Chester Brown Day

I've emerged from a funk compounded by computer problems (what are these cascading failures about, and why do I seem to have have less memory available? A virus scanner from F-Prot said the machine was clean. Then it proceeeded to lock the computer up completely, though I got it uninstalled. Next, I have to find a spyware detector. Not too happy about it all.) Anyhow, lots of interesting work coming my way. You can never turn down work, but I hope I can find time for it all without blowing a fuse.

Sketchbook today, maybe too sharply reduced, because each drawing filled an entire page. Back-to-School is the best time to buy new art supplies, so I stocked up.



But what I wanted to do today was give you a link to Chester Brown. There's an interview from him, which isn't that useful if you haven't read his work, but at the bottom there's also a link to a strip of his, about schizophrenia. It's an excellent example of "documentary comics." [link]

I haven't read his latest, Louis Riel, but last night paged through a copy of Ed the Happy Clown, published by Vortex Books, now out of print. He has these gentle characters persecuted by a hostile society and random chance. You want to yell "unfair!" but who do you yell to? God? Fate? You can yell a little bit at his other characters, such as the scientists and doctors who perform terrible acts without thinking anything is amiss. Generally, society, even the universe itself, is set up to harm his innocent protagonists.

I've met Brown a couple of times in Montreal. Once, during what was called a "Novacon," a get-together sponsored by a long-vanished comic shop called "Nova" at 472 Ste. Catherine Street. It was a very intimate meeting in a spacious, loft-style comic store with Brown and Julie Doucet, and other, more mainstream comic artists. Montreal is a relatively easy place to be an artist: lots of studio space, and until lately, cheap rents). When the event finished, we went out to the Deer Garden restaurant on Saint Laurent Blvd., just above Boul. Rene Levesque, which I've found is a reliable place to bring a crowd to at short notice.

The second time, I saw him in Cole's Bookstore (which later became Chapters, this was all in the early '90s). a glossy magazine had just come out with my latest comic page, which I was excited to find (there are some of these on my site, which I am updating, I guarantee). I wanted to show him the page, but I must have come off like a demon fanboy, because he would have nothing to do with me. I'm friighted of turning up in a comic or novel as one of these scary characters, menacing the protagonist.

Comics have been called the "poor man's cinema" (got to find a more PC way of saying that), and it's true. I spent $20.00 today on a sketchbook, drawing instrument (No. 3 brush), and budget ink. Outside of a pencil, that's all a comics artist really needs. Computers help a lot, though, but only when they're working.