"So-Called 'Austin Mayor': The Smartest Kid on Earth"?

If you're like me, you're half-queer for Chicagoan Chris Ware's "graphically inventive, wonderfully realized novel-in-comics."

Sadly, that also means you will probably out-bid me in the upcoming e-Bay auction to have your name and "approximate drawn likeness" in a Ware comic strip.

And I suppose that's just as well.

In its review of "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth," Booklist said, "Ware's hero is a doughy, middle-aged loser who retreats into fantasies that he is 'The Smartest Kid on Earth,'" and it would be a shame if Mr. Ware had to return to such a character just because a blogger won the auction.