Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Chris Ware. Pantheon Books released the book in 2000 following its serialization in the newspaper Newcity and Ware's Acme Novelty Library series.
Publication
The story was serialized in the alternative Chicago weekly newspaper Newcity and in Ware's comic book Acme Novelty Library in issues #5–6, 8–9, and 11–14) from 1995 to 2000.
Plot summary
Jimmy Corrigan is a meek, lonely thirty-six-year-old man who meets his father for the first time in the fictional town of Waukosha, Michigan, over Thanksgiving weekend. Jimmy is an awkward and cheerless character with an overbearing mother and a very limited social life. After an ill-timed phone call, Jimmy agrees to meet his father without telling his mother. The experience is stressful for him as he can barely communicate with anyone other than his mother, let alone his estranged father. The two do very little together and Jimmy's father, while well-intentioned, comes off to Jimmy as slightly racist and inconsiderate. A parallel story set in the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 shows Jimmy's grandfather as a lonely little boy and his difficult relationship with an abusive father, Jimmy's great grandfather.
