Chester Brown

For over four decades, Canadian comics artist Chester Brown has been producing idiosyncratic and highly personal comics that have been influential to generations of other cartoonists. Throughout a career that began with self-published minicomics in the early 1980s, Brown’s work has been central to the history of alternative comics since the undergrounds. In such era- and genre-defining works as his serialized alternative comic book Yummy Fur, his surrealist Ed the Happy Clown, his autobiographical narratives The Playboy and I Never Liked You, his historical biography Louis Riel, his controversial memoir about seeing sex workers Paying for It, and his provocative retelling of biblical tales Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, Brown has continually challenged existing ideas about the kinds of stories comics can and should tell. This book is the first extended critical engagement with the whole of Brown’s life and career. Taking a chronological and biographical approach, the book examines one of the most varied bodies of work in all of comics history in its changing cultural and personal contexts. Accessibly written, generously illustrated, and including lengthy engagements with Brown’s many unfinished and uncollected works, Chester Brown provides a new critical perspective on not just an influential comics artist, but also on the alternative comics history in which he has been a central figure. The book will be of interest to anyone interested in comic books and graphic novels, including how one publication format slowly gave way to the other.