Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Jimmy Corrigan, an oddly shaped, bizarrely structured comic by a writer/artist that's never done mainstream work, is probably one of the best comics ever published. It can be hard to get through, I admit to two failed attempts before completing it in one day. When it was finished, my faith in humanity had been thoroughly destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt again.

The "story" concerns a 39 year old man, the title character, with seemingly no friends and no ability to socialize, who's only point of contact with humanity is his Mom, living in a nursing home, who calls him several times a day. Jimmy has a severe crush on a co-worker, but can't say more than ten words to her. He has never met his father, and when he gets a letter from dear old pop asking to meet he feels a compulsion to meet the odd old man. The unfolding story then stars, Jimmy, his father and his grandfather, all named Jimmy Corrigan as far as I can ascertain. All are lonely, the youngest is a perpetual bachelor, the older two are widowers. Loneliness pervades the book, dripping off ever panel, of which there are sometimes 30+ of on a single page. As we cut back and forth between Jimmy's grandfather growing up as a 9 year old circa the first World's Fair, all three Jimmy's daydreams, nightmares and random musings and modern day Jimmy's self hatred and total lack of assertiveness, a heartbreaking, but all too realistic portrayal of fractured modern life emerges. The effect is hard to describe, but is undeniable. Echoing a comment on the inside jacket, it seems like an intense act of either bravery or masochism on the author's part to even publish this quasi-autobiographical document.

My original interest came about due to Neil Gaiman mentioning Jimmy Corrigan on the inside cover of Blankets. Blankets being the best comic since Jimmy Corrigan, supposedly. Jimmy Corrigan is the better work however, a kind of artifact reminiscent perhaps of what would result if a human heart was cut open, and the jumble of thoughts and feelings that poured out were transformed via alchemy into a work of fiction.