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

 

Cat Getting Out of a Bag

Given the popularity of Lolcats, it seems like Jeffrey knew he was into a fairly safe bet with the release of his observational cat-based humour book, Cat Getting Out of a Bag, which predates the lolcat explosion by several months.

The book mostly comprises 9-panel comics shorts - almost a hundred, in fact - depicting the observations Jeff has made about the various cats he has owned. These are broken up by detailed and realistic life-illustrations of cats, though it should be noted that the entire book is monochrome. The bulk of the artwork for the book appears to have been done with brushes, actually, though the comics are noticably in Jeff’s traditional style and it’s mainly the shading and depth that shows hints of a more painted style. It’s an interesting new take on his artwork.

I have to admit - ultimately, this is one for cat owners only. As a Jeff Brown completist, I bought it, but I found it frequently humourless and uninteresting, and the point being made in of many of the strips eluded me entirely. I gave it to my friend who once owned a cat, and he found every page hilarious. So that probably explains it. I’m not an animal lover, the behaviour of cats doesn’t amuse me, and therefore the book wasn’t really aimed at me - it’s no wonder I didn’t really enjoy it.

Still, I can’t fault the package - it’s a hardback with a nice fabric-covered spine (perfect for claw-sharpening antics, one suspects) and it’d make a really good gift for the kind of people who are REALLY into their cats. You know the kind. It seems well-aimed at the mass market rather than Brown’s usual comic-reading public. It’ll never be essential reading, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it sold better than some of his other work, and indeed it certainly world, if only it could get on the shelves alongside its real contemporaries - things like the Bunny Suicide books - though sadly, I’m not sure people would think to put it there because of Brown’s name being attached to it.

Buy Cat Getting Out of a Bag from Amazon (US)
Buy Cat Getting Out of a Bag from Amazon (UK)

 

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)

 

Incredible Change Bots

This week, it’s all-new Brown as his latest book, Incredible Change-Bots, finally hits UK shores (or, more importantly, the shelves of my local comic shop). Here’s what the inside cover has to say about the plot:

Far away in space, there is a planet full of robots able to change from robot form to vehicle form — the Incredible Change-Bots! Leaving their war torn planet, the Change-Bots arrive on Earth, where their battle continues — BUT AT WHAT COST?!

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Perhaps like a cartoon you used to watch, some toys you used to play with, or perhaps a movie you remember watching this summer (possibly while choking back vomit) - yes, you somehow figured it out - Incredible Change-Bots is Jeffrey Brown’s take on that loveable robot-based megabrand, the Transformers.

Now, before we go any further, I should warn you - I am what you would call “fairly obsessed” with Transformers. Be prepared to witness some even worse nerdery than usual. I promise I’ll be back to “normal” next week.

As Incredible Change Bots opens, the Awesomebots are embroiled in a fierce, ongoing, er, election campaign, with their rivals, the Fantasticons. The leader of the Fantasticons, Shootertron, wishes to gain control of the government, blaming the Awesomebots for slowing their planet’s economy with their lack of warfare. He seizes power by rigging the voting machines, and as a result, fighting breaks out between the two factions. This is what you’d call a thoroughly ironic take on the conflict presented in the original Transformers series, where the factional differences and power structures were poorly defined, if at all. The fight eventually spreads to Earth, and naturally, hi-jinks ensue.

Brown effectively parodies the tone of the original Transformers series - the characters speak with bombast, shouting slogans at each other during battle and making vague declarations about good and evil. As portrayed by Brown, the Change-Bots display the kind of human qualities most robots get to avoid - they interrupt one another, they leave awkward silences, and they irritate others with their stupidity. They have personalities, but each only really has one character trait which they then display at every opportunity. It’s all funny because it’s only a shade more ridiculous than the truth ever was. Moments like Awesomebot leader Bigrig having to set up his trailer after transforming Incredible-Changing, and the human characters pointing out to him how much of a coincidence it is that he changes into a truck, given his alien name, all point to an author who, like the target audience, might just have thought about the original Transformers cartoon a little too much.

Brown doesn’t make mockery his only concern, though - while there’s a joke on virtually every page, the story does also serve as an action-adventure in its own right. Indeed, the plot itself is fully played out within the pages, in a suitably epic tale that even leaves room for a sequel. It’s half-parody, half-love letter to the original Transformers concept, and Brown’s affection for the material beams from every panel. If you love the idea of a transforming robot but also recognise its inherent ridiculousness, well, be assured - so does Brown. For those deeply into Transformers, there are a couple of references that only the obsessive will get - you could count them on one hand, though, and the vast majority of the jokes are going to work for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the concept.

Incredible Change-Bots is most immediately distinguished from the rest of Brown’s catalogue by being his first full-length work in colour. It’s bright and bold, and has great texture. Whether or not he does further work with colour, it’s hard to believe it’ll ever look as good as this. It’s an utter magnum opus, equalling the recent Transformers movie in scope (indeed, the movie release is what inspired him to complete the story he’d been hanging onto for some time) and justifies every centimetre of every page.

To be honest, I could go on, but there’s so much to talk about it could get ridiculous. I’ll leave you with a nicely quotable closing statement (because I don’t do grading, you ingrates): Jeffrey Brown’s Incredible Change-Bots is a must-own for anyone who grew up on 80s toy-commercial television, but it’s still brilliant in its own right. Buy it, love it, thank me later. Preview pages available below!

Incredible Change-Bots Preview Pages at Top Shelf
Buy Incredible Change-Bots from Amazon (UK)
Buy Incredible Change-Bots from Amazon (US)

 

Miniature Sulk

One of the more frustrating things about following indie comics creators, especially for people like me - that is, someone who is both:

1. A completist
2. Living somewhere that’s not America

is that people who write and draw their own comics have a tendancy to self-publish them too. This means there’s often a substantial body of work that you can’t get, because they don’t ship overseas or, even worse, only take them to conventions where there’s no chance in hell I’ll ever get my filthy mitts on them.

Luckily, if you wait long enough, there comes a third way: collected editions. If you pray hard enough to the right god, indie comic creators will eventually cram their last few out-of-print minicomics into a larger anthology and put it on general release. Miniature Sulk appears to be one of those such releases.

After the fairly heavy going work that is Brown’s autobiographical works, miniature sulk largely dispenses with the emotion and concentrates on the comedy. That’s not to say that the stories in Miniature Sulk aren’t autobiographical, of course, because that does largely seem to be the case. Emphasis on seem, though, because with Brown’s comedy work it’s much harder to say how far lines have been blurred between fiction and reality to service the humour.

The first section appears to be the contents of a minicomic entitles “My Brother Knows Kung Fu” which is a series of authobiographical comics in the Unlikely format about Jeff as (mostly) a young boy and his siblings. The caricature that is young Jeff embodies all of the same things that the older version does - confusion, vulnerability, awkwardness - only sort of… more so. The drawings, to me, have an inately hilarious look to them, and as ever it lies in the power of the expressions Brown can depict, full of subtlety. A second section, “Cute Girls Are Cute”, follows a similar vein showing Jeff’s dealings with women during childhood and adolescence, pre-Unlikely.

The last major piece in the book is an 15-page original work entitled “To Wenatchee” which shifts gears and takes a more serious tack. It’s a little at odds with the comedic tone of the rest of the book, but that’s not to say that it’s bad, because it’s a great short story and a fantastic use of the ccmics medium.

Interspersed between the larger bodies of work are loads of smaller pieces, ranging from 1-page parody advertisements, single-panel comics and 3 or 4-page shorts. My personal favourite would be “Bitch Get Off the Phone” in which Brown vents his anger at people who concentrate more on their mobile phone conversation than their driving, in a manner that any pedestrian can probably relate to.

All in all, Miniature Sulk is a fantastic way to spend $8 (that’s about 4 quid in real money). It’s much smaller than any of Brown’s other work, but it’s a great taster for anyone who thinks they’ll prefer Brown’s observational comedy over his usual observational tragedy.

Buy Miniature Sulk from Amazon (UK)
Buy Miniature Sulk from Amazon (US)

 

Be A Man

Following the release of Clumsy, there was much praise, and not unsurprisingly, a certain amount of backlash for this new cartoonist who was showing everyone up with his scratchy penmanship and penchant for navel-gazing. Much of the criticism focussed less on the easy target of the art, and more on the even easier target of Brown himself. He was accused of being emotionally under-developed, of being whiny, and of lacking masculinity. The implication was that Brown’s relationship troubles with Theresa could have simply been solved if only he had stood up for himself, and been a man.

Never one to back down from a fight (though, presumably as long as it doesn’t involve any actual punching) Brown addressed these criticisms head on by releasing the minicomic, Be a Man.

Be a Man isn’t the sequel to Clumsy, like AEIOU. Nor is it a prequel, like Unlikely. Be a Man is an alternate take on how the events of Clumsy could’ve gone, if only he’d taken the advice of those self-appointed relationship counsellors and stopped letting some woman push him around. It takes certain pages from Clumsy and re-draws the ending. In Brown’s own words:

A few months ago I realized I was much too sensitive and pathetic in ‘Clumsy‘, so I wrote ‘Be a Man’ and fixed myself, creating the ‘Clumsy‘ you all wanted to see.

What results is Brown’s first foray into humour from a major publisher. There’s no aspect of his character that he doesn’t assassinate over the course of 32 pages, presenting a Jeffrey Brown who chases other women, ignores the feelings of others, and cares about no-one but himself. Instead of being confused by his girlfriend’s lesbian crush, he suggests a threesome. When Theresa breaks up with him, his reaction is a cheer instead of a sob. In short, this is a Jeffrey Brown who’s not afraid to be a man.

Each chapter is presented in a similar manner to the events of Clumsy, if slightly abbreviated for space, before veering off in a new direction as dictated by the ‘new’ Brown’s behaviour. The chapters have the same title (so you can go back and compare the original and ‘corrected’ versions) and the 6-panel format that exemplifies Brown’s autobiographical work returns. The comic is even the same pocket-size as the novel, with the same colours on the cover. Clearly, it’s designed to complement the original. 

The first time I read Be a Man was well after I read the rest of the ‘girlfriend trilogy’ - at the time it was very hard to come by outside the US, but his popularity and subsequent reprints have made it a bit less difficult to find (though it’s still not available through Amazon…) Perhaps my favourite thing about Be a Man is how openly it attacks the perception of what is and isn’t masculine behaviour - the Jeffrey Brown portrayed within Be a Man is deeply cruel, unlikeable and emotionally retarded, and yet all of his behaviour stems directly from the kind of male archetype that is considered not only acceptable, but desirable. Essentially a writer of modern romance, Brown is well-poised to take those assumptions on, and after doing so indirectly with his self-portrayal in Clumsy he uses Be a Man to go right for the jugular and show that it’s not a bad thing for men to be a little complicated.

Be a Man is brilliantly self-aware, and proves to anyone that Brown is well-poised both to address his critics and to recognise how some people are going to react to his work. He’s not perfect - none of us are - but his response is this, a collection of 32 pages of hilarious ‘fuck you’ comics aimed right at anyone who thinks they could have done better in his situation. It’s a brilliant palette-cleanser following the emotional weight of Clumsy, and a great introduction to the style of humour that’ll later become prominent in Brown’s non-autobiographical works. Find links to purchase it below.

Buy from Top Shelf (US)
Buy from Gosh! Comics, London (UK)