Feeble Attempts

Feeble Attempts is a 48-page collection of Jeffrey Brown’s short comics – something of a “pilot” for his forthcoming series, which is expected to be launched under the title of “Sulk” some time this year.

When it originally came out in May ‘07, I was incredibly pleased that it was bringing together a lot of material from many disparate sources. I’d read a couple of the strips online, and one or two I’d found in other comics, but as I’ve said before, being a die-hard, completist Jeffrey Brown fan can be incredibly hard work, trying to track down all the curios, so comprehensive collections like this are exactly what I’m into. They showcase all of his styles, bringing together comedy, autiobiography, and even superheroics all under one title. The topic of religion even gets a look in which is something he rarely tackles so openly.

Even now, it remains one of my favourite releases of his, simply because there’s so much in there. 48 pages from Brown means a LOT of work, since most of the pages contain a number of panels that’s well into double figures, crammed with dialogue, if not necessarily action. It’s really packed in there too – the inside covers have glorious, full-colour comics printed on them. There’s nary an inch of free space in the entire volume, and for $5 it’s incredibly well-priced. You could pay 5 times that for an anthology of similar quality.

The longest story is a reprint of the Bighead piece which can be found in Project: Superior, though not the Bighead anthology, and that alone is worth what you’ll pay for it just to see more of Brown’s take on Superheroics, with his art being taken to a rarely-seen level.

It’s hard to know what sort of beast Feeble Attempts is. Certainly, I’d give it to someone who wanted to get into Brown’s work because it’s got it all in there, it’s like a Jeffrey Brown sampler – but I’m finding it hard to think of a situation where someone would want to get into his work without already knowing what they like about it, so I dunno. All I can say is that there’s no excuse for a Jeffrey Brown fan not to own a copy.

Buy Feeble Attempts from Top Shelf (Intl.)
Feeble Attempts Preview pages from Top Shelf

 

I am going to be Small

While Jeff’s earlier work focuses mainly on fragile emotions and how badly screwed up his life can get, it should not be overlooked that he is also one of the greatest comedic voices in the medium. I am going to be Small is really a sequel, of sorts, to Minisulk, as well as being a “special edition” re-release of his original minicomic. This book is utterly crammed with minutae that you would otherwise have one hell of a time finding, from complete reprints of minicomics, to single-frame jokes he drew for Too Much Coffee Man, to advertising posters he has drawn. At the time, I called Minisulk a completist’s dream, but I was wrong- this is.

This book shows that he’s got range, and he’s not afraid to use it. It’s sometimes offbeat, sometimes emotional, sometimes crude, sometimes twisted, sometimes hilarious, and sometimes just enough to make you smirk. The only consistent thing it’s got is that it’s all great. Except for those last 50 pages or so of some tragically crap animal cartoons – A minicomic called “Cuticle” featuring some talking animals and their relationship dramas, but god help me, I think it’s probably the least entertaining thing Brown has ever written.

It’s fair to say that Brown’s more emotionally involved work is his best. However, it’s also plenty accurate to say that it’s worth buying anything he does on the strength of his name alone. I’ve bought entire anthologies just to get a one-page strip by him, and this book allowed me to do a decade of catchup in one sitting. While the last few pages in Small weren’t my favourite, there are an additional 350 to pad out the rest of it. On those pages are well over 500 pieces culled from Brown’s previously unpublished or uncollected work, spanning a 9 year period – with single-panel jokes, text pieces, fake adverts, more conventional comic strips, and god knows what else, you could entertain yourself with this book for an incredibly long time. If you’re the type of person who enjoys reading on the toilet, it’s perfect for it, though you could end up permanently affixed to the crapper while caught up reading just one more joke.

All that said, I’m not sure I’d recommend it as the best way to get into Brown’s work. It’s fairly unrepresentative of his other stuff, most of which is actually much more satisfying in the long run. The previous compilation of his work, Minisulk, is far more about the laughs. If that’s his “Greatest Hits,” this seems more like a B-Sides collection for the hardcore fans. I love it, I encourage everyone to buy it, but it probably shouldn’t be your starting point.

Buy I am going to be Small from Amazon (UK)
Buy I am going to be Small from Amazon (US)

 

You Ain’t No Dancer, Vol. 2

You Ain’t No Dancer, volume 2, came out a year ago this month, October 2006, only shortly after I purchased the previous volume. Like the previous volume, it’s packed with indie talent, in a fairly unconventional package that forces the use of a widescreen format. While that’s fairly standard for a certain kind of strip (Webcomic creator Mitch Clem is undoubtedly right at home) it’s not something you see in the mainstream, or even indie mainstream very often, and it gives these books a distinctive look. The strips themselves are also fairly short – 23 stories in 95 pages, and only one or two get past the 6 page mark. To New Reliable’s credit, they’re really crammed a lot into this.

Jeffrey Brown’s story in YAND Vol. 2 is entitled “Chimney Preference” and revisits the familiar setting of the “Young Jeff” autobiographical comics that I’ve previously discussed in the review of Minisulk. It’s a 2-page comedy piece that makes the most of Brown’s style, though I have to admit if you’re buying this collection just for the Jeffrey Brown in it, you might not be fully satisfied by 2 pages and one joke. It’s less of a snack, more a morsel. That said, I have to admit, in these kind of strips half the humour, for me, comes from the expression on Young Jeff’s face, which is inherently hilarious for reasons I can’t begin to articulate.

If 2 pages isn’t enough brown for you, well, then, good news, because he’s also painted the cover! A wraparound cover, no less, depicting Young Jeff and his brother in the playground at autumn, a rare example of coloured work from Brown.

Now, 2 pages is a bit small for a full review, so let’s quickly look elsewhere in the anthology. My favourites of the remainder were The Eve Of, by Blaise Laramee, and Phil McAndrew’s Sharp Young Minds, both stories united by a theme of childhood exploration and cameraderie, the former going with a confessional psychological tone, and the latter with a more humourous turn.

Overall, volume 2 feels more disjointed than the original, and contains fewer “name” creators to put you on familiar ground for the fairly steep price point. With generally less conventional material, even fans of the first volume might find this challenging, but as ever it remains a brilliant way to expose yourself to new creators and stories. As with the previous volume, the quality of both is consistently high, but the quantity of work means that it’s impossible for everything to click – given the range of work available, don’t expect to come into this and love everything, just consider that what you do enjoy is going to be worth the price, and the rest of it is bonus material.

Buy You Ain’t No Dancer from New Reliable (US & Int.)
You Ain’t No Dancer v2 Preview Page (Jeff Brown)
You Ain’t No Dancer v2 Preview Page (Blaise Larmee)
You Ain’t No Dancer v2 Preview Page (Phil McAndrew)

 

Project Telstar: A Different Place Then

Project Telstar was the first of three themed anthologies from Adhouse, featuring a ridiculous amount of indie comics creators all throwing a short story into the mix. Anthologies are always hit and miss, but the Science Fiction-themed Project Telstar, printed in black, white and metallic blue (featuring futuristic rounded corners!) contains barely a single duff story, setting an almost impossibly high standard for the anthologies that followed, Project Superior and Project Romance.

It’s with some trepidation, then, that I have to deliver this fact. I was kind of disappointed by Jeffrey Brown’s story in this one.

Hear me out on this – it’s not that the story is bad, because it isn’t. It’s got everything you could want from Brown’s non-autobiographical work: action, comedy, some tragic romance. The problem, in fact, stems from just this. Where almost every other creator at least appears to have gone outside their comfort zone and created something unique and occasionally, very profound, it feels a little like Brown has taken a fairly standard approach with his work and just chucked in a token robot for good measure. Where’s the adventure?!

Admittedly, out of context, it’s great – it’s about a man in space who breaks up with his long-long-long-distance girlfriend, and then, awaking the next morning from a drunken stupor, discovers that in his heartbreak, he programmed his robot to be a violent killing machine that he must then disable. It sits unassumingly alongside the stories of Project Telstar or any of Brown’s other work, though notably in tone it’s most like Brown’s super-hero parody, Bighead, than anything else. Still, we knew Brown had more than this in him, if only because a few years later he finally finished the brilliant Transformers parody, Incredible Change-Bots, which features a far more compelling story about robots and space travel, and one which treats the subject matter as more than the mere background elements of a stock Brown romance plot.

Still, if you’re a fan of the work of Jeffrey Brown, then the Project anthologies remain a must-buy. Mainly because they’re a must-buy whether you like Brown or not. The sheer amount of creators I’ve discovered from this line can’t be understated.

Of particular genius in Telstar are Joel Priddy’s Long Slow Flight of the Ashbot, depicting a robot surviving (barely) as he floats in space until the end of time, and Gregory Benton’s Passover, a story showing the final remnants of the human race deserting a polluted and destroyed Earth in brilliantly pedestrian fashion. Best of all, though, may be Paul Rivoche’s Robot in the Rain, mixture of detective noir and cold-war sci-fi aesthetic with an undercurrent of paranoia so powerful you’ll have to use a crobar to prise the book away. Project Telstar outdoes itself in every possible way, and even if I was a little hard on Brown’s contribution, that’s only because the rest of it sets an incredibly high standard. For what it’s worth, Brown’s inclusion in Project Superior, the second part of the Project trilogy, is far better. But I’ll get to that next week…

Buy Project Telstar from Amazon (UK)
Buy Project Telstar from Amazon (US)
Please be aware that Project Telstar is out of print, so availability may be limited and prices may be ridiculous.

 

You Ain’t No Dancer, Vol. 1

Published by New Reliable Press, You Ain’t No Dancer, Volume 1 is one of those rare finds where I pick a book off the shelf just to see what it’s about and discover that it’s packed full of high-quality work. At the time, I had recently allowed Scott Pilgrim into my life and was on something of a Byan Lee O’Malley kick, and was waiting for my delivery of his first full-length work, Lost at Sea, so I was ecstatic to discover this contained some of his work. However, even before that, I had read the two names that guaranteed my purchase of the book: Jeffrey Brown.

Despite one of the most wilfully grotesque covers I’ve seen in recent years, You Ain’t No Dancer is one of the highest quality indie anthologies I’ve read. Volume 1 contains more “big name” indie creators than you can shake a stick at, including some of my favourites: Jim Mahfood, Hope Larson, Dean Trippe – as well as a selection of artists with less exposure. Many of these creators would also show up in the ridiculously high-quality “Project” trilogy from Adhouse, including Brown himself (so I believe I’ll get to those on the blog eventually) and that alone should be an indication of how good it is. Anthologies such as these usually have a specific theme, but I can’t find one in these, so let’s assume for now that the theme is “excellent and original short comics” and I think we’ll all be happy with that.

Brown’s story, “William, I Need You” occupies the theological end of Brown’s spectrum, albeit comedically, which is one aspect of his work that unfortunately (for an elightened atheist like me) doesn’t show up very often. The piece itself is drawn in Brown’s more realistic style (ie, proper shading, varied line thickness, all those “real” artist’s tricks) and has 4 panels per (landscape) page (though the Man himself, God, does grab himself an entire page’s worth of splash panel). It’s not the heaviest piece of social commentary, nor the most original – general broad comedy around the idea that following God’s instructions instead of thinking for yourself will end up getting you killed – but it IS a timeless message, and I guarantee that there’s no other place you’ll get such amusement out of a man trying to decide how he can make fun of a pack of Lions.

I won’t go through all the others, because there are a huge amount, and I’m not going to single out the best, because they’re all of equally high quality, but I will tell you my two favourites and we can agree that no-one’s being snubbed.

Nicholas Gurewitch did one of my favorite strips, entitled “Giant Jim, your wife is cheating on you with the baker.” Which mixes fairy tale and infidelity into one bittersweet tale only 4 panels long and containing some brilliantly distilled storytelling. While researching this, I realised that he’s the same guy who does Perry Bible Fellowship, which is one of my favourite webcomics, and, even better, a version of this exact strip is available on that very site, so don’t say I never do anything for you.

Mahfood’s art style is always welcome, and his strip, “The Worst of Times” featuring his long-time anthology stalwart, One Page Filler Man, is as good as his work gets, with the frantic pace and humour one expects from anything he does. OPFM’s full-length OGN wasn’t the best work he’s done, but this short is top-quality.

Any more gushing would come across a bit TOO sycophantic (and after going out on Sunday this weekend, I’ve got limited time on Monday night to bash this entry out, so I could probably do to keep it succint now that Brown’s work is covered) but suffice to say, even without Brown’s inclusion I’d be giving this anthology the Crudely Drawn Naked People stamp of quality. I’m only now realising that Crudely Drawn Naked People actually applies to several of the shorts in this book, and the indie scene in general. Clearly I am a Genius.

Buy You Ain’t No Dancer from New Reliable (US & Int.)
You Ain’t No Dancer Preview Pages (including Jeff Brown artwork!)

 

Deevee 2007

So, this is the first time since I started this blog that I’ve bought a new Jeffrey Brown release the same week. So, because it’s unprecedented, I’ll just state how I intend to deal with it so it’s down in black and white. If new Jeffrey Brown material surfaces in one form or another (e.g, it is released that week, or I first buy a copy of it that week) my plan is to break from the reviewing of old material and do the new thing. This week is a double first, because it’s also the first time I’m reviewing his work in an anthology title, so I’ll have to figure out a format for that as well. Still, shouldn’t prove too difficult (getting the will to write this up instead of continuing with my pokemon game, though – that’s difficult.)

This week, I’m looking at an anthology title that I’ve never encountered before called “Deevee.” The website, Deevee Press, doesn’t contain much information, so feel free to correct me if you’re a massive Deevee fan and some of what I say sounds like rubbish, but here’s what I’ve managed to scrape together so far: Deevee appears to be released fairly sporadically. There are references in the back to previous issues, now collected, of Deevee 2001, Deevee: Molotov, and Deevee: Flange, suggesting this is only the 4th release in 6 years. The indicia calls this issue Deevee 2007, which seems fairly accurate. It appears to be published by an Australian company, though the presence of Jeffrey Brown suggests no specific limitation to just Australian creators, but it’s a fair bet that some of them are – which is cool, because you see a lot of American and British indie anthologies, but I don’t recall any specifically Australian ones before. A cursory search shows this marketing hype turn up in a few places, so here it is again:

The new issue of the long running Australian anthology DeeVee is listed in the current Diamond Previews catalogue. This stand-alone special features ‘tales of spiteful romance’ including a brand new Playwright story illustrated by Eddie Campbell plus The Fat Sheila Hit Me, the crime story he illustrated to crime author Peter Doyle’s script. Also features work by Jeffrey Brown, Mandy Ord, Jason Paulos, mr j and the pick of current Aussie cartoonists. We’re listed under the Top Shelf section and the order code is Diamond APR074012.

So far, so good. It’s priced reasonably high and, to be honest, the paper quality is pretty low, but when you’re dealing with indie companies and indie creators, both publisher and readers have to cut corners on the financial sides to make the relationship work. Make no mistake – this is a great title.

Jeffrey Brown’s work, which readers of this blog will no doubt be interested in, falls under the umbrella of semi-fictionalised autobiography. His 3-page strip appears to star himself and an un-named girlfriend, and is titled “The Depth of my Anger is Indication of my Love.” – the spiel above mentions “spiteful romance” – well, Brown’s strip contains a fair amount of spite, and only brief allusions to romance (though it is a comedy.)

Don’t go thinking that 3 pages is an insubstantial body of work. These 3 pagers contain no less than 120 panels. Okay, they’re small and there’s a fair amount of talking heads, but there’s also a fair amount of what I’m going to start terming CDNPs in an effort to ensure I don’t start getting porno-traffic. This comic may contain more depictions of sexual activity in 3 pages than most comic readers see in a year (har har, I am funny!)

What we really get here is a relationship distilled into the essence of its sexual liasons. 120 panels broken into around 6 or 7 panel mini-chapters describing the sexual dynamics of a given moment. They work as a serial or taken alone, and while the focus on sex leaves you with some gaps to fill in, it’s got a rapid fire punchlines that something like American Pie would kill for (with very few small penis jokes!)

Now, while it’s worth the price of admission for Jeff Brown alone, I’ll just quickly give my opinions of the rest:

Eddie Campbell’s 2 strips, The Playwright with Daren White, and The Fat Sheila Hit Me with Peter Doyle are both excellent – The Playwright serves as a chapter/trailer for a larger release coming in 2008, and deals with a sexually frustrated playwright’s observations look after his older, mentally ill brother, that looks like it could be very worth buying.

Mandy Ord’s style I recognised from her work with Adhouse, and her strip, Arsehole, was one of my favourite pieces in the book though the following story, Don’t Call me Baby, by David Tang and Matt Huynh might just edgee it out slightly. Ord’s piece deals with body image and the expectation surrounding physical attraction. Tang/Hynh’s piece is about how repression (emotional and sexual) can damage a relationship. Both pieces distill their themes brilliantly while leaving a relatable human core.

Blind Love, by Daren White and Jason Paulos a hilarious story of Super-Heroine, Sweet Spot, in love with Super-Villain, Spore, defending their relationship to the members of her Super-Hero pantheon, The Institute of Integrity. To its massive credit, could’ve come straight out of Adhouse’s brilliant Project: Superior or Project: Romance. The funniest thing in the book, though, was probably the two strips on the back cover – Doctor Karen Summers, M.D. – A pastiche of soap-opera newspaper strips, by Dan Best, Andy Finlayson and Lee Slattery, with a vaguely 60s sensibility. It’s the kind of thing I’ve got a real soft spot for.

The only thing that didn’t really work for me was Mister J’s “Hayley Cambell Funnies.” The humour was broad and the art traditionally cartoonish, it’ll be right up your alley if you’re a fan of, say, Andy Capp, or Hagar the Horrible (imagine those with swearing and a few cultural references, and you’re pretty much there.) Actually, here’s a nice test. Do you find this funny:

Mister J: “Well Hayley, we’ve had a lovely evening, how about a goodnight kiss?”
Hayley: “Why spoil a perfectly good evening?”

I don’t want to get snobbish, but seriously, it’s not really on the same level as the rest of the work, and appears to be lacking a severely necessary amount of self-awareness. It just reads like a slightly dodgy webcomic. I don’t often use the phrase “not as good as Penny Arcade” but in this case…

Still, that’s the only duff note in this metaphorical symphony of greatness. It came out a couple of weeks ago, though I only spotted it this week when I was attracted, like a foolish insect, to the bright colours adorning the cover, then trapped like a rat as soon as I saw the name Jeffrey Brown on it. It’s so good I’m making animal metaphors all over the place. Buy it below, and hey, why not visit the Deevee site and get the trade of the previous issues of Deevee like I’m planning on doing?

Buy Deevee 2007 from Top Shelf
Buy Deevee Collected (does not include Deevee 2007) from Deevee Press