Chester Brown
Brown at the 2009 TorontoWord on the Street festival
Born	Chester William David Brown (1960-05-16)16 May 1960 (age 65) Montreal,Quebec, Canada
Other names	CWDB
Occupations	Cartoonist politician
Political party	Libertarian
Awards	Inkpot Award (2011)[1]

Chester William David Brown (born 16 May 1960) is a Canadian cartoonist. Brown has gone through several stylistic and thematic periods. He gained notice inalternative comics circles in the 1980s for the surreal, scatologicalEd the Happy Clown serial. After bringingEd to an abrupt end, hedelved into confessional autobiographical comics in the early 1990s and was strongly associated with fellow Toronto-based cartoonistsJoe Matt andSeth, and theautobiographical comics trend. Two graphic novels came from this period:The Playboy (1992) andI Never Liked You (1994). Surprise mainstream success in the 2000s came withLouis Riel (2003), a historical-biographical graphic novel about rebelMétis leaderLouis Riel.Paying for It (2011) drew controversy as a polemic in support of decriminalizing prostitution, a theme he explored further withMary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus (2016), a book of adaptations of stories from the Bible that Brown believes promote pro-prostitution attitudes among early Christians.^{[citation needed]}

Brown draws from a range of influences, including monster and superhero comic books,underground comix, and comic strips such asHarold Gray'sLittle Orphan Annie. His later works employ a sparse drawing style and flat dialogue. Rather than the traditional method of drawing complete pages, Brown draws individual panels without regard for page composition and assembles them into pages after completion. Since the late 1990s Brown has had a penchant for providing detailed annotations for his work and extensively altering and reformatting older works.

Brown at firstself-published his work as aminicomic calledYummy Fur beginning in 1983; Toronto publisherVortex Comics began publishing the series as a comic book in 1986. The content tended towards controversial themes: a distributor and a printer dropped it in the late 1980s, and it has been held up at theCanada–United States border. Since 1991, Brown has associated himself withMontreal publisherDrawn & Quarterly. FollowingLouis Riel Brown ceased serializing his work to publish graphic novels directly. He has received grants from theCanada Council to completeLouis Riel andPaying for It.

Chester William David Brown was born on 16 May 1960 at theRoyal Victoria Hospital in Montreal,Quebec, Canada.^[2] He grew up inChâteauguay, a Montreal suburb with a large English-speaking minority.^[3] His grandfather was history professor Chester New, after whom Chester New Hall is named atMcMaster University inHamilton, Ontario.^[4] He has a brother, Gordon, who is two years his junior. His mother hadschizophrenia,^[5] and died in 1976^[6] after falling down the stairs while in theMontreal General Hospital.^[5]

Though he grew up in a predominantly French-speakingprovince and had his first mainstream success withhis biography of French-speakingMétis rebel leaderLouis Riel, Brown says he does not speak French. He said he had little contact with francophone culture when he was growing up, and the French speakers he had contact with spoke with him in English.^[7]

Brown described himself as a "nerdy teenager" attracted to comic books from a young age, especially ones aboutsuperheroes and monsters. He aimed at a career insuperhero comics, and after graduating from high school in 1977 headed to New York City, where he had unsuccessful but encouraging interviews withMarvel andDC Comics.^[3] He moved to Montreal where he attendedDawson College. The program did not aim at a comics career, and hedropped out after a little more than a year.^[8] He tried to find work in New York, but was rejected again. He discovered thealternative comics scene that was developing in the early 1980s, and grasped its feeling freedom to produce what he wanted.^[9] At 19 he moved toToronto,^[10] where he got a job in a photography lab and lived frugally inrooming houses.

At around twenty, Brown's interests moved away from superhero and monster comic books towards the work ofRobert Crumb and otherunderground cartoonists,Heavy Metal magazine, andWill Eisner's graphic novelA Contract with God (1978).^[8] He started drawing in an underground-inspired style,^[3] and submitted his work to publishersFantagraphics Books andLast Gasp;^[6] he got an encouraging rejection when he submitted toArt Spiegelman andFrançoise Mouly'sRaw magazine. He became friends with film archivistReg Hartt, and the two unsuccessfully planned to put out a comics anthology calledBeans and Wieners as a showcase for local Toronto talent.^[3]

In 1983 Brown's girlfriend Kris Nakamura introduced him to the small-press publisher John W. Curry (or "jwcurry"), whose example inspired the local small-press community.^[3] Nakamura convinced Brown that summer to print his unpublished work asminicomics,^[11] which he did under his Tortured Canoe imprint.^[3] The sporadically self-publishedYummy Fur lasted seven issues as aminicomic. Brown soon found himself at the centre of Toronto's small-press scene.^[3] While he found it difficult at first, Brown managed to get the title into independent bookstores, the emergingcomic shops, and other countercultural retailers, and also sold it through the growing North Americanzine network.^[3]Yummy Fur had respectable sales through several reprintings and repackaging.^[12]

Brown and a number of other cartoonists featured in a show called Kromalaffing at the Grunwald Art Gallery in early 1984. He had become a part of Toronto's avant-garde community, along with other artists, musicians and writers, centred aroundQueen Street West.^[12] In 1986, at the urging of Brown's future friendSeth,Vortex Comics publisherBill Marks picked upYummy Fur as a regular, initially bimonthly comic book. Brown quit his day job to work full-time onYummy Fur.^[9]

Starting publication in December 1986,^[9] the first three issues ofYummy Fur reprinted the contents of the seven issues of the earlier minicomic, and Brown quit his job at the copy shop.^[13] Brown began to weave together some of the earlier unrelated strips^[14] into an ongoing surrealblack comedy calledEd the Happy Clown. The bizarre misfortunes of the title character include being inundated in the faeces of a man unable to stop defaecating, being chased by cannibalistic pygmies, befriending a vengeful vampire, and having the head of his penis replaced by the head of a miniatureRonald Reagan from another dimension.^[15]

A counterpoint to the at-timesblasphemousEd serial, Brown also began to runstraight adaptation of the Gospels, beginning with theGospel of Mark in a subdued style. What appeared a natural target of satire for the author ofEd was instead a continuing attempt of Brown's to find what he really believed, having been raised a ChristianBaptist. The adaptations later continued with theGospel of Matthew and theapocryphal "The Twin" from theGnostic textPistis Sophia,^[16] and Brown went through periods of agnosticism andGnosticism.

The offensive content ofEd caused it to be dropped by one printer,^[17][18] and is suspected to be behindDiamond Comic Distributors' decision to stop distributingYummy Fur starting with issue #9.^[19] AfterThe Comics Journal announced they would be investigating the issue, Diamond started distributing it again.^[20]

In 1989 the firstEd collection appeared, collecting theEd stories from the first twelve issues ofYummy Fur with an introduction byAmerican Splendor writerHarvey Pekar and drawn by Brown. At this point, Brown had grown to lose interest in theEd story^[21] as he gravitated toward the autobiographical approach of Pekar,Joe Matt, andJulie Doucet,^[22] and the simpler artwork ofSeth.^[23] He broughtEd to an abrupt end inYummy Fur #18 to turn to autobiography.

The 19th issue ofYummy Fur^[24] began his autobiographical period. First came the strip "Helder", about a violent tenant in Brown's boarding house, followed by "Showing 'Helder'", about the creation of "Helder" and the reactions of Brown's friends to the work-in-progress.^[25] With "Showing 'Helder'" Brown breaks from his earlier syle by giving the panels no borders and arranging them organically on the page—a style that was to characterize his work of this period.^[26] He found his friends were uncomfortable with his writing about their lives, and soon turned to his adolescence for source material.^[27]

Brown began the first installment of what was to become the graphic novelThe Playboy inYummy Fur #21, under the titleDisgust. The revealing, confessional story tells of the teenage Brown's feelings of guilt over his obsessive masturbating over thePlaymates ofPlayboy magazine, and the difficulties he had relating to women even into adulthood.^[15] Critical and fan reception was strong, though it drew some criticism from those who saw it glorifying pornography.Playboy's publisherHugh Hefner wrote Brown a letter of concern that Brown could feel such guilt in a post-sexual revolution world.^[28] It appeared in a collected edition titledThe Playboy in 1992.^[28]

Around this time, Brown had become friends with the cartoonists Seth andJoe Matt. The three became noted for doing confessional autobio comics in the early 1990s, and for depicting each other in their works. In 1993, they did an interview together inThe Comics Journal's autobiographical comics issue. Seth had joined the new Montreal-based comics publisherDrawn & Quarterly, which had also started publishing Julie Doucet. D&Q'sChris Oliveros had been courting Brown to join as well, but Brown had felt loyal to Bill Marks for giving him his first break. When his contract came up in 1991, however, Oliveros offered Brown nearly double the royalty he was getting from Vortex. Brown moved to D&Q starting withYummy Fur #25.^[29]

In 1992, Brown began a relationship with musicianSook-Yin Lee, and in 1993 moved to Vancouver to be with her. He stayed there with her until 1995, when Lee began asVJ atMuchMusic in Toronto, and the two moved back there together.

Brown moved away from autobio after the conclusion ofFuck, and for his next major project, Chris Oliveros convinced him to change the title, believing the titleYummy Fur was no longer a fitting one for the direction that Brown's work had taken, and that the title made the book harder to sell. His next work,Underwater, would appear under its own title, while continuing the Gospel of Matthew adaptation as a backup feature.

Underwater was an ambitious work. Its lead character, Kupifam, was an infant who was surrounded by an encoded^[a] gibberish-like language, which she comes to understand in bits and pieces. Fans and critics gave the series a lukewarm reception, with its glacial pacing and obscure narrative. Eventually, Brown came to feel he had gotten in over his head with the scope of the project. In early 1998, he decided to leave it in an unfinished state.^[31]

Partway through the series, in 1996, Brown and Lee broke up. They continued to live with each other, and have continued to be close friends. Brown came to decide that he no longer wanted to have exclusive relations with women, but also realized he lacked the social skills to pick up girls for casual sex.^[32] He spent the next few years celibate.

Brown's father died in 1998^[33] as he was putting together his collection of short strips,The Little Man. He lost interest inUnderwater, and had been reading about Métis resistance leader Louis Riel, and decided he wanted to do a biography on him. He wanted to do it as an original graphic novel, but Chris Oliveros convinced him to serialize it first.^[34] Drawn & Quarterly put out the ten issues ofLouis Riel from 1999 until 2003, and with help from aCAD$16,000^[10] grant from theCanadian Council for the Arts,^[35] the finished annotated collection appeared in 2003, to much acclaim and healthy sales. In Canada it became a bestseller,^[36] a first for a Canadian graphic novel.^[37]

In 1999, after three years of celibacy, Brown decided he would start frequenting prostitutes. His open nature prevented him from hiding this fact from his friends, and the fact soon became widely known. After completingLouis Riel, he embarked upon another autobiographical graphic novel that would detail his experiences as ajohn. This time, the work would not be serialized, and would wait until 2011 to be published asPaying for It.

In the early 2000s, Brown moved out from the place he shared with Lee and got himself acondominium, where he lived by himself, and was free to bring prostitutes home. Around this time, Joe Matt moved back to the US, and Seth moved toGuelph, Ontario, breaking up the "Toronto Three".

While reading up on issues surrounding Louis Riel, Brown became increasingly interested inproperty rights. His reading eventually took him to believe that countries with strongproperty rights prospered, while those without them did not. This path gradually led him to espouse the ideology oflibertarianism. He joined theLibertarian Party of Canada and ran as the party's candidate in theriding ofTrinity—Spadina in Toronto in the2008 and2011 federal elections.^[38][39]

During the long wait betweenLouis Riel andPaying for It, Brown allowed Drawn & Quarterly to reprintEd the Happy Clown as a serial comic book, with explanatory notes^[40] that were becoming both more common and more detailed in Brown's work.^[41] In 2007 Brown provided six weeks worth of strips to Toronto'sNOW magazine as part of the "Live With Culture" ad campaign. The strip features a malezombie and a living human girl participating in various cultural activities, culminating in the two going to a movie theatre to watchBruce McDonald's yet-unmadeYummy Fur adaptation.^[42]

Brown's next graphic novel,Paying for It, came out during the 2011 election, in which he was running.^[43] Again he finished with the help of a Canada Council grant.^[44][45] It was apolemic promoting thedecriminalization of prostitution, and attracted praise for its artistry and bare-all honesty,^[46] and criticism for its subject matter and Brown's perceived naïveté as he brushes aside concerns abouthuman trafficking^[47] and dismissesdrug addiction as a myth.^[48] At about this time, Brown finally stated he didn't intend to finish his Gospel of Matthew, which had been on hiatus since 1997.^[49]

In 2016 Brown followed upPaying for It withMary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, made up of adaptations of stories from the Bible that Brown believes promote pro-prostitution attitudes among early Christians, and argues for the decriminalization of prostitution.^[50] Brown declared his research determined thatMary, mother of Jesus, was a prostitute, that early Christians practised prostitution, and that Jesus'Parable of the Talents should be read in a pro-prostitution light. Brown describes himself as a Christian who is "not at all concerned with imposing 'moral' values or religious laws on others" and believes that Biblical figures such asAbel andJob "find favour with God because they oppose his will or challenge him in some way".^[51]

Brown was brought up in a Baptist household,^[52] and in his early twenties he began adapting the Gospels.^[53] Brown later said that this "was a matter of trying to figure out whether [he] even believed the Christian claims—whether or not Jesus was divine".^[2] During this time, Brown went through periods where he considered himself anagnostic then agnostic. Since then, Brown has consistently described himself as religious, but has alternated between periods of identifying as a Christian and simply believing in God.^[54][55][56] As of 2016, Brown describes himself as a Christian.^[51]

In the 1980s Brown expressed sympathy forleft-wing politics, although he has stated his understanding of politics was not deep.^[10] He considered himself an anarchist until, while researchingLouis Riel,^[33] he became interested in issues of property rights, especially influenced by his reading ofTom Bethell'sThe Noblest Triumph, a book which argues that the West owes its prosperity to having established strong property rights.^[33] Brown thus gained an interest inlibertarianism—a belief that government should protect property rights (although, he says, notcopyrights), and otherwise should mostly keep out of people's lives. After attending a few meetings of theLibertarian Party of Canada, he was asked to run forParliament, and collected the 100 signatures necessary to appear on the ballot.^[10]

Brown ran as the Libertarian Party's candidate for theriding (or constituency) ofTrinity—Spadina in the2008 federal election.^[10] He came in fifth out of seven candidates. He stood in the same riding for the same party in the2011 Canadian federal election,^[57] coming in fifth out of six candidates.^[58] The 2011 election coincided with the release ofPaying for It, in which Brown talks about his frequenting prostitutes. He was worried his promotion of that topic in the media would make the Libertarian Party uncomfortable with having him run, but his official Party agent and the Ontario representative assured him that, as libertarians, they believed in individual freedom, and would continue to support his candidacy.^[59]

A longtime friend of fellow cartoonistsJoe Matt andSeth, Brown has been regularly featured in theirautobiographical comics over the years, and collaborated with them on various projects. The three were often mentioned together, and have been called "the Three Musketeers ofalternative comics"^[60] and the "Toronto Three",^[61] forming "a kind of gutterrat pack trying to make it through theirdrawing boards in 1990sToronto".^[10] Brown dedicatedThe Playboy to Seth, andPaying for It to Matt. Sethdedicated hisgraphic novelGeorge Sprott to Brown ("Best Cartoonist, Best Friend").

Brown had a long-term relationship with the musician, actress and media personalitySook-Yin Lee from 1992 until 1996. She is depicted in several of his comics. He moved to Vancouver for two years to be with her, and moved back to Toronto with her when she became aVJ forMuchMusic. He also drew the cover for her 1996solo albumWigs 'n Guns. Brown's relationship with Lee is the lastboyfriend/girlfriend relationship he had, as he explains inPaying for It. They remain good friends, and Brown has contributed artwork to her productions as recently as 2009'sYear of the Carnivore.

Brown is currently in a pay-for-sex monogamous relationship with a sex worker he has been seeing for decades. Their relationship was detailed in the 2024 filmPaying for It.

In the 2024 edition ofPaying for It, Brown calledCOVID a "hoax" and wrote it "wasn't real".^[b]

Throughout his early years as a cartoonist he mostly experimented with drawing on the darker side of hissubconscious, basing his comedy on free-form association, much like thesurrealist techniqueAutomatism. An example of such methods in Brown's work can be found in short one-pagers where he randomly selects comic panels from other sources and then mixes them up, often altering the dialogue. This produced an experimental,absurdist effect in his early strips.

Brown first discusses mental illness in his strip "My Mother Was A Schizophrenic". In it, he puts forward theanti-psychiatric idea that what we call "schizophrenia" isn't a real disease at all, but instead a tool our society uses to deal with people who display socially unacceptable beliefs and behaviour. Inspired by the evangelical tracts ofJack T. Chick, Brown leftXeroxes of these strips at bus stops and phone booths aroundToronto so its message would reach a wider audience. It first appeared inUnderwater #4, and is also reprinted in the collectionThe Little Man.

Brown's Louis Riel book was inspired by the alleged mental instability ofRiel, and Brown's ownanarchist politics, and he began his research for the book in 1998. Over the course of researching for the book, he shifted his politics over the course of several years until he was alibertarian.^[c] Regarding anarchy, Brown has said, "I'm still an anarchist to the degree that I think we should be aiming towards an anarchist society but I don't think we can actually get there. We probably do need some degree of government."^[64]

Brown's drawing style has evolved and changed a lot throughout his career. He's been known to switch between usingRapidograph pens,dip pens, brushes,pencils^[65] andmarkers^[18] for his black-and-white cartooning, and has used paints for some colour covers (notably inUnderwater).

Brown does not follow the tradition of drawing his comics by the page – he draws them onepanel at a time, and then arranges them on the page.^[66] In the case of his acclaimedgraphic novelsThe Playboy andI Never Liked You, this allowed him to rearrange the panels on the page as he saw fit. In the case ofI Never Liked You, this resulted in a different page count in the book collection than was in theYummy Fur serialization. The panels were slightly rearranged again when the"New Definitive Edition" ofI Never Liked You was released in 2002. Brown depicted himself making comics in this way in the storyShowing Helder inYummy Fur #20 (also collected inThe Little Man). Despite drawing his panels individually, he says his "brain doesn't tend to think in terms of one image at a time", so that he has difficulty coming up with one-image covers.^[67]

He has used a number of different drawing tools, includingRapidograph technical pens,markers,^[18]crowquill pens andink brushes, the latter of which he has called his favourite tool,^[65] for its "fluid grace".^[18] For much ofEd the Happy Clown, he had artwork printed fromphotocopies of hispencils, which was faster for him thaninking the work, and produced a more spontaneous feel,^[65] but in the end he turned away from this method, feeling it was "too raw".^[18]

In an interview withSeth, Brown says his earliest childhood cartoon was an imitation ofDoug Wright'sLittle Nipper.^[55] He frequently mentionsSteve Gerber as amongst his foremost influences of his teenage years. From about the age of 20, Brown discovered the work ofRobert Crumb and otherunderground artists, as well as class comic strip artists such asHarold Gray, whose influence is most evident in Brown'sLouis Riel.

Brown often talks of contemporariesSeth,Joe Matt andJulie Doucet's influence on his work, especially during hisautobiographical period. He also had been reading theLittle Lulu Library around this time, and credit's the cartooning ofLittle Lulu'sJohn Stanley and Seth with his desire to simplify his style during this period.^[68]

The stiff, stylized look ofFletcher Hanks' comics, reprints fromFantagraphics of which Brown had been reading around the time, was the primary influence on the style Brown used inPaying for It.^[69]

Many of his books have undergone title changes, sometimes at the behest of his publisher, sometimes without his permission.Ed the Happy Clown: the Definitive Ed Book was given theDefinitive title, despite the fact that he "didn't want to put that as the subtitle of the second edition. Vortex did it for marketing reasons."^[72]The Playboy was originally titledDisgust and thenThe Playboy Stories, andI Never Liked You was calledFuck (the German translation retains that title^[73]).Underwater was originally intended to appear inYummy Fur, but Brown's new publisher felt they could attract more readers with a different title.Paying for It carries the sense of adouble entendre that Brown dislikes^[d]–he would have preferred to call the bookI Pay for Sex.^[43]

Brown has also done a certain amount of illustration work. In 1998, he did the cover to Sphinx Productions'Comic Book Confidential #1;^[75] in 2005 he did the cover toTrue Porn 2 fromAlternative Comics; and he illustrated the cover forPenguin Books' Deluxe Classics edition ofLady Chatterley's Lover byD. H. Lawrence.^[76] Brown illustrated the cover to the 11 July 2004, issue ofThe New York Times Magazine, an issue whose theme wasgraphic novels.^[77][78] He has done the cover forSook-Yin Lee's 1996solo albumWigs 'n' Guns (to which he also contributed lyrics for one song),^[79] and the poster for her film,Year of the Carnivore.^[80]

Brown provided the illustrations for the story "A Tribute toBill Marks" inHarvey Pekar'sAmerican Splendor #15 in 1990, and "How This Forward Got Written" inThe New American Splendor Anthology in 1991.

HeinkedSeth'spencils for the story "Them Changes" inDennis Eichhorn'sReal Stuff #6 in 1992, and shared artwork duties withSook-Yin Lee on the story "The Not So Great Escape" inReal Stuff #16 in 1993.

He alsoinkedSteve Bissette'spencils for the story "It Came From ... Higher Space!" inAlan Moore's1963 #3 in 1993.^[81]

Ajam piece withDave Sim was included in theCerebus World Tour Book in 1995.^[82]

Over the years, Brown has received fourHarvey Awards and numerous Harvey andIgnatz award nominations.The autobiographical comics fromYummy Fur placed No. 38 on theComics Journal's list of the100 best comics of the century. Brown was inducted into theCanadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame, on 18 June 2011, at theJoe Shuster Awards in Calgary,Alberta, Canada.^[83] Brown was one of the cartoonists to appear in the first volume ofFantagraphics' two-volumeThe Best Comics of the Decade (1990.ISBN 978-1-56097-036-1).

• Alternative comics
• The Beguiling
• It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken

• Chester Brown: Conversations by Dominick Grace and Eric Hoffman, with notes by Chester Brown, University Press of Mississippi, 2013

This section'suse ofexternal links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Pleaseimprove this article by removingexcessive orinappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate intofootnote references.(July 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Chester Brown at theGrand Comics Database
• Chester Brown at the Comic Book DB (archived fromthe original)
• News Briefs featuring Chester Brown atDrawn & Quarterly'swebsite
• Time.com interview with Chester Brown
• CBC Arts Online article about Chester Brown's Ed The Happy Clown series
• Chester Brown induction into CBC Arts Online's Alternative Canadian Walk of Fame
• Audio interviewArchived 19 July 2011 at theWayback Machine of Brown bySeth

• 1960 births
• 20th-century Canadian non-fiction writers
• 21st-century Canadian non-fiction writers
• Canadian album-cover and concert-poster artists
• Alternative cartoonists
• Anglophone Quebec people
• Anti-psychiatry activists
• Canadian Christians
• Canadian comic strip cartoonists
• Canadian comics artists
• Canadian graphic novelists
• Canadian libertarians
• Christian writers
• Film poster artists
• Former Baptists
• Harvey Award winners for Best Cartoonist
• Harvey Award winners for Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work
• Harvey Award winners for Best Graphic Album
• Harvey Award winners for Best Writer
• Inkpot Award winners
• Libertarian Party of Canada candidates in the 2008 Canadian federal election
• Libertarian Party of Canada candidates in the 2011 Canadian federal election
• Living people
• Obscenity controversies in comics
• People from Châteauguay
• Underground cartoonists

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