Visualizing affect in <i>Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth</i>

Abstract This essay reveals that Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth is neither devoid of emotion nor simply filled with categorized emotions like loneliness, but permeated with elusive and de-subjectivized Deleuzian affect manifested through the adoption of Pop Art, the verbal interruption of the peritext and the conjunction, and the framing device that interacts with the character’s body. These techniques collectively embody a surfeit of affect, the zeitgeist of the postmodern era, and reflect Ware’s disorienting experience and his discontent living in a society dominated by consumer capitalism.