Jimmy Corrigan: The Most Pathetic Kid on earth.

Jimmy Corrigan was in no way an easy read. I thought it would be a fun book I could get through really fast but I was constantly aggravated by the pathetic band of characters. The characters appeared to be really flawed and oblivious to how people should act in “everyday situations.” Talking about inappropriate topics or not being of aware of certain social cues, I kept reading this graphic novel in frustration. At the end of the book though, I felt a lot more sympathetic towards all of the characters and the death they experienced. I understood where the characters were coming from and learned to look past a lot of the initial frustrations and lack of conversations.

The artwork is one aspect that really stood out in this book and added to my disdain for Jimmy Corrigan. I was already fed up with the conversations and his personality (I’ll get to the dialogue later) but his appearance made it even worse. From a small child, he had the facial features of an old man. Things didn’t improve as he got older, in fact, he looked even worse. He was portrayed as an out of shape loser who had daily conversations with his mother. Everything about him screamed pathetic: from the clothes he wore to the amount of respect he received from his co-workers. The artist obviously chose to make Jimmy look this way. It added to the impression that he (jimmy) was already giving off. His nervous facial expressions, unique outfit choice, and other less than beautiful physical qualities definitely aided my feelings of “you are so pathetic” while reading this book.

I also noticed at the beginning of the book a lot or all of the characters faces (more specifically the eyes) were obstructed by something, except for Jimmy Corrigan. All we really had a good look at was Jimmy and this could have been done for many reasons. The reason I think the artist tried to hide the eyes of the other characters is because he really wanted us to focus on Jimmy. Without the distractions of the other characters your disgust for Jimmy grows. You don’t have a chance to rest your eyes on another character who may have confidence in themselves, instead you are stuck with Jimmy. One last thing I notice about the art was the reappearance  of the red bird on the tree. The bird comes back at different points in the story but I am not sure what it could possibly mean.

The dialogue is also very influential. A lot of the dialogue is full of nervous ticks (or just ticks)such as *sniffs* or *ha ha*. These things seem small but they affected my reading experience. When Jimmy’s father did a nervous laugh or Jimmy stuttered out his words, it made me want to scream “shut up already.” It was just annoying. But I think this was a good thing. The writer created dialogue the way it would flow in the “real world” if someone was put in an awkward or uncomfortable social situation (such as meeting your father or half black sister for the first time). I think the words he chose and the multiple ways he had Jimmy react were great ways to help express the weak and cowardly nature of Jimmy. The one sided phone calls from his mother at work to tell Jimmy about how she misses him or the call to Jimmy’s apartment to tell him about a rainbow, says a lot. Jimmy simply nods and says “yeah ok. I’m busy, um I’ll talk to you later.” The dialogue is really funny but can sometimes get really old really quick. I think it is written well but perhaps my idea of what is funny and how many times you can make a certain joke before it gets old, really affected my reading of the book.

However at the end, all of the cowardly and weak moments made the death of Jimmy’s father that much sadder. It was kind of unexpected but in a book full of disappointments and awful occurrences, I guess some people could see the death of Jimmy’s father coming. It was shocking and I thought maybe Jimmy would finally step up and be a guy with courage and he did, but it didn’t go as he expected. His sister lashed out at him and he left, feeling defeated. At that moment I felt I could look past all of the annoying character’s flaws and really felt bad for all of them.

Jimmy Corrigan was a good read but it was pretty difficult. Aside from being annoyed for several points in the book (making it hard to want to finish the book), sometimes I was confused at what order to read certain panels. There was a lot going on on each page. I would get through half the page to realize I had just read the panels in the wrong order. There were arrows to guide the panels sometimes but it was difficult at times. I did figure it out eventually but I wish it was a little clearer.