Your Heart is an Empty Room

Another packed weekend means no time for a massive update, but here’s another something special that I’ve been saving for when I wussed out of a review. This is (youtube allowing) the Jeffrey Brown-directed video for Death Cab for Cutie’s song, Your Heart is an Empty Room from the album, Plans.

The story is, in great Brown tradition, semi-autobiographical. It was animated by Eliza Chincarini, who may or may not be the same one currently working on Robot Chicken (and if so, great work on that too!)

This video, alone with a rare video interview with the man himself is available on the DCFC DVD companion to Plans, entitled Directions.

Buy Directions from Amazon (UK) *
Buy Directions from Amazon (US)

*Note that the Directions DVD is Region 1. For the love of god ensure you can play it before buying it.

 

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)

 

Conversation #2

Conversation #2 is a fairly odd comic, even by the standards of the indie scene. In a format devised by Kochalka, two creators illustrate a conversation that they’re having, alternately drawing half a panel at a time and allowing the other one to complete it. The topic of said conversation? In this case: Art. Why they make it, and where it comes from. A pretty hefty topic for 48 pages, that’s for sure, especially when this is probably the tiniest comic I’ve ever actually bought – it could fit inside a CD case with plenty of space. It seems like it could be a real challenge to fit topics so huge into so little space.

Somehow, the format does manage to keep up. Rather than being the static, boring talking-heads piece that the idea of an illustrated conversation suggests, it’s remarkably action-packed. Kochalka brings his surrealist and vulgar tone to the artwork, meaning that you get a 48-page philosophical head-to-head across some giant metaphorical landscape that starts on a rock beneath a tree and eventually visits prehistoric caves and outer space, while along the way a giant version of Brown destroys a city. Strangely compelling. Brown and Kochalka’s styles, while fairly different, meld together fairly well. It’s clear who’s drawn what, but in the cases where one inhabit’s the other’s landscapes, the way they stick out almost seems to service the conflict of ideologies that’s being presented.

The two artists do genuinely approach their comics differently. Kochalka seems to espouses a more immediate, visceral, “draw first and ask questions later” approach, in which his comics aren’t about his life – they are his life – and he draws solely because he can. Brown takes a different tack, with a reflective and introverted approach where everything has a reason. I’m unsure of Kochalka’s background, but it certainly feels like Brown’s fine arts education is influencing him.

While I can see the appeal in both methods, it’s probably no surprise that I agree with Brown more than Kochalka. At one point, Brown feels like Kochalka’s reasoning has become circular, and it does seem that way to me as a reader at times. Kochalka evades direct questioning about his reasons for writing and drawing comics about himself by making assertions about living through art and art through living. Eventually they come to an agreement about why actually go so far as to publish the comics they make, rather than just write them, which to me feels like Kochalka has finally been tempered into addressing his motivations and reasoning, despite his earlier willingness to avoid them. In the interests of balance, (and in the nature of dialogue presented by the very format of this comic) Kochalkaholic does a review where he’s firmly in the Kochalka camp.

Despite Conversation being written by two largely autobiorgaphical creators, it feel like the most honest work they’ve done. It cuts directly to the core of why either is even making comics in the first place, and more importantly it presents them as about as human as it gets, exchanging ideas – occasionally inarticulately, or inaccurately – seemingly without revision or filtering. Even the imperfect version of Brown he usually writes is still, to some degree, only a version of the true one. The Brown in Conversation feels like Brown, the creator, rather than Brown, the character.

It’s fair to say there’s very niche appeal to Conversation. The experimental format and the very subject matter mean that likely the only people this is going to attract are people who are already fans of Kochalka and Brown. I hesitate to use the term “vanity project” but it’s certainly fair to say that Top Shelf probably took a reasonable risk that this would sell based on the names of the creators alone. It’s a small subset of people that are going to find this a rewarding reading experience, but to those that would, it’s an incredibly unique piece of work, essential for understanding the creators involved.

Buy Conversation #2 from Top Shelf

 

Proof of Life

Despite several weeks of near-clockwork regularity and constant updates, there was bound to come a time when it wouldn’t be possible for me to do an update, and this week is the first of those times. I am, as you read this, most probably in a field in Berkshire either camping in a waterlogged tent, or listening to a bunch of bands playing. In any case, I’m in no condition to be writing about anything, Jeffrey Brown or otherwise.

Still, that’s not to say I’m leaving you out in the cold. I don’t have a review, but here’s some Jeff Brown content I prepared earlier. Visit my Flickr page and see images tagged “Jeffrey Brown” for a look at what kind of mini-sketches Jeff puts into his books when you sign them. These particular books were my own personal copies, signed by him downstairs at Gosh! Comics in London. We had a conversation about his Wolverine parody book and the forthcoming Transformers movie, and he was very polite despite how obviously I struggle with interpersonal skills. I would recommend the experience to a friend.

And, because it greatly amuses me, here’s an embedded copy of the postcard advertising the signing:

See you next week!

 

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)

 

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!)

 

Aeiou: Any Easy Intimacy

Aeiou, or Any Easy Intimacy marks the ‘end’ of Jeffrey Brown’s autobiographical Girlfriend Trilogy, following Clumsy and Unlikely. There will be a short epilogue which I’ll certainly be getting to in due course. This last book contains the story of Brown’s relationship with a girl named Sophia, in a way that Brown himself claims in post-script “leaves so much left unsaid that it may as well be fiction.”

Ever the auteur, Brown presents Aeiou in an even simpler fashion than his previous books. With two large panels per page, and 2 pages per ‘chapter’ it breaks the format of his other autobiographical work in several ways. Most importantly, the moments are more carefully defined and rendered, as with the pencil work. As a result, much of the story happens through implication only – rather than being a warts-and-all document of a relationship, it leaves the reader to infer much of the character interplay based on a suggestion, with the starts and ends of conversations occasionally missing, and the fallout and buildup of any emotional moment left to our imaginations. These techniques give a hyper-real feeling to the characters and events, giving a stark picture of things that would seem far more mundane as part of a larger tapestry.

It seems that, out of all of Brown’s documented relationships, Aeiou appears to tell the story of the one that hit him the hardest. Occasionally criticised for being weaker in structure than the others, the fact that it misses out so much, allowing huge narrative jumps, suggests that he felt less willing to go into a lot of specifics – clearly, the acknowledgement at the end indicates a fair amount of missing material, as does the fact that the narrative has a happy ending that the relationship clearly didn’t. It’s not as if it was the freshest in his mind – Clumsy, at least, was started before the relationship ended. The shift from his earlier autobiographies leads many people to claim that this isn’t the best book to start with, but I disagree – it’s more challenging, certainly, and perhaps a non-comics reader might have trouble reading a comic that gets so disjointed, but the more I consider it, the more I think it’s probably the best of the three books. It takes the techniques and idiosyncracies of them and trims away the fat, leaving an arguably purer experience, and one that certainly requires more of the reader, and in return, gives more back.

One thing I’ve never mentioned about Brown’s artwork, but that seems most appropriate for this story, is how disarming his depictions can be. The simplicity of the drawing lets you connect with characters on a far more direct level than deeply accurate renderings would allow. Part of the appeal of cartooning (against more ‘mainstream’ comic work) is that it allows for the application of a more general mental model, and Brown’s work in Aeiou takes advantage of that to about the fullest extent possible, finally inverting things with the last panel – a detailed illustration of Sophia standing in a darkened room. That moment alone hits you all the harded because of the sudden realism that previously was absent.

Understandably, Aeiou isn’t going to be everyone’s favourite. It does largely depend on how you take ambiguity in a story. For those that have read Clumsy and Unlikely and are looking for more of the same, this is the closest you can get from Brown, but it’s not quite identical to what has come before. It’s not really the last word, but it’s the end of the full-length works on the subject. Just don’t go into it looking for closure.

Buy Aeiou: Any Easy Intimacy from Amazon (UK)
Buy Aeiou: Any Easy Intimacy from Amazon (US)

 

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

 

Unlikely

Unlikely is Jeffrey Brown’s second major published work. Sub-titled “How I Lost My Virginity,” it takes place before the events of Clumsy and depicts the events of his first serious relationship, including, as promised, how he loses his virginity. It’s a story almost everyone’s going to have at some point in their life, but in most cases it’s not something people are anxious to share, let alone write, draw and have published for the entire world to see. Jeffrey Brown decided to do just that, however – as you can imagine, it’s a story that must have required some level of catharsis.

So, let’s get it straight – this isn’t bragging. If you think he wanted to draw a comic about losing his virginity because it involved twelve cheerleaders and vat of baby oil, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Unlikely is, if anything, the most fundamentally traumatic of the so-called “Girlfriend Trilogy,” simply because he goes into the relationship innocently and seems unprepared for what’s going to happen to him, both physically and emotionally.

When reading Unlikely, it’s very easy to fall into relationship-counsellor mode and start predicting doom. Frankly, when Allysin starts describing her past full of drugs, abuse and eating disorders immediately after they first kiss, it becomes obvious that she’s a walking pile of drama and it’s unlikely to be the somewhat naive-seeming virgin, our hero Jeffrey Brown, that calms her down. However, for the purposes of the story, we have to remember two things – first, that the events depicted are selective and obviously the truth, if not distorted, has certainly been snipped away to present a particular picture, and secondly, that what matters is that at the time they thought it could work.

Detractors of Clumsy will be glad to see a Jeffrey Brown in Unlikely who is less of a doormat. Unfortunately, it’s easy to see how his relationship with Allysin informs his later relationship with Theresa. If the message of Unlikely is anything, it’s that people can’t be forced to be what they’re not. In Jeff’s eyes, the relationship broke down because Allysin frequently got drunk, smoked and used drugs against his wishes. It’s likely that she feels differently – while we don’t have a comic about it, there’s enough there to infer that she feels the relationship ended because Jeff was unable to accept those aspects of her and attempted to force her to change. By the events of Clumsy, Jeff is needier, and given the emotional wringer he’s gone through in his first relationship, it’s not hard to see why.

Unlikely presents a similar art style to it’s predecessor, however it’s far more refined. The images are better-composed, the designs more consistent, and you get such advanced techniques as shading turning up during particularly important moments. The immediacy and emotion are still there in the work – it’s certainly not over-rendered – but by balancing the crude with the conventional the book looks and reads far better than his debut. The format is similar to Clumsy – it’s a slightly larger book, though it retains the 6-panel per page structure, and titled-vignette format, though they are arranged into 8 chapters each of which contain a significant event or discretely-defined period in the relationship.

Unlikely was the first Jeff Brown book I ever read. There are a lot of moments, good and bad, that I could identify with on some level, and even if my girlfriend isn’t a drug-obsessed loon it struck me as being the first depiction of modern romance that mirrored, in any way, my own experiences. That’s what compelled me to go and find more. The events of Unlikely, more than Clumsy or AEIOU are driven more by the girl he’s with rather than his own actions, and it feels like a more traditional story as a result. The overwhelming sense is a little more one-sided than the other books – you’re reading less about two people, and more about how Jeff Brown was increasingly unable to deal with this cartoon-character of a girl. The further through the book you get, the more the sweetness between them turns to conflict, and it’s not hard to feel bad for Brown’s attempts to deal with it, and inability to end his first relationship long after it’s finished in her mind.

In retrospect, it’s probably the worst starting point of the three books despite being the one that’s chronologically first, because it needs the context of Clumsy to show that it’s not being unreasonably hard on Allysin simply because they broke up. However, once you’ve read Clumsy and want to know the full story of one of book’s opening vignettes, entitled “My last night with Krystin,” Unlikely is where you’ll need to go.

A page from Unlikely.
Buy Unlikely from Amazon UK.
Buy Unlikely 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)