The Saddest Kid on Earth

“Jimmy Corrigan” is a sad, sad comic book about the kind of kid who you’d expect would read comics rather than star in them. He’s a 36 year old man who wears old-fashioned knickers, works in an anonymous cubicle equipped with a phone that rings only when his mother calls, and wishes he were a superhero -- or at least gallant enough or charming enough to secure a date with Peggy from the mailroom. I wouldn’t recommend this book for its plot or characters, but the precisely drawn, evocative illustrations sucked me in.

I’ve never before read a book-length comic or a graphical novel, and I was never a voracious reader of comic books. Even to me, though, it’s clear that Chris Ware is both paying tribute to and poking fun at comic book culture. The meticulously crafted frames are as clean and crisp as a hospital bed, and his attention to detail suggests this comic-artist has a profound respect for his medium. The title plates and stylized, block-lettered conjunctions –- ostensibly transitions in the story –- are more likely souvenirs from a childhood spent pouring over classic comics. But the “superheroes” of Ware’s imagination aren’t the type you’d find beating up Lex Luther. Of the several masked men who make cameo appearances, one commits suicide by leaping off the roof of a tall building near Jimmy’s office, and another is a costumed pitch-man at an auto show who seduces Jimmy’s mother and skulks off next morning without saying goodbye.

In the book’s forward, printed on the inside flap of the book binding, Ware’s irony is even more direct: His tongue-in-cheek “General Instructions” provide a Dave Eggers-like primer for establishing “a successful linguistic relationship with the pictographic theater” on the pages that follow. These “Instructions” include a quiz of your abilities to interpret the meaning of comic images. The first cell shows a stick-figure mouse holding aloft a stick-figure hammer; the second shows the hammer slammed down on a cat’s head. If you think the strip depicts two different mice, each with a hammer, or, worse yet, you don’t identify the critter as a mouse at all, Ware discourages further reading. The message, I gather, is that comic books are easy –- unless you’re a complete idiot.

But in reading further, I was amazed at the subtlety of emotion and the complexity of meaning Ware conveys through pictures. When Jimmy’s father delivers an unkind comment, Ware merely re-uses an image of Jimmy’s face, without captions of any kind, and through this silent pause the reader feels Jimmy’s heartbreak. In another sequence, Ware draws a conversation between a laborer and his boss in which the dialogue bubbles contain cartoon images instead of words. Nonetheless, the content of their discussion (dirty jokes included) is perfectly clear.

I’d liken my experience with “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth” to an afternoon at a museum. While it wasn’t easy “reading” the meaning of the pictures, the book reminded me to look more closely at details, facial expressions, gestures, and perspective, and for that alone it’s worth it.