For a few years either side of the millennium I drifted away from comics, meaning that I missed the rise of Chris Ware as possibly the most acclaimed living cartoonist.
I've
come across brief examples of his strips in various anthologies (such
as McSweeney's 13: The Comics Issue,
which he edited),
but until this week I'd never tackled his 380-page landmark work,
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on
Earth, which in 2001 became the first
'graphic novel' to win a major literary prize – the £10,000
Guardian First
Book Award.
And
even though I was familiar with his very distinctive illustration
style, the emotional wallop of the book and its constant narrative
invention left me breathless – and almost intimidated by the scale
of its creator's talent and vision.
An
outline of Jimmy Corrigan
sounds fairly low-key: Jimmy, an awkward and isolated middle-aged
office worker, is thrown into turmoil when his absent father contacts
him out of the blue and invites him to visit for Thanksgiving.
Interwoven with this, we also have the childhood recollections of
Jimmy's grandfather, growing up in Chicago before and during the
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.
However,
what propels the book into the stratosphere is Ware's incredible
design-led cartooning style. Within a semi-rigid framework of largely static panels,
each page weaves a blend of familiar
'cinematic' present-tense narrative and a variety of flashbacks
and other stream-of-consciousness inserts, using the form to
create effects that would be impossible in any medium other than
comics (click to enlarge).
On occasion it also veers away from traditional sequential/narrative art
altogether, not just becoming non-linear and non-diegetic, but
creating diagrammatic pages that require a wholly different approach
to reading them.
That
leads to a degree of complexity that may prove a little hard to
digest for readers who aren't conversant with the visual grammar of
comics: poet Tom Paulin famously had a bit of a meltdown on the Late
Review (BBC Two) when trying to deal
with Jimmy Corrigan.
However, for all this formal innovation, the book is far from just a graphic design showcase: in its calm and measured way, it's a timeless and heart-rending tale of the difficulties of childhood and the way people can find themselves disconnected from the world around them.
However, for all this formal innovation, the book is far from just a graphic design showcase: in its calm and measured way, it's a timeless and heart-rending tale of the difficulties of childhood and the way people can find themselves disconnected from the world around them.
The work isn't without flaws. It was originally serialised in Ware's Acme
Novelty Library comic series between 1995 and 2000, and the author takes a while to realise fully his preferred style. Many of the early sections are too easily
derailed by their creator's tireless invention and their characters' flights of
fancy, including protracted dream sequences and
other diversions.
But by the time we get into the main body of the story – particularly the sequences dealing with Jimmy's grandfather's reminiscences of his own childhood – the work absolutely sings.
But by the time we get into the main body of the story – particularly the sequences dealing with Jimmy's grandfather's reminiscences of his own childhood – the work absolutely sings.
As much as we can empathise with Jimmy's abandonment and loneliness, by the end of the book I found it hard to feel much more sympathy for his passive victimhood – especially when his altogether more vibrant half-sister Amy enters the story.
However, the virtuosity of the narrative, both technical and emotional, makes it impossible to turn him away completely, and the reader is rewarded at the end with a coda that offers at least a glimmer of hope for Jimmy's future.
The
serialised nature of Jimmy Corrigan
means that it might lack the unity of form required to make it an
unequivocal masterpiece, but the way in which Ware comes close to
reinventing the medium makes it as near to a work of genius as I think
I've come across in nearly 30 years of reading comics.
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