Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth

Jimmy Corrigan, a withdrawn middle-aged man, receives a chance to meet his father. The encounter sits beside episodes from an earlier generation, so that family history gradually explains the emotional distance of the present.

Chris Ware first developed the work in serial form in the 1990s before its 2000 book collection.

The book’s formal detail is inseparable from its subject. Ware makes awkward pauses and missed connections feel as consequential as dramatic events.

The family story also shows how isolation can be passed on without anyone intending to pass it.

This is literary family fiction about abandonment, inherited habits and the stories people make from incomplete knowledge. Its shifts in time ask the reader to assemble relations across generations.

Humor appears, but often sharpens rather than softens the discomfort.

Ware combines small panels, diagrams, restrained color and meticulous page design. His visual order contrasts with the characters’ difficulty in making sense of one another.

The page can slow a second down or bridge decades with a visual rhyme.