The comic: Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth
By: Chris Ware
Type: Graphic Novel
Content Rating: PG-13, for occasional violence, some language, some sparse nudity and (humorous) sexual content.
Plot: Imagine Charlie Brown as a 30-year-old man, and you'd get something pretty close to Jimmy Corrigan's character. He's a quiet, meek, boring man; paralyzingly shy and doormattish. He has no friends and his life is punctuated only by continuous phone calls from his clingy and worry-filled mother. The cycle is finally broken when Jimmy recieves a message from his father, whom he's never met, asking if he'd like to visit for Thanksgiving weekend. In a surprising move, Jimmy agrees, and steps out of his bubble to meet this “dad” person. A simple visit blooms into a poignant visual narrative on the negative effects of fathers both overly permissive and overly commanding as it explores four generations’ worth of Jimmy Corrigans.
Personal thoughts: Since I first discovered it, this has been a graphic novel very high on my list; a big personal favourite of mine. I don’t know if I can necessarily recommend it, however, as my like if it in my experience seems to be a rare thing. In fact, most of the people I know that have read it absolutely hated it, citing it as “moving too slowly,” “not having enough happen,” and Jimmy as being “a boring character.” I don’t know, I think Jimmy’s external boringness is offset by his vivid and highly symbolic imagination. This is a very dense book. You can’t read it once, long as it is, and have “gotten” everything. With each subsequent reading you pick up things you hadn’t noticed before. It’s also very picture-heavy, the words are limited to small scraps of narration and snatches of dialogue, most of which is not Jimmy’s. Jimmy himself is actually a very quiet character, relegated mostly to Ums, Uhs, and little bits of nervous laughter. There are symbols everywhere, something that from what I’ve noticed is true of a lot of Chris Ware’s work…he constructs his comics sort of like flowcharts sometimes. Some of these symbols will be fairly evident on the first time through (for example, red panel backgrounds when Jimmy is panicking or a leg injury he has that shows up very suddenly representing his being socially crippled), others are more obscure (birds representing the passage of time, peaches representing notions of family ties). Chances are also, fair warning, that if something really bizarre begins to happen, it's Jimmy's imagination at work. I also really like how Chris Ware’s art style works here—he has a very slick, smooth-lined “factory-produced” feel with bright colours being a rarity, most of the hues are subdued or washed-out, which perfectly captures Jimmy’s bleak world. It looks like something on a faded product package. In a good way, that is. Give it a shot if you have the time to commit to reading it. Whether you end up loving it or hating it (it seems to be very polarizing), it's still something doubtless different from a lot of things you'll read, even other comics. Since I got it, I've re-read it once each year.
Holden Out.
No comments:
Post a Comment