Acme Novelty Library #1

Acme Novelty Library by Chris Ware is a strange comic about a man(boy?) named Jimmy Corrigan with a strained relationship with his mother. The way it's presented and utilize color throughout the issues changes. An example would be how the first strip was made to look like newspaper comic strip with similar colors and panel layout, but in later strips the panels become more dynamic and varied. My favorite page would be were Jimmy calling his mother and the panels deconstructs parts of the characters like the mother's hand or the telephone poll in smaller panels that would reconnect to the main panel creating a circle.
Jimmy's relationship with his mother is strange and mostly hostile. I could never tell if he loves her, if he hates her, or if he has a strange Oedipus complex. I thought the the comic was going to go on the route of "boy genius", but was surprised that it wasn't like that at all. Then I thought it was going to be more like "washed up kid actor", but that wasn't the case either. I still don't know what exactly is going on with Jimmy Corrigan. Sometime it bounces between young Jimmy and old, and genius Jimmy and normal kid Jimmy. All that is known is that Jimmy's father left him and his mother. It is worth noting that in the first strip you can clearly see the mother's face but in latter panels her face is obscured.