Acme Novelty Library: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth back

Four generations of men grow increasingly dysfunctional as the emotional damage accumulates through acts of carelessness, callousness or petty cruelty, culminating in the traumatised mouse that is Jimmy Corrigan.

Of course it's not told like that. This is Chris Ware. You begin with Jimmy avoiding the world, then gradually work out where he came from. Noone can manipulate the artform like Ware, and for all I know Minutiae is his middle name. This ridiculously cheap version boasts a typically self-deprecating strip on the back as the book finds its way across the sea from China and then swiftly into the dustbin via inappropriate racking in prose book shops, with the help of sales staff possessing neither the knowledge nor the training to sell the sucker.

Also: another new two-page strip.

Also, also: a whole host of quotations endorsing the book, and four sentences of blinkered ignorance from Tom even-my-mother-is-probably-disappointed-in-me-by-now Paulin. One last time: Fuck you, Paulin!

Winner of the Guardian First Book Prize two thousand and something.