Jimmy Corrigan
Jimmy Corrigan is the title character from the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware. Despite the title and references to superman, this is a graphic novel in that the subject matter that traditionally delt with in novels, not in comic books. The book is about a contemporary man in his mid-thirties who meets his father for the first time in a town near Chicago over a Thanksgiving weekend. The novel has a substantial flashback to the late 1800s, and other smaller flashbacks. Jimmy is an awkward and very realistic character with an overbearing mother, a limited social life and an active generally non-verbal imagination.Ware is very aware that the novel is not a comic book, and pokes fun at superheroes with a leitmotif of superman acting especially faulted. The author uses the medium well, expressing the vast majority of the novel visually, often with whole pages absent of text.
Potential readers should be aware that the plot does not catch in the first dozen or more pages, so initial patience is needed.