4 Page Essay on the comic book Jimmy Corrigan

Jimmy Corrigan Essay (Final Exam) MLA Format: 4 pages

Read Chris Ware’s interview with Matthias Wivel and write an essay about one of the essay questions below. Your response should take the form of an academic argument that evaluates “Jimmy Corrigan.”

Link to interview: http://classic.tcj.com/alternative/interview-with-chris-ware-part-1-of-2/

**Note: MW= Michael Wivel; CW=Chris Ware**

Question 1

MW: One of the noticeable metaphors you use is the superhero, and [directed at audience] as you can see here Jimmy is wearing a Superman shirt, being not very super, and …

CW: I think the Superman mythos … I mean, at the same time this book came out, Michael Chabon’s book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay came out, and he thoroughly examined the idea of what a superhero is so much better than any of us could have ever done. It’s only one facet of it, but in my case I’d always seen the Superman-figure as a father figure, a father stand-in, and certainly when I was growing up that’s what all superheroes were.

MW: Yeah, he becomes a stand-in for the father, and you also undermine the super-human status, of this type of character. This [showing page with superhero falling to his death] always gets reproduced, of course.

When evaluating a work of art, one may assess value by examining an important message that the art work expresses or communicates. Does “Jimmy Corrigan” express something important about the relationship between fathers and sons that’s relevant to our society? If so, what?

Question 2

MW: You show how different immigrants populate America and how their lives are connected specifically through the story of this family. You seem to be making an argument that every family is emblematic of the American experience and of American history. You even seem to suggest that American society, modern society, capitalism, is somehow the reason why people like the Corrigans have never met each other and are alienated in the way they are — that capitalism or modern society has that effect.

Alienation and loneliness is a devastating and unrelenting theme in “Jimmy Corrigan.” Do you think it’s possible to create art with deep meaning in a society that, as the interviewer suggests, results in people who are living disconnected lives? How does “Jimmy Corrigan” perhaps respond to that precise question?

Question 3

CW: I grew up as an only child, emotionally impaired; I hated myself, everybody hated me, etc. etc. I had never met my real father and it kind of lodged in my brain like this weakness, this emotional weakness; I thought, “Someday I’ll meet him,” you know. We Americans are really weak people. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but we like to whine about ourselves and feel like we’re put upon, even though we are destroying half the world just so that we can be comfortable. But anyway, I’ve grown up in America, so I guess I got that mental trauma. I did this story as sort of an experiment: “What would it be like if I had my real father?” And of course in the middle of working on the story, he actually called me up. So one day I was suddenly talking to my real father and I got to meet him once, briefly, before he died right before I finished the book. So that was the initial emphasis for the story. And in working on it I thought about how families and lives interact in ways that we are both aware of and unaware of, so…

In some ways, there are parallels between Chris Ware and the character he’s created, Jimmy. Jimmy is emotionally impaired and depressing; a Debbie Downer kind of character. He’s not easily likeable or likeable at all, though, perhaps, it is easy to pity or empathize with Jimmy. Jimmy’s story is a heavy downer, too.

Is “Jimmy Corrigan” too depressing to be considering “good”?

Question 4

MW: You’ve sometimes used the analogy of music instead of film.

CW: Well, fundamentally, a comic is that. When you read it, it creates this sense of rhythm or music or melody, even if there’re no words in it. If you listen to the sounds in your head when you read a comic that doesn’t have words in it, you’ll actually hear these kinds of imaginary sounds in your mind. It’s sort of like when you try to think about what the voice in your mind really sounds like? Whose voice is that? Is it really your voice? So I’m trying to get at that a little bit. Which I think is something that all writers try to get to, but I’m using pictures as well.

When we briefly discussed poetry, we talked about the musicality of language. If literature is the study of the human experience, expressed and understood through language: can we consider a graphic novel to be literature? A comic might be music or musical—but is it literature?

Question 5

CW: Yeah, I mean, fundamentally, it’s (comics) an art of composition, the same way that, if you’re a musician or a composer especially, you’re trying to compose something that is coherent and holds together, the same way that our memories are coherent and hold together, but our experiences are not. We take in our experiences and then put them together in a way that makes sense to our personalities and explains our lives and our friends. But the experience itself can be very incoherent and sort of uncomfortable. I guess that sounds pretentious. I should just be telling dumb jokes.

Is Jimmy Corrgan art? And if so, what is it trying to do or say?