Jimmy Corrigan must have taken Chris Ware an astounding amount of time and energy to create. Jimmy's story takes place in an intricately imagined and Jimmy Corrigan must have taken Chris Ware an astounding amount of time and energy to create. Jimmy's story takes place in an intricately imagined and illustrated Chicago, following two parallel narrative lines: one concerns Jimmy Corrigan, a 30+-year-old in present day Chicago and, the second occurs in the Chicago of 1893, when that city hosted a storied world's fair, and concerns a Jimmy-like child (8 or 9 years old, I'll call him Jim to differentiate) and Jim's father. These two narrative lines weave around each other interspersed with Jimmy's (and Jim's) dream ballets and bizarre nonsequiturs addressed directly to the reader.
This is, ultimately, a story about sons and fathers; about Jimmy trying to reconnect as an adult with a long absent, imperfect but well-intentioned father and about Jim, raised by an unloving malicious man who ultimately abandons him. I wanted to like this book more than I do because of the considerable amount of respect and admiration I have for the complexity of Ware's visual imagination. However, I could not make myself like Jimmy or find his woes compelling; sympathetic, sure, but not compelling. Jim's story gripped me more, primarily because he shows backbone that Jimmy completely lacks.
It is difficult to root for someone who will not help themselves and Jimmy seems almost completely paralyzed by his own timidity. His mother harangues and smothers him. His father reappears in his life after decades of silence, attempting lamely to manufacture a warmth between him and his son that he destroyed by vanishing in the first place. He is lonely and unable to connect with anyone. Jimmy has plenty to be dissatisfied with. His emotional turmoil is reasonable and understandable. Even as an adult, childhood issues can plague a person and limit them. But Jimmy's struggle to move out from underneath these issues never manifests with any force. He has no pluck and no spirit and possesses the sexual maturity of a 15-year-old. I feel unkind summing him up in this way, suspecting these characteristics should elicit more sympathy from me, not less. I characterize myself as having much empathy for the gentle and sensitive, for feeling protective of them rather than critical of them. For this reason, my reaction to Jimmy's character surprises and confuses me, but I found him annoying and uninteresting. But there it is. I didn't like Jimmy and didn't think he tried hard enough, which makes the emotional pain he suffers appear to some extent like his own fault.
Jim, on the other hand, seems faced with a nastier situation. He is a small boy. His mother is dead. His father alternates between distant and belligerent. But these circumstances do not crush Jim or intimidate him to the point of paralysis. They do, however, create a more jaded human being. When we learn how Jim and Jimmy's stories intersect (namely, who exactly is Jim to Jimmy), we do see how Jim's unhappy upbringing created an unhappy if resilient man who would pass down questionable fathering to his own son.
Perhaps it is Jim's chutzpah that gives me so much more patience for him than I feel for Jimmy. Perhaps I simply like the aesthetics of Jim's story better; the fact that his world is late nineteenth-century Chicago and his father, a glazier, works on the White City of the world's fair. Perhaps Ware, for all the pseudo-autobiographical hints in Jimmy Corrigan, actually found Jimmy mildly annoying as well. Perhaps *because* of the pseudo-autobiographical aspects of the book, Ware found Jimmy annoying; an unpleasant, helpless aspect of himself amplified in fiction. ...more
I read a couple of critical, professional reviews of Habibi before deciding what - if anything - I wanted to say about it. It's troublesome. Craig ThoI read a couple of critical, professional reviews of Habibi before deciding what - if anything - I wanted to say about it. It's troublesome. Craig Thompson's treatment of race and the Middle East is, I think well intentioned, but not thoughtful enough by half. His Arab men are all seedy in some respect, his black men are eunuchs in a harem (because Thompson imagines his mythical, timeless Middle East with modern oil pipelines AND an 18th-centuryish sultan), his female protagonist is naked half the time, being raped and abused in sundry ways, and even though Thompson's narrative is telling you how awful are the things that befall this woman, his visual style is practically reveling in them.
For better take downs of these problems, see and .
As an aside, I do take issue with Creswell's description of Thompson's visual style as exhibiting "a conventional sort of virtuosity". As though using one's talents to explore traditional motifs is a lesser form of art. This is a popular sentiment among devotees of the obnoxiously hegemonic Modernism, but I think Creswell is simply looking for one more dig and probably can't be bothered to examine each of Thompson's highly detailed pages. Thompson's illustrations are busy, but to dismiss them because they echo traditional (conventional?) Arabic art and manuscript illustration is to dismiss the one aspect of the book that is truly superlative, subtle and lovely. ...more
I came to my reading of Watchmen with pretty high expectations. I steered clear of the film until I could take in the book, having heard what an origiI came to my reading of Watchmen with pretty high expectations. I steered clear of the film until I could take in the book, having heard what an original, complex and downright groovy graphic novel this is. I guess I would call Watchmen original and complex, and for that matter groovy. And yet, I didn't love it the way I wanted to love it. It did not seem immediate or very relevant. I disliked the female characters and the book's handling of gender. Every once in a while the over-earnest writing (especially for Rorschach) elicited an eye roll from me. And then it struck me Watchmen was published over 20 years ago.
The main plot line of Watchmen unfolds against and becomes intertwined with the eruption of a nuclear scare between the United States and the Soviet Union. The U. S. President at the time of this occurrence (1985ish) is still Richard Nixon. We learn that he ushered through a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for more than two terms. Even though nuclear armament, and the threat of its use in an alternate historical 80s, comprise the very specific atmosphere within which the larger questions of heroism and altruism develop, these questions still resonate today. We no longer fear all out nuclear war (even though we probably should), now we fear terrorism. In any event, there still exists a phantom-like hostility out there, which leads us to gauge the balance of our safety with our freedom and to imagine heroes capable of offering us the former while protecting the latter. Perhaps because Moore envisions superheros as real personalities, because he questions vigilante justice and what would draw an individual to pursuing it, do we today portray superheros the way we do - as flawed and somewhat frightening humans who exercise power many of us wish for, many of us distrust, but few of us would truly want. Just as with contemporary superhero films, Watchmen maintains interest in both the effect of vigilante justice on the psyche of the superhero/vigilante and its effects on the public those superheroes/vigilantes purport to protect.
In addition to this theme of moral ambiguity, Watchmen achieves complexity with its interesting structure. The main narrative (and illustration, in this case) alternates both with different formats, news clippings, book excerpts, etc., and with a parallel narrative or story-within-a-story of "The Black Freighter". (Aside: The Brecht fan in me really appreciated this homage.)
Altogether a work of ambitious scope and intellectually interesting questions, I ultimately appreciated Watchmen mentally much more than I did emotionally or aesthetically. I think that for its emotional and aesthetic impact to reach me, I would have had to read it in the 80s, when it all seemed fresh. But that's my failing, I think, and not really the book's.
Like the Maus graphic novels of Art Spiegelman (and probably like many graphic novels of which I a simply ignorant) Fun Home is not fantastic *for a gLike the Maus graphic novels of Art Spiegelman (and probably like many graphic novels of which I a simply ignorant) Fun Home is not fantastic *for a graphic novel*. It's as fantastic as any novel of any kind out there. Alison Bechdel simply uses image as well as word to communicate what is, essentially, a memoir about her relationship with her father. Fun Home is a highly literary work. In fact, Bechdel seems most able to describe and relate to (at least in the retelling) her family life and experiences through reference to a variety of literary works, authors and characters. Instead of seeming trite, this constant reference to the world of literature underscores the nature of Bechdel's upbringing and her relationship with both of her parents. They were both well-read and rather emotionally removed in the way smart, creative introverts can be - that is, not removed because they lacked the emotions which draw people to each other, but removed because the weight of their interior lives and those emotions demanded greater self-attention.
Also like Spiegelman, Bechdel does not flinch at writing about and (this seems even more daring to me) drawing highly sensitive and personal moments, ambivalent and human moments; Spiegelman, for example, recounts his impatience and embarrassment at his father's hoarding, even though that behavior stemmed from being a Holocaust survivor. This is an emotion Spiegelman couldn't have been proud of, but he was still, on one level, simply a man's son and children will be embarrassed and frustrated by their parents, regardless of their parents' past, and so Spiegelman opts for honesty over artifice. Bechdel gives the same treatment both to her self-discovery that precipitated coming out to her parents and to her father's habitual affairs with young men. The former, Bechdel's self-discovery, includes frank portrayal of the developing relationship between a young woman and her body, which are not embarrassing, but are extremely personal, nevertheless. She relates the latter, her father's struggle with his sexuality, in an equally candid manner. And yet, throughout, Bechdel maintains dry humor and an extreme willingness to evaluate herself and her actions as critically as she does her father or any figure in the book. This quality keeps all of her frankness about personal things from seeming purposefully tell-all or self-indulgent.
Finally, I really enjoyed Bechdel's drawing style. It put me in mind of Kate Beaton (shameless plug for something I think is extra cool: ), whose comics have clean and detailed lines, but are not too polished like much comic book art. Both artists avoid using visual hyperbole when drawing the human form (think Disney - in Fun Home there are no baseball-sized eyes or feet so small they look bound), and yet Bechdel and Beaton's illustrations both maintain a playfulness and buoyancy that keep them in the world of comics and cartoons and show how much the artists enjoy drawing.
I can't say enough good things about Fun Home. It is a fine, fine book....more
Irreverent, demented, wicked, hilarious. I'm guessing Jhonen Vasquez and his work get described with these adjectives often. I'm offering them along wIrreverent, demented, wicked, hilarious. I'm guessing Jhonen Vasquez and his work get described with these adjectives often. I'm offering them along with no small amount of admiration. The dark things that already nestle in my own mind had very good company while reading this. In fact, I think they multiplied....more
Loading...
