Rating: 
Summary: Double up on your Paxil dosage, and read it!
Review: Chris Ware manages to transform the phrase "ha ha" into a tragic cry for help.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent work of melancholic whimsy
Review: Chris Ware has created a masterpiece with this book, and, like most masterpieces, it is hard to write a review of it.In essence, this book details incidents in the lives of three generations of Corrigans, who resemble each other sufficiently closely (especially as children) that the only way to tell them apart at times is context. Add to this imaginary occurrences and dreams that slip unannounced into the intertwining narratives and you'll probably appreciate that I'm not going to try to describe any storyline - the storyline you interpret for yourself is probably the best one for you. Mr. Ware's illustrative style is clear, clean and detailed. He also imbues each scene with emotional content, whether from variations in colouring, a slightly different depiction of a person or place to suit the particular Corrigan's own emotions at the time, or techniques like the size of individual panels and combining panels in sequence. This book is more an emotional than intellectual journey. It is one that should be experienced multiple times to allow the nuances hidden in early parts, which only become plain in light of later events, to be appreciated.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, bizarre, unique, strange, depressing, great
Review: Who knows why this book appealed to me. I do not read comic books -- I usually read very mainstream books. So I am not a part of the comic book in-crowd or subculture. This book was so incredibly unique and brilliant, but also just plain bizarre. Yet it was so honest and real. It is brutal to read. The story is brutal! But there was a time that I actually laughed out loud in one point in the book, and I RARELY laugh out loud at books. This surprised me the most about this book. Amazing. The writing is poetic. The artistry could not be any better. The character of Jimmy is so pathetic, that you just want to shake him -- yet I saw a part of him in myself, so I did recognize the similarities I share with him. Again, this is what makes this book so real to me. Jimmy has clearly missed many developmental stages in his life. So I would reason about Jimmy and try to understand him and why he is the way he is, yet he is just so pathetic and frustrating that I still wanted to jump into the pages and shake him. It is so hard to communicate the depth of this book and the journey it takes you on as you read it and look at it. Not only was it a strange and bizarre story that I wasn't used to reading, it was written in a non-chronological way, and in a comic book form. I mean it is such a unique and amazing piece of art. It will put you through so many emotions. It is a book to be experienced, rather than just read.
Rating:
Summary: brilliance and despair
Review: the chronic pain of everyday life is presented with incredible precision and the subtle touch of humor. i highly recommend it to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Chris Ware: The Smartest Cartoonist on Earth
Review: 380 pages of pure genius.I recommend this to all graphic designers,comics fans,or anyone considering Radial Keratotomy. If you can`t find inspiration from Jimmy`s tales you had better check your pulse.
Rating: 
Summary: DIFFICULT TO REVIEW
Review: First of all, the art and design are beautiful. I'm pretty sure Ware won an award for them. And it would be difficult to get this story in the individual comics as they were published in all sorts of different sizes. Having said that, this is a DEPRESSING STORY. Do not expect to be reading the lighthearted adventures of the smartest boy on earth.Ware in his apologia gives some background on where the story came from (though I would have liked to know more) and the two page epilogue hints that maybe something nice will happen to this character but otherwise, this is a sad man with a sad life. Do not read if you are presently taking anti-depressants.
Rating:
Summary: Thank you Chris Ware.
Review: I first grew up with the comics of Frank Miller, John Byrne, and Robert Crumb. As a college Art History major I was intrigued with the works of Hieronymous Bosch, Albrect Durer and William Hogarth. Chicago indeed is blessed to have such an Artist recounting the emotional history of this city in such an honest and touching way. I feel enriched by his work and his talent. This is what good Art should do. I have lived in the Midwest for all my life and in Chicago for the last 6 years. I have come to appreciate the depth of history and human experience in this provincial, contradictory, brutal and wonderful city. I feel grateful to Chris Ware and the commitment he made in producing such a fine work. Here in Chicago, I live in the same Wicker Park neighborhood, probably not too far from Chris. Sometimes, when I come home from work on the Subway, and slowly walk home, I can feel Jimmy's Corrigan sorrow.
Rating:
Summary: Genius
Review: Chris Ware, like a number of artistic geniuses, seems to be an obsessive personality, perhaps to his torment, but to our benefit. His laser-like drive to put his vision on paper has resulted in this collection, which is a masterwork. By turns comical and bleak, Jimmy's story deserves to stand beside Maus and the collected works of Robt Crumb as an instance of graphic and narrative brilliance. I doubt Ware will hit the road to flack for the book-- interviews show him to be too shy (and have too much integrity) to flog the thing as it should be flogged. Buy it, pore over it, tell others-- this is a major and unequalled talent.
Rating:
Summary: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
Review: - by which I mean, even if you have all the individual issues, it's probably still worth shelling out full hardcover price for this fat little work of genius. The double-sided poster which serves as the book's dust jacket is an amazing, intricately wound diagram of the Corrigan family tree in all its seedy glory. The endpapers are new material - the back endpaper has a moving (although stiffly written) little essay by Ware about how the book started out as a way he could vicariously work out his feelings about having been abandoned by his dad, and he actually met his real-life dad for the first time while writing it. Of course this isn't "the first true graphic novel," as a previous reviewer dubbed it, but it's remarkable for its relatively complex symbolism and the compelling way it intertwines Jimmy's fantasy life with reality. The book's sole flaw is Jimmy's one-dimensional nature - he's always pathetic and never, ever comes out on top, and that might be rooted in the author's own insecurity. But who cares? Buy it anyway, it's amazing.
Rating:
Summary: Judge it by its cover
Review: I spent about half an hour last night just looking at the dust cover for this book. On first glance, it just looks like an attractive arrangement of shapes, lines and tiny ilustrations. But with a little patience (and perhaps a magnifying glass) the careful reader will begin to decode an elaborate pictographic language which leads one on a visual journey around the world, back through 5 generations of the protagonist's geneology, and into the depths of the Corrigan psychology. If that's not enough, there are also instructions for how to fold the jacket into a 3-dimensional model of little Jimmy Corrigan. The amount of thought and artistry devoted to the cover of this book alone is more than what can be found in a years' worth of NY Times bestsellers. What's inside the book is just as rewarding.
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