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I thought of this comic as what would happen if James Joyce had come forward in time and utilized the comics medium. As it was, at least two of the reviews in the book itself compared it to Ulysses, a tome that I have not read as of yet (and may never do for the rest of my days, ).

This was the hardest, most difficult comic I've ever read. So what the hell can I tell you about it? Well, apart from the fact that I read it from one of Neil's reviews, and the fact that I had to read another similar from Chris Ware, there is a great use of "meta-narrative" -- or meta-writing. Ware's story comments on itself, and even parodies itself, and its form from time to time. And the layout is an example of what, I suppose you could venture to call, "advanced comics grammar." Panels are all over the place, and sometimes they have a very clear order, or an arrow pointing to it a successive panel. I think the order matches an overall tone or mood to the entire piece of displacement and uncertainty -- you are hardly ever grounded and when you are, for a few succession of panels they are flat with very little overt action.

Rather, it's the little actions, the movements of birds, or awkward pauses in conversation, that stand out the most. There are other techniques -- where in a fit of self-alienation the protagonist views himself as a robot, as well as the use of dream symbolism intermixed with, or paralleled with actual images from the past (such as Jimmy Corrigan's dreams of a small horse and his grandfather's remembrances of his time growing up and the awkward metal horse he made), and even faded whitened "ghosts of panels" that mirror their more substantial predecessors -- symbolizing a character's memory and flashback in a new situation.

Just to warn you, don't read on beyond this point unless you want to get spoilers, although you could probably find them on reviews on Amazon and whatnot. Just so you are warned.

As for Jimmy Corrigan himself -- well, the more recent of the two men that the narrative focusses on first (much like in Flaubert's Madame Bovary there were three Mme. Bovarys -- Charles' mother, first wife and then Emma), I have to say that I really felt sorry for him. Everyone just treated him like crap -- from his mother's psychic vampirism, to his estranged father's lack of consideration, and really everyone else around him. Hell, the only person he actually seems to open up to is a foster sister he never knew and even she pushes him away when he tries to show closeness at a critical time.

Jimmy Corrigan is a shy, awkward, introverted man who barely had a father, had to deal with his mother's emotional instability, and is really the loneliest guy I can ever imagine. He does get some some shows of emotion. Even his 96 year old grandfather, a man he never knew until recently, who never had a mother himself and was abandoned by his father at the World's Fair told him that he was, "A good kid."

And he really, in my opinion, was a good person -- but someone too passive and always trying to behave to really enjoy his life. He just gets used or ignored, and as the story progresses you realize this trend has been going on for a long time, even beyond his own generation in this fractured family.

There is a review in the book that says that Ware manages to reach back into the past and remove all the nostalgia from it, and I have to say that he succeeded in that, although the World's Fair was an interesting thing to think about. I also like the very clear way that atmosphere was conveyed.

This book should have a guide to it, especially an academic guide in all the different ways it can be read in itself, paralleled and held against other materials. It ultimately deals with the human condition -- that we are born and die alone, in these bodies, and sometimes we can ignore that existential truth with something else. That is enough to depress me right there, and some of his narrative self-derisive digressions and wordplay where it would have once amused only makes me feel a little contemptuous. That and in many places the font was WAY too small. Creativity gone horribly wrong when the audience can barely even see it with a magnifying glass.

That said, it was a beautiful looking book and I still don't know how the hell these "reviews" keep getting more and more complicated. :-p A good study of a product of comics, but probably not something I want to focus on for too long myself ... even though a part of me wants to look through the complex family tree diagrams over again for stuff I have missed and an ending that I may or may not understand.

It was, I will admit, kind of rewarding to get through as much as I did here.

I just hope that poor bastard gets a break at some point.

Extra Note: There is an article at the beginning of this book, a small wee-little article that discusses the use and development of the comics medium. It's actually worth reading if, again, you can get past the small print. You may be able to find a larger version of it, or order it from the company. If not, then the author was lying. Again. Good luck if you seek it.