Chester Brown

Chester Brown
Chester Brown

Chester Brown. Photo: Joel Friesen
Born May 16, 1960 (1960-05-16) (age 51)
Montreal, Canada
Occupation Cartoonist, comic book artist
Nationality Canadian
Period 1983–present
Genres Autobiography, Biography, Black comedy, Religion, Surrealism
Literary movement Alternative comics

Chester William David Brown (born May 16, 1960 in Montreal), is a Canadian alternative cartoonist and, since 2008, the Libertarian Party of Canada's candidate for the riding of Trinity-Spadina in Toronto, Canada.

Brown is best known for his controversial autobiographical comics of the early 1990s and his biographical graphic novel of rebellious Métis leader Louis Riel.

His underground work was initially self-published, then released by the independent publishing company Vortex Comics. Since 1991, most of his output has been published by Drawn and Quarterly.

Brown often signs his work CWDB.

Contents

Biography

Brown was born in Montreal on May 16, 1960, at the Royal Victoria Hospital, but grew up in Châteauguay, Quebec. His mother suffered from schizophrenia, and died while in Montreal General Hospital when Brown was 17 years old.[1]

Brown was a "nerdy teeneager" who was attracted to comic books, especially about superheroes, since a young age, and decided he wanted to make drawing superhero comics his career. He attended Dawson College in Montreal, but since the program wasn't one that aimed at a career in comics, he dropped out after a little more than a year.[2]

Around the age of twenty, Brown started to move away from superhero comics and more towards undergrounds like Robert Crumb. He also came across Heavy Metal and Will Eisner's A Contract with God around this time.[2]

Career

At the urging of his girlfriend, Kris,[3] Brown made his debut in comics in 1983 with a sporadically self-published mini-comic called Yummy Fur, which he made in his spare time while working for a copy shop. Later, Bill Marks of Vortex Comics approached Brown to publish Yummy Fur as a full-sized comic. In 1986, the first three issues of Yummy Fur reprinted the contents of the seven issues of the earlier mini, and Brown quit his job at the copy shop.[4] Its contents included the surreal black comedy strip Ed the Happy Clown, collected in graphic novel form first in 1989 and later in a "Definitive" edition 1992, both from Vortex. The bizarre misfortunes of the title character include being chased by cannibalistic pygmies and having the tip of his penis replaced by the head of a miniature Ronald Reagan from another universe. The book was selected as one of the best comics of 2003 by Time columnist Andrew D. Arnold and was nominated for a 2004 Eisner Award. Brown has begun to reprint the original, unaltered versions of the Ed stories with the publisher Drawn & Quarterly. They plan to eventually publish a revised third and definitive book-length version of the saga.[citation needed]

In later Vortex issues of Yummy Fur, Brown experimented with autobiography, and in the early 1990s had structured narratives about his childhood serialized in his comic. Yummy Fur switched publishers to Drawn and Quarterly in 1991. The two longer autobiographical stories were later collected as the graphic novels The Playboy in 1992 and I Never Liked You in 1994. The former deals with his obsessive preoccupation with Playboy magazines in his youth, and is promoted as "[a]n autobiographical look at how pornography has affected my life" by the author. I Never Liked You (originally titled Fuck when serialized in Yummy Fur) is an often grim coming-of-age tale, which depicts the author as an introvert who is constantly picked on by his schoolmates and cannot relate to the opposite sex. It also briefly touches on his mother's schizophrenia.

Brown's longest-running work was a series of adaptations of the Christian gospels: he finished the Gospel of Mark as a backup feature in Yummy Fur, and the still unfinished Gospel of Matthew appeared in Yummy Fur and Underwater. These adaptations adhere closely to Biblical events but use colloquial language and often grotesque caricature; Brown's portrayal of Jesus not only is idiosyncratic and often harsh, but varies considerably between the two books, reflecting the differences in emphasis between gospels. The gospel strips have not been reprinted; Brown had long said he intended to finish them, but in a 2011 interview with The Comics Journal, he said it is no longer likely, as his "heart just isn’t in it."[5] Recently[when?] Chester was asked by Cerebus comic book creator Dave Sim for permission to print previously unpublished material related to this work. At last mention Chester hadn't said yes or no.[citation needed]

After Yummy Fur

Underwater, Brown's first series after Yummy Fur, was an experimental work that attempted to portray life from the point of view of an infant, starting with seemingly incomprehensible events and dialogue[6] which gradually become more coherent as the child matures. The series was not well received by critics and sold poorly;[7] Brown abandoned it in an unfinished state. He followed it up with the series Louis Riel, which was supported in part by a CAD $16,000 grant[8] from the Canadian Council for the Arts. The collected version appeared in hardcover in 2004, and in softcover in 2006.

Following Louis Riel was the longest gap between published works for Brown. For the first time, Brown produced a full-length graphic novel without the benefit of serializing it first. The result was the long awaited[9] Paying For It, about Brown's "two competing desires--the desire to have sex, versus the desire to NOT have a girlfriend."[9][10] Brown's solution to the problem is to forgo traditional boyfriend/girlfriend relationships and marriage and to take up the life of a "john" by frequenting prostitutes.

In 2007, Brown provided six weeks worth of strips to Toronto's NOW magazine as part of the "Live With Culture" ad campaign, featuring a male zombie and a living human girl participating in various cultural activities, culminating in the two going to the movies to watch Bruce McDonald's as-yet-unmade Yummy Fur adaptation.[11]

Title changes

Many of his books have undergone title changes, sometimes at the behest of his publisher, sometimes without his permission. Ed the Happy Clown: the Definitive Ed Book was given the Definitive title, despite the fact that he "didn't want to put that as the subtitle of the second edition. Vortex did it for marketing reasons."[12] The Playboy was originally titled Disgust and then The Playboy Stories, and I Never Liked You was called Fuck (the German translation retains that title[13]). Underwater was originally intended to appear in Yummy Fur, but Brown's new publisher felt they could attract more readers with a different title. Paying For It carries the sense of a double entendre that Brown dislikes[14] — he would have preferred to call the book I Pay For Sex.[15]

Thematic subjects

Regarding his early work, Brown has explained that "the Ed story came automatically, without any thought."[16][unreliable source?] Throughout his early years as a cartoonist he mostly experimented with drawing on the darker side of his subconscious, basing his comedy on free-form association, much like the surrealist technique Automatism. An example of such methods in Brown's work can be found in short one-pagers where he randomly selects comic panels from other sources and then mixes them up, often altering the dialogue. This produced an experimental, absurdist effect in his early strips.

Brown first discusses mental illness in his strip "My Mother Was A Schizophrenic". In it, he puts forward the anti-psychiatric idea that what we call "schizophrenia" isn't a real disease at all, but instead a tool our society uses to deal with people who display socially unacceptable beliefs and behaviour. Inspired by the evangelical tracts of Jack T. Chick, Brown left Xeroxes of these strips at bus stops and phone booths around Toronto so its message would reach a wider audience. It first appeared in Underwater #4, and is also reprinted in the collection The Little Man.

Brown's Louis Riel book was inspired by the alleged mental instability of Riel, and Brown's own anarchist politics, and he began his research for the book in 1998. Over the course of researching for the book, he shifted his politics over the course of several years until he was a libertarian.[17] Regarding anarchy, Brown has said, "I’m still an anarchist to the degree that I think we should be aiming towards an anarchist society but I don’t think we can actually get there. We probably do need some degree of government."[18]

Style

Brown's style has evolved and changed a lot throughout his career. He's been known to switch between using Rapidograph pens, dip pens and brushes for his black-and-white cartooning, and has used paints for some colour covers (notably in Underwater).

Working Method

Brown does not follow the tradition of drawing his comics by the page — he draws them one panel at a time, and then arranges them on the page.[19] In the case of his acclaimed graphic novels The Playboy and I Never Liked You, this allowed him to rearrange the panels on the page as he saw fit. In the case of I Never Liked You, this resulted in a different page count when the book was collected than when it was serialized in Yummy Fur. The panels were slightly rearranged again when the "New Definitive Edition" of I Never Liked You was released in 2002.

Brown depicted himself making comics in this way in the story Showing Helder in Yummy Fur #20 (also collected in The Little Man).

Drawing influences

In an interview with Seth, Brown says his earliest childhood cartoon was an imitation of Doug Wright's Little Nipper.[20] He frequently mentions Steve Gerber as amongst his foremost influences of his teenage years. From about the age of 20, Brown discovered the work of Robert Crumb and other underground artists, as well as class comic strip artists such as Harold Gray, whose influence is most evident in Brown's Louis Riel.

Brown often talks of contemporaries Seth, Joe Matt and Julie Doucet's influence on his work, especially during his autobiographical period. He also had been reading the Little Lulu Library around this time, and credit's the cartooning of Little Lulu's John Stanley and Seth with his desire to simplify his style during this period.[21]

The stiff, stylized look of Fletcher Hanks' comics, reprints from Fantagraphics of which Brown had been reading around the time, was the primary influence on the style Brown used in Paying For It.[22]

Personal life

Religious beliefs

Brown was brought up in a strictly Christian Baptist[23] household.[24] He considered himself a Christian until his early 20s, when he started to do a lot of reading on Christianity.[23]

Brown took on his retelling of the Gospels "trying to figure out what I believed about this stuff. It was a matter of trying to figure out whether I even believed the Christian claims — whether or not Jesus was divine."[25]

While doing the Gospels, Brown came to abandon Christianity. At the time he said, "I just realized that this was something that didn't make sense to me".[24] He returned to it later,[20] but as of 2011, he once again no longer considers himself a Christian.[26]

Personal relations

A longtime friend of fellow cartoonists Joe Matt and Seth, Brown has been regularly featured in their autobiographical comics over the years, and collaborated with them on various projects. The three were often mentioned together, and have been called "the Three Musketeers of alternative comics" [27] forming "a kind of gutter rat pack trying to make it through their drawing boards in 1990s Toronto."[8] Brown dedicated The Playboy to Seth, "for his example as an artist", and Seth dedicated his graphic novel George Sprott to Brown ("Best Cartoonist, Best Friend").

Brown had a long-term relationship with the musician, actress and media personality Sook-Yin Lee from 1992 until 1996. She is depicted in several of his comics. He moved to Vancouver for two years to be with her, and moved back to Toronto with her when she became a VJ for MuchMusic. He also drew the cover for her 1996 solo album Wigs 'n Guns. Brown's relationship with Lee is the last boyfriend/girlfriend relationship he had, as he explains in Paying For It. They remain good friends, and Brown has contributed artwork to her productions as recently as 2009's Year of the Carnivore.

Politics

In September 2008, Brown entered politics as the Libertarian Party of Canada's candidate for the riding of Trinity-Spadina in the 2008 federal election;[8] he came in fifth out of seven candidates. He stood in the same riding for the same party in the Canadian federal election, 2011,[28] coming in fifth out of six candidates.[29]

Recognition

Over the years, Brown has received four Harvey Awards and numerous Harvey and Ignatz award nomitions. "The autobiographical comics from Yummy Fur" placed #38 on the Comics Journal's list of the 100 best comics of the century.

Brown was one of the cartoonists to appear in the first volume of Fantagraphics Books' two-volume The Best Comics of the Decade (1990. ISBN 9781560970361).

Brown was inducted into the Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame, on June 18, 2011 at the Joe Shuster Awards in Calgary.[30]

Awards

Awards
Year Organization Award for Award
1990 Harvey Awards[31] Chester Brown Best Cartoonist
Ed the Happy Clown (1st Ed.) Best Graphic Album
2004 Louis Riel Best Writer
Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work

Nominations

Comic book series

Date Title Publisher Issues Notes
1983-1986 Yummy Fur (mini-comic) self-published 7[33]
1986-1995 Yummy Fur
# 1 - 24 Vortex Comics
# 25 - 32 Drawn and Quarterly
32
1995-1998 Underwater Drawn and Quarterly 11 Left unfinished
1999-2004 Louis Riel 10
2004-2006 Ed the Happy Clown 9 Reprinted material from Yummy Fur with extra background information

Graphic novels and collections

Year Title Publisher ISBN Notes
1989 Ed the Happy Clown: a Yummy Fur Book Vortex Comics 978-0-921-45104-4
1992 Ed the Happy Clown: the Definitive Ed Book 978-0-921-45108-2
  • abridged
  • changed ending
The Playboy: A Comic Book Drawn and Quarterly 978-0-969-67011-7
1994 I Never Liked You 978-0-969-67016-2
1998 The Little Man: Short Strips 1980-1995 978-1-896-59713-3
2002 I Never Liked You (Second Edition) 978-1-896-59714-0
  • black page backgrounds changed to white
  • added two-page appendix
2006 Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography 978-1-894-93789-4
2011 Paying For It 978-1-770-46048-5

Illustration

Brown has also done a certain amount of illustration work. In 1998, he did the cover to Sphinx Productions' Comic Book Confidential #1;[34] in 2005 he did the cover to True Porn 2 from Alternative Comics; and he illustrated the cover for Penguin Books' Deluxe Classics edition of Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence.[35]

He has done the cover for Sook-Yin Lee's 1996 solo album Wigs 'n Guns (to which he also contributed lyrics for one song),[36] and the poster for her film, Year of the Carnivore.[37]

Brown illustrated the cover to the July 11, 2004 issue of The New York Times Magazine, an issue whose theme was graphic novels.[38][39]

Collaborations

Brown provided the illustrations for the story "A Tribute To Bill Marks" Harvey Pekar's American Splendor #15 in 1990, and "How This Forward Got Written" in The New American Splendor Anthology in 1991.

He inked Seth's pencils for the story "Them Changes" in Dennis Eichhorn's Real Stuff #6 in 1992, and shared artwork duties with Sook-Yin Lee on the story "The Not So Great Escape" in Real Stuff #16 in 1993.

He also inked Steve Bissette's pencils for the story "It Came From...Higher Space!" in Alan Moore's 1963 #3 in 1993.[40]

A jam piece with Dave Sim was included in the Cerebus World Tour Book in 1995.[41]

See also

Portal icon Biography portal
Portal icon Comics portal
Portal icon Libertarianism portal
Portal icon Christianity portal


Notes

  1. ^ I Never Liked You, page 191 (appendix, first page)
  2. ^ a b Juno, page 132
  3. ^ Juno, page 131
  4. ^ Juno, page 135
  5. ^ Rogers, part 3
  6. ^ Verstappen, Nicolas (2008-08). "Chester Brown". du9.org. http://www.du9.org/Chester-Brown,1030. Retrieved 2011-04-19. "It's really just a code. Simple letter substitution." 
  7. ^ Juno, pg. 144
  8. ^ a b c Marc Weisblott (17 September 2008). "Chester the Libertarian". http://www.eyeweekly.com/blog/post/39716--chester-the-libertarian. Retrieved 14 September 2009. 
  9. ^ a b Panel from Paying For It from The Beat: the News Blog of Comics Culture. 2010-09-17. retrieved 2011-04-10
  10. ^ Paying For It, page 16
  11. ^ Review of Zombies Take Toronto at walrusmagazine.com. retrieved 2011-04-10
  12. ^ Arnold, Andrew D. (2004-04-12). "Keeping It 'Riel'". Time magazine. http://www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,609686,00.html. Retrieved 2011-05-01. 
  13. ^ Reprodukt product page for Fuck
  14. ^ Paying For It, page 259. "It suggests that not only am I paying for sex but I’m also paying for being a john in some non-monetary way. Many would think that there’s an emotional cost — that johns are sad and lonely...I haven’t been 'paying for it' in any of those ways. I’m very far from being sad or lonely, I haven’t caught an S-T-D, I haven’t been arrested, I haven’t lost my career, and my friends and family haven’t rejected me."
  15. ^ Wagner, Vit (2011-04-29). "Paying for It: A Comic-Strip Memoir About Being a John by Chester Brown". "The Toronto Star". http://www.thestar.com/news/books/article/982927--paying-for-it-a-comic-strip-memoir-about-being-a-john-by-chester-brown. Retrieved 2011-05-01. 
  16. ^ Pub.eu Chester Brown
  17. ^ Matheson, Emmet (2004). "Chester Brown". Riel: a comic-book hero. CBC Digital Archives. http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/visual_arts/clips/9905/. Retrieved 2008-06-18. "I was an anarchist when I began the strip and I knew the story would make the government look bad. [...] But in doing all the research for this book [Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography], I learned a lot about general political theory. I came to realize that anarchy is completely unworkable, which I sort of suspected all along." 
  18. ^ Daniel Epstein. "Chronicling the revolutionary:Chester Brown on Louis Riel". http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=7360. 
  19. ^ Tousley, Nancy (2005-03-01). "Interview: Chester Brown: Louis Riel's comic-strip biographer". Canadian Art. http://www.canadianart.ca/art/features/2005/03/01/298/. Retrieved 2010-04-19. 
  20. ^ a b Seth Interviews Chester Brown, hosted at sequential.spiltink.org. retrieved 2011-05-15
  21. ^ Juno, pg. 136
  22. ^ Rogers, part 1
  23. ^ a b Juno, page 143
  24. ^ a b Hwang, Francis (1998-21-23). "Graven Images". City Pages. http://www.citypages.com/1998-12-23/feature/graven-images/. Retrieved 2011-04-26. 
  25. ^ Epp, Darell (2002-01-29). "Two-Handed Man interviews cartoonist Chester Brown". twohandedman.com. http://replay.web.archive.org/20080509104034/http://www.twohandedman.com/Interviews/Chester/Index.html. Retrieved 2011-04-23. 
  26. ^ Walker, Benjamen (2011-05-17) (Audio). The Difference Between Giving and Taking (a conversation with Chester Brown). Interview. http://soundcloud.com/bwalker/the-difference-between-giving. Retrieved 2011-05-23. 
  27. ^ "Fred Hembeck's Dateline". The Ephemerist. http://www.sparehed.com/2007/01/10/fred-hembecks-dateline/. 
  28. ^ "Time to ask your west-downtown Toronto federal candidates some questions". Gleaner Community Newspapers. 2011-04-04. http://gleanernews.ca/index.php/2011/04/04/time-to-ask-your-federal-reps-in-trinity-spadina-some-questions/. Retrieved 2011-04-13. 
  29. ^ [1]
  30. ^ Nominations For The 2011 Joe Shuster Awards
  31. ^ a b c d Harvey Awards official website
  32. ^ a b c Ignatz Awards official website
  33. ^ inside front cover of Yummy Fur #1. Vortex Comics (1986)
  34. ^ Sterling, Mike (2010-01-25). "COMIC BOOK CONFIDENTIAL #1 (SPHINX PRODUCTIONS, 1988).". Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin. http://www.progressiveruin.com/2010/01/25/comic-book-confidential-1-sphinx-productions-1988/. Retrieved 2011-04-10. 
  35. ^ Penguin Books' product page for Lady Chatterly's Lover (Deluxe Classics edition, 2007). ISBN 9780143039617)
  36. ^ Carruthers, Sean. "Wigs 'n' Guns". http://www.allmusic.com/album/r498184. Retrieved 2011-05-19. 
  37. ^ Balkissoon, Denise (2010-06-11). "Sook-Yin Lee: Candid with the camera — except for one thing". The Toronto Star. http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/822672--sook-yin-lee-candid-with-the-camera-except-for-one-thing. Retrieved 2011-05-25. 
  38. ^ "Cover Story on Graphic Novels in N.Y. Times Magazine: Will They Replace Traditional Novels?". ICv2. 2004-07-13. http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/5300.html. Retrieved 2011-05-26. 
  39. ^ "Chester Brown on the NY Times Magazine Cover". Inappropriate Laughter. 2010-01-20. http://tjaxckson.tumblr.com/post/344143570/chester-brown-on-the-ny-times-magazine-cover-via. Retrieved 2011-05-26. 
  40. ^ "Annotated 1963 Annotations". http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Annotations/Alan%20Moore/1963%20Annotations.htm. Retrieved 2011-05-19. 
  41. ^ Sim, Dave et al. Cerebus World Tour Book 1995, pages 47-65. Aardvark-Vanaheim, 1995. ISSN 0712-7774

References

External links

v · d · eChester Brown
Major stories and periods
Ed the Happy Clown · Gospels · autobiographical · Underwater · Louis Riel · Paying For It
Collected works
Series
Yummy Fur (minicomic) · Yummy Fur · Underwater · Louis Riel · Ed the Happy Clown
Other comics contributed to
American Splendor · Real Stuff · 1963 · The Narrative Corpse
Publishers
Vortex Comics · Drawn and Quarterly
Related people
Seth · Joe Matt · Sook-Yin Lee
v · d · eDrawn and Quarterly
Creators
English
Kate Beaton • Chester Brown • David Collier • Julie Doucet • Debbie Drechsler • Kevin Huizenga • Dylan Horrocks • Jason Lutes • Joe Matt • Anders Nilsen • Seth • Adrian Tomine
Translations
Reprints
Series
Altas • Berlin • Big Questions • Dirty Plotte • Ed the Happy Clown • Louis Riel • Optic Nerve • Palooka-Ville • Peepshow • Underwater • Yummy Fur
Other

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Chester Brown — (2005) Chester Brown (* 16. Mai 1960 in Montreal) ist ein kanadischer Comiczeichner. Brown wuchs in Chateauguay, einem Vorort von Montreal, auf. Seine Karriere als Comiczeichner begann 1983 in Toronto. Die ersten Jahre verlegte er dort seine… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Chester Brown — Chester Brown. Chester Brown (Montreal, 16 de mayo de 1960) es un historietista canadiense. Contenido 1 Biografía …   Wikipedia Español

  • Chester Brown — est un auteur de bandes dessinées né le 16 mai 1960 à Montréal au Canada, d expression anglaise. Il est très représentatif de la bande dessinée indépendante, en particulier dans le domaine du récit autobiographique. Il s est ensuite consacré à la …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Chester Brown's Gospel adaptations — thematic stories Brown s depiction of Jesus in the Gospels of Mark (left) and Matthew (right) First appearance …   Wikipedia

  • Chester Brown's autobiographical comics — Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown attracted a lot of attention from critics and his peers in the early 1990s alternative comics world when he began writing autobiographical comics in his comic book series Yummy Fur. From this period, Brown… …   Wikipedia

  • Chester (disambiguation) — Chester is a city and is also the county town of Cheshire, England. The name comes from Old English ceastre, city, ultimately from Latin castra, camp. Chester may also mean the following places: Contents 1 Places 1.1 Canada …   Wikipedia

  • Brown (Familienname) — Brown ist ein englischer Familienname. Herkunft und Bedeutung Der Name ist die englische Entsprechung des deutschen Namens Braun. Varianten Browne, Broun Bekannte Namensträger Inhaltsverzeichnis A B C D E F G …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Brown (homonymie) — Brown Cette page d’homonymie répertorie les différents sujets et articles partageant un même nom.  Pour les articles homophones, voir Braun et Browne. Brown signifie brun en anglais. Sommaire …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Brown — Saltar a navegación, búsqueda El término Brown puede referirse: en biografías a: Alfred Reginald Radcliffe Brown, antropólogo de  Reino Unido. Amy Brown, dibujante de …   Wikipedia Español

  • Brown — Cette page d’homonymie répertorie les différents sujets et articles partageant un même nom.  Pour les articles homophones, voir Braun, Browne et Brawn. Brown signifie brun en anglais. Sommaire …   Wikipédia en Français

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”