was preceded by two short interviews with the author in
which he expatiates over the laborious and demanding process of comic creation. Then, we devoted some time to Ware’s exceptional style as well as to his sources
of inspiration. If you are willing to plunge deeper into Ware’s literary output, we recommend that you read The
Building Stories (2012), which is even more innovative in its form.
In Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth the reader is presented
with two intertwining story lines. The first one, embedded in the 20th/21st
century, narrates the story of Jimmy Corrigan, a 36 year-old office
worker, who meets his father for the first time in his life during the Thanksgiving
weekend. The parallel story, in turn, takes place in Chicago, 1983 during the
World’s Columbian Exhibition and shows the abusive relationship between Jimmy’s
grandfather, portrayed as a lonely and misunderstood kid, and Jimmy’s overbearing
great grandfather.
During
our discussion, we made some very interesting observations. First of all, we
noticed that the notion of relationship between boys or even adult men and
their fathers permeates deeply American literature. Surprisingly, one may also find
a physical resemblance between Jimmy and the children depicted on Pieter Bruegel’s
paining Children’s Games (1560) in
which childlike faces seem to be imprisoned in old bodies.
What is more, it did not escape our notice that Ware
also plays with the stereotypical representation of heroes in the American
graphic novels. The title The Smartest Kid on Earth implies an
extremely talented child who tries to save the world in his own childlike way.
In contrast, we get to know a middle-aged, solitary and helpless man unable to
find his place in the world, to change his life or to have any meaningful
relationship with his own family (and this is why, some of the readers may feel
disappointed and deceived during the reading). Ware also captures the
downfall of Superman by his suicidal death. In this way, the author
demythicizes and deconstructs the figure of the American hero and suggests that we
live in times deprived of any types of superheroes, but abounding in the anti-heroes
(such image would be exploited further in another graphic novel already
discussed by BLASt, namely Watchmen
(1987) by Alan Moore). Jimmy can be also viewed as an everyman and his surname (Corrigan) may be read as a metaphor: our lives are
full of mistakes and wrongdoings, which have to be constantly corrected by us. Finally, we analyzed
the original structure of the pages, the dependence of mood upon colors and density of visual details, which can be tiring for some
readers. But as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details…
by Marta MakoĊ
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