Jimmy. The smartest Kid on Earth

Chris Ware

Brightly and beautifully designed, this "comic book" is encyclopedic, dense eye-candy illustrating an oppressively sad story of injury and loneliness. Ware's book is a semi-autobiographical account of his first contact with the father who abandoned his family. Jimmy Corrigan is a socially and emotionally inept, unhappy man who is dominated by his mother. The father/son meeting that drives the story line turns out to be another failure. Jimmy's fantasies and dreams as well as his family history are brilliantly interwoven between Jimmy's unfortunate and excruciatingly empty "real life". Ware's clean, sharp, simply detailed drawing style will boggle your mind while the story chokes you up and makes you squirm.