The Translated Superhero in Jimmy Corrigan and Logicomix

In Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth and Apostolos Doxiadis’ Logicomix, the archetypal role of the superhero to bring resolution and harmony into his world is translated into the strivings of supposedly ordinary characters. The graphic novel format of each work is extended as a piecemeal distribution of the classic comic book superhero’s characteristics: the traumatic past, the superpower, and the quest. By dissecting the superhero into its most essential parts, both Ware and Doxiadis offer an early Modernist, fragmented, approach to the classic comic book superhero, such as DC’s Superman or Marvel’sSpiderman. By this approach, each author extends their work as an alternative version of the superhero presented in an alternative version of the comic book, offering each character’s quest for resolution as a deeper and more nuanced format for the genre as a whole.

Both Chris Ware and Apostolos Doxiadis begin their graphic novels by establishing a definition for the archetypal superhero that they eventually subvert with a modern supplanting. Logicomix presents this archetype most directly by explaining that that the book is “just what 99.9% of comic books are, an honest to god real yarn. Simply, a story!” and “[Logicomix] is rather unusual in this sense: it’s heroes are all logicians!” (Doxiadis 12-13). Here, Doxiadis initiates the narrative by explicitly assuring the reader that the protagonists of Logicomix are superheroes, and therefore, it can be logically inferred that the “Foundational Quest Draft”:

Comic of Russell reading foundational quest draft looking contemplative

Displayed in the first panels of the book analogize the classic superhero quest of Russell Bertrand; Bertrand’s superhero quest is to find a foundational theory of mathematics, rather than fight crime or avenge his murdered parents.

In Chris Ware’s graphic novel, protagonist Jimmy Corrigan is bluntly introduced to the superhero archetype as a disappointingly lecherous version of Superman. The visual component of Jimmy Corrigan seems to take precedent from this introduction as the red/blue/yellow coloration of the ‘fake Superman’ repeats itself as an indicator of disappointment, anxiety, and general conflict throughout the Corrigan’s life.

Young Jimmy meets superman

By this correlation, it appears that Corrigan’s superhero quest is to find harmony in social conflict. The separation of ‘fake Superman’s’ costume into its constituent parts and metonymies exemplifies the feebleness of Corrigan’s navigation through his unharmonious existence. The archetypal superhero as depicted by ‘fake Superman’ represents the fragmentation of the ideal comic book protagonist in Jimmy Corrigan and establishes his role as the impotent anti-hero questing after social harmony.

With both superhero archetypes established and translated into the roles of Bertrand Russell and Jimmy Corrigan, each novel then sets out to describe their protagonist’s superpower. In Logicomix, Russell’s intense focus on his work is his most obvious superpower. In classic comic book fashion, it both elevates his position and alienates him:

Logicomix section discussion near a tree

Here, the textual significance of Logicomix takes precedent over the visual as the narrator emphasizes the “tortured” condition of the novel’s protagonist. The condition of Russell as a ‘Super Logic Man’ fighting against the evil forces of faulty mathematical foundations represents a very conventional role for Russell. His superpower (as well as his quest) is as clearly and logically described as the power itself.

The “tortured” condition that Doxiadis describes is also apparent in Ware’s novel. If a superpower exists in Jimmy Corrigan, it is, antithetically, his torturous lack of confidence. When Jimmy is placed against a sequence of social discomfort, two colors of the blue/yellow/red trio usually appears to affirm this anti-power. This is highlighted in the sequence where Corrigan is eating a hamburger with his father in the Burger Kuntry Diner:

Jimmy and his dad at a diner

Here, the anxiety that Corrigan faces in having to exchange his father’s burger is accompanied by the red of the ketchup and the yellow of the soda cup. The archetype of ‘fake Superman,’ as metonymized by the color pallette of his costume, is ingrained in Corrigan from his childhood and evidently fragmented by the lack of the complementary blue. This indicates the incompleteness, or incompetence, of Corrigan as an ideal superhero.

Any ideal superhero of course has a dark and traumatic origin story that directly influences his later life. In the origin story of DC’s Batman, Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered by a mugger, so Batman dedicates his life to beating up poor people. Marvel’s Spiderman follows a similar direction where Spiderman’s Uncle was murdered by a thief, influencing Spiderman to dedicate his life to beating up poor people. This common pattern is repeated in Logicomix, but in lieu of a thief or mugger, Bertrand Russell’s parents die from disease. The conflict that drives Russell’s direction as a superhero then comes indirectly from multiple sources: the veiling of his parents deaths by his grandparents, his grandmother’s strict, rule based upbringing, and his private tutoring.

Logicomix section

The speech bubble that creeps into the scene of Russell’s darkest, suicidal point, stating that “blessed are they which do hunger and thirst,” emphasizes the cruciality of these factors in forming Russell into a superhero:

Russell looks over the edge of a building, suicide

Here, these traumas are depicted as the most foundational to Russell’s character and reiterate his qualities as a superhero.

The necessity of a traumatic childhood is intensified (to say the least) in Ware’s graphic novel, where Jimmy Corrigan’s past, as well as the pasts of his father and grandfather, are peppered in throughout the novel. The cruelty of these events depict a general degradation in Corrigan’s confidence and haunt him as a continuous, driving force for his fate as a socially incompetent hero. This is highlighted in the sequence where Corrigan is sleeping on his father’s couch:

Jimmy wakes as a child and transforms into an adult

Here the flowers on the pillow disappear as Corrigan is depicted as regressing into a physical state of infancy. The loss of detail in the pillow and the translucency of the couch as Corrigan imagines himself as a baby correlates to the first pages of the novel where Corrigan awakes in his mother’s house, ready to meet Superman after his liaison with his mother:

Jimmy as a child in his house

Corrigan relates the reality of his father with the reality of Superman, exemplifying the haunting character of Corrigan’s past as it follows him throughout his adult life. The repetition of this trauma forms the foundation for Corrigan’s superhero-esque origin story.

With the necessary foundations of the superhero established in both characters, the difficulties of their respective quests remain to define them completely. In Logicomix, the sequentiality of the narrative follows Russell’s quest to discover a foundation for logical thought. The metafictionality of the narrative style highlights the social conflicts that arise in Russell’s life. This is shown very prominently when Russell’s wife confronts him about his affair:

Russell yells at wife and leaves his hosue

Here, Russell tears off his shirt, not unlike Superman, in an attempt to shed the complications of his social life in favor of his grand “Principia” quest. The delineated borders of the ‘past’ panels can be compared to the edgeless panels of the ‘present’ as indicative of the eventual infirmity of Russell’s failed quest and the loss of certainty that followed.

This loss of certainty is extended as a total absence in Jimmy Corrigan, and his most prominent in the final sequence of the novel:

Jimmy meets a nice lady at his office

Here, Corrigan’s quest for social harmony and resolution with his father is left as a failure, and the only salvageable factor remaining is his own love life. The coloration of the woman’s clothing correlates to the Superman trio – red/blue/yellow. These colors are rarely shown simultaneously, and their appearance on the woman indicate a potential harmony. The muted condition of the colors and the chewed up yellow pencil that the woman writes with indicate a more realistic variation of the Superman ideal. The following page that depicts Superman flying off with a young Corrigan seems to indicate the expiration of the Superman ideal and affirm a hopefulness in the finale of Corrigan’s quest.

In Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan and Apostolos Doxiadis’ Logicomix, the superhero archetype, as a holistic construct of power, conflict, and questing, is exploded and translated. The effects of this translation on each novel’s protagonist is the simultaneous elevation and degradation of their narratives. The superhero of Logicomix is a coldly focused man that devotes his youth to an unattainable foundation for mathematics, while Jimmy Corrigan describes the anti-superpower of social anxiety as a driving force for familial resolution. Each work contains the constituent factors of the superhero and delineates them as subtle characteristics of ordinary life. The failures of each character’s quest is surmised to be the missing link that separates the fictional Superman from the fictional man, but ultimately, the depth and nuance of both works are elevated beyond the formative boundaries of their genre.

Works Cited

Doxiadis, Apostolos/ Papadimitriou Christos. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth. N.p.: St Martins Pr, 2009. Print.

Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. New York: Pantheon, 2002. Print.