Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth -- Chris Ware, Paperback

This first book from Chicago author Chris Ware is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally-impaired everyman (Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth), who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time. An improvisatory romance which gingerly deports itself between 1890's Chicago and 1980's small town Michigan, the reader is helped along by thousands of colored illustrations and diagrams, which, when read rapidly in sequence, provide a convincing illusion of life and movement. The bulk of the work is supported by fold-out instructions, an index, paper cut-outs, and a brief apology, all of which concrete to form a rich portrait of a man stunted by a paralyzing fear of being disliked.

Author: Chris Ware
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 04/29/2003
Pages: 380
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 2.05lbs
Size: 6.30h x 8.00w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780375714542

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 05/04/2003 pg. 28
Newsweek 07/13/2009 pg. 66

About the Author
CHRIS WARE is widely acknowledged as the most gifted and beloved cartoonist of his generation by both his mother and seven-year-old daughter. Building Stories, released in 2012, received 4 Eisner Awards, including Best Graphic Album, in 2013. His Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth won the Guardian First Book Award and was listed as one of the 100 Best Books of the Decade by The Times (London) in 2009. An irregular contributor to This American Life and The New Yorker (where some of the pages of this book first appeared) his original drawings have been exhibited in the Whitney Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and in piles behind his work table in Oak Park, Illinois.