Chester Brown

A long-out-of-print classic by a master of underground comics In the late 1980s, the idiosyncratic Chester Brown (author of the much-lauded Paying For It and Louis Riel) began writing the cult classic comic book series Yummy Fur. Within its pages, he serialized the groundbreaking Ed the Happy Clown, revealing a macabre universe of parallel dimensions. Thanks to its wholly original yet disturbing story lines, Ed set the stage for Chester Brown to become a world-renowned cartoonist. Ed the Happy Clown is a hallucinatory tale that functions simultaneously as a dark roller-coaster ride of criminal activity and a scathing condemnation of religious and political charlatanism. As the world around him devolves into madness, the eponymous Ed escapes variously from a jealous boyfriend, sewer monsters, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a janitor with a Jesus complex. Brown leaves us wondering, with every twist of the plot, just how Ed will get out of this scrape. The intimate, tangled world of Ed the Happy Clown is definitively presented here, repackaged with a new foreword by the author and an extensive notes section, and, as with every Brown book, astonishingly perceptive about the zeitgeist of its time.

Chester Brown reinvents the comic book medium to create the critically acclaimed historical biography Louis Riel. Brown won the Harvey Awards for best writing and best graphic novel for his compelling, meticulous, and dispassionate retelling of the charismatic, and perhaps insane, nineteenth-century Metis leader's life. Brown coolly documents with dramatic subtlety the violent rebellion on the Canadian prairie led by Riel, an embattled figure in Canadian history, regarded by some as a martyr who died in the name of freedom, while others consider him a treacherous murderer.

D&Q's first ever graphic novel, published in 1992,this is an excellent companion to I Never Liked,You. Stark and expressionistic, this is Chester,Brown's frank and unsettling account of first his,adolescent and then adult relationship with,pornography. It begins in 1975 with an abandoned,copy of Playboy..

The idiosyncratic master Chester Brown continues his thoughts on sex work “The Bible is Chester Brown’s holy harlot. He plumbs the mysteries of her depths while she schools him in the ways of love. Like all of Chester’s work, Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is confounding, yet addictive, instantly re-readable, and expands with revelations in his hundred pages of notes. A work of passion, research, and elegant clarity. My new favourite.”—Craig Thompson, author of Blankets and Habibi “Chester Brown is both God’s and the devil’s gift to the world.”—David Henry Sterry, author of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys “Chester’s work never fails to surprise and delight me. Since I always enjoy mythic and legendary tales of harlots, I knew I would like Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, but I was pleased and impressed by the way he used all these stories to illustrate a larger theme about humanity’s relationship to Divinity and the role my profession plays in that relationship. Chester shows that spirituality and sexuality, which are so often depicted in our culture as opposed to one another, are actually deeply intertwined.”—Maggie McNeill, author of The Honest Courtesan The iconoclastic and bestselling cartoonist of Paying for It: A comic-strip memoir about being a john and Louis Riel returns and with a polemical interpretation of the Bible that will be one of the most controversial and talked-about graphic novels of 2016. Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is the retelling in comics form of nine biblical stories that present Chester Brown's fascinating and startling thesis about biblical representations of prostitution. Brown weaves a connecting line between Bathsheba, Ruth, Rahab, Tamar, Mary of Bethany, and the Virgin Mother. He reassesses the Christian moral code by examining the cultural implications of the Bible's representations of sex work. Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is a fitting follow-up to Brown's sui generis graphic memoir Paying for It, which was reviewed twice in The New York Times and hailed by sex workers for Brown's advocacy for the decriminalization and normalization of prostitution. Brown approaches the Bible as he did the life of Louis Riel, making these stories compellingly readable and utterly pertinent to a modern audience. In classic Chester Brown fashion, he provides extensive handwritten endnotes that delve into the biblical lore that informs Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus.

Collected interviews with the unconventional comics creator of Yummy Fur (1983-1994), comics memoirs such as The Playboy (1991/1992) and I Never Liked You (1991-1994), and his best-selling memoir Paying for It (2011)

A harrowing memoir of loss and the struggle to connect, Brown's story is told with a spare poetic elegance. A self-absorbed teenager, Chester Brown strays into the difficult territory of friendship and early love while at home there is a slowly building crisis over his mother's mental health. Emotionally intense, the story veers unsteadily between the extremes of eerie detachment and sudden desperate outbursts of need. A complex and disturbing true story told with a nuanced, queasy visual style that lingers in the mind long after the book has been put away.

"One of the medium's brilliant mavericks." — time.com The Little Man: Short Strips, 1980-1995 is a collection of short-story works by the celebrated and bestselling Louis Riel cartoonist Chester Brown. From his early experimental comedic surrealism to his later autobiographical and essay strips, we see not a major talent in development but a fully realized storytelling virtuoso. Included are his early autobiographical stories "Helder" (a story about a young man's tentativeness when pursuing a woman), "Showing Helder" (a blow-by-blow account of the construction of the previous story), and "Danny" (a strangely compelling moment-by-moment account of Brown waking up and trying to avoid contact with a fellow rooming-house tenant). Other standouts are Brown's controversial essay on schizophrenia (specifically his own mother's) and various medical views on this baffling disease, and the title story, "The Little Man," a Freudian classroom romp fantasy by a adolescent Brown that ties into the schizophrenia essay in a surprising way. The acclaimed compendium, culled mostly from his groundbreaking comic book series Yummy Fur, provides a fascinating insight into Brown's psyche; he rounds out the collection with exacting notes on each story.

The critically lauded memoir about being a john. Now in paperback! Paying for It was easily the most talked-about and controversial graphic novel of 2011, a critical success so innovative and complex that it received two rave reviews in the New York Times, and sold out of its first print run in just six months. Chester Brown’s eloquent, spare artwork stands out in this paperback edition. Paying for It combines the personal and sexual aspects of Brown’s autobiographical work (I Never Liked You, The Playboy) with the polemical drive of Louis Riel. Brown calmly lays out the facts of how he became not only a willing participant in, but a vocal proponent of one of the world’s most hot-button topics—prostitution. While this may appear overly sensational and just plain implausible to some, Brown’s story stands for itself. Paying for It offers an entirely contemporary exploration of sex work—from the timid john who rides his bike to his escorts, wonders how to tip so as not to offend, and reads Dan Savage for advice, to the modern-day transactions complete with online reviews, seemingly willing participants, and clean apartments devoid of clichéd street corners, drugs, or pimps. Complete with a surprise ending, Paying for It continues to provide endless debate and conversation about sex work.