| Ed the Happy Clown | |||||||||||||
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 Ed the Happy Clown: the Definitive Ed Book cover (Vortex, 1992) | |||||||||||||
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| First appearance | Yummy Fur minicomic#2 | ||||||||||||
| Created by | Chester Brown | ||||||||||||
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Ed the Happy Clown is agraphic novel by Canadian cartoonistChester Brown. Its title character is a large-headed, childlike children's clown who undergoes one horrifying affliction after another. The story is adark, humorous mix of genres and featuresscatological humour, sex,body horror, extreme graphic violence, andblasphemous religious imagery. Central to the plot are a man who cannot stopdefecating; the head of a miniature, other-dimensionalRonald Reagan attached to the head of Ed's penis; and a female vampire who seeks revenge on her adulterous lover who had murdered her to escape his sins.
The surreal, largely improvised story began with a series of unrelated short strips that Brown went on to tie into a single narrative. Brown first serialized it in his comic bookYummy Fur, and the first, incomplete collected edition in 1989, titledEd the Happy Clown: A Yummy Fur Book. Shortly after, Brown became unsatisfied with the direction of the serial; he brought it to an abrupt end in the eighteenth issue ofYummy Fur andturned to autobiography. A second edition titledEd the Happy Clown: The Definitive Ed Book appeared in 1992 with an altered ending and most of the later parts of the series eliminated. The contents of this edition were re-serialized with extensive endnotes in 2005–2006 as a nine-issueEd the Happy Clown series and collected asEd the Happy Clown: A Graphic-Novel in 2012.
The story is seen by many critics as a highlight of the 1980s North Americanalternative comics scene. It has left an influence on contemporary alternative cartoonists such asDaniel Clowes,Seth, andDave Sim, and has won aHarvey and other awards. Canadian film directorBruce McDonald has had the rights since 1991 to make anEd film, but the project has struggled to find financial backing.
Brown grew up inChâteauguay,Quebec, a Montreal suburb with a large English-speaking minority.[1] He was an introverted youth attracted tocomic books from a young age. He aimed at a career drawingsuperhero comics, but was unsuccessful in getting work withMarvel orDC Comics after graduating from high school.[1] He moved to Toronto and discoveredunderground comix[2] and the small-press community.[1]
By the early 1980s Marvel and DC had come to dominate comic-book publishing in North America, andcomic shops became the main places of purchase, with a clientele of dedicated comics fans. During this time, a trend towards greater ambition and expressiveness was developing on the fringes, such asDave Sim's longCerebus series and the avant-garde graphics magazineRaw in which the serialization ofArt Spiegelman's graphic novelMaus appeared.[3] Brown was to find himself in thealternative comics scene that grew throughout the decade.[4]
Brown was feeling himself in a creatively stagnant period when he came across a book onSurrealism:Wallace Fowlie'sThe Age of Surrealism (1950).[5] The book motivated Brown to work on an improvisedminicomic series which he calledYummy Fur[6] and self-published from 1983.[1]
Ed suffers one indignity after another as the plot gets grimmer and more surreal. His bizarre misfortunes include having the tip of his penis replaced by the head of a miniature, talkingRonald Reagan fromanother universe. Ed's adventures featured encounters with penis-worshipping pygmies, flesh-eating rats,Martians,Frankenstein's monster, and other characters from traditionalgenre fiction. The story unfolds with a black-comedic sensibility topped withChristian symbolism. Despite his ordeals—being imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, falling in love with avampire—Ed remains a gentle, childlike innocent, with aCandide-like optimism.[6] The story has had more than one ending[7] and is a challenge to summarize.[8]
The children's hospital Ed is about to visit burns down with all the children in it.[6] A number of apparently unrelated short gag strips appear[7] before Brown begins to tie the narrative together into one plot.[9]
Ed is imprisoned when he finds hospital janitor Chet Doodley's severed hand and the police assume Ed had taken it. In the prison, a man is unable to stop defecating and his faeces fill the jail engulfing all, including Ed. When Ed emerges he finds the head of his penis replaced with the head of a miniatureRonald Reagan from Dimension X—a world much like Ed's but whose people are tiny. Dimension X has dumped its waste into a trans-dimensional portal, which turns out to be the anus of the man who could not stop defecating. Reagan's body remains in Dimension X, and the professor who discovered the portal travels to Ed's dimension to find the head, making contact with the authorities of Ed's world.
Chet believes the loss of his hand is due to his unfaithfulness to his wife;[9] as a child his mother read Chet the story of a Saint Justin who cuts off his right hand to avoid sinning, and Chet assumes his lost hand is a like punishment from God.[10] He tries to atone for it[9] by killing his girlfriend, Josie, in the woods.[10] Penis-worshipping, rat-eating pygmy cannibals drag the bodies of both Josie and Ed into the sewers. As they are about to sever Ed's penis, Josie reanimates in time to save him. The two attempt to escape from the sewers when they are accidentally shot by a mother–daughter team of pygmy hunters. Josie dies again, and her disembodied spirit learns from the ghost of Chet's sister that she has become a vampire.[11]
The professor from Dimension X and members of the staff of theAdventures in Science TV show find Ed and the President and bring them to the TV studio. The discovery is big news, and the professor and the President make a TV appearance. When it is discovered that the people of Dimension X arehomosexual orbisexual[12] the professor is put to a violent death,[11] and Ed and the body of Josie are put in confinement. The studio is invaded by the pygmies when they recognize their "Penis God" on television. Josie's spirit returns to her body, and she and Ed escape and make their way to the hospital where Chet works. Josie gets her revenge by seducing Chet and killing him before he is able to repent, thus sending him to Hell.[13]
Ed is one of a number of men secretly kidnapped to provide another, Bick Backman, with apenis transplant—a larger one to please his wife. Out of the lineup of unconscious men, Ed's penis with the President's head on it stands out and is chosen for Backman. After the operation,Mounties raid the hospital and, finding Reagan, take Backman and leave Ed, who has had a larger penis sewn on in the President's place. The hospital hands Ed over to Mrs Backman, claiming he is her husband. Though suspicious, she accepts Ed—and his newly transplanted penis.[10]
The ending that appeared inYummy Fur has not appeared in book editions. In it, Mrs Backman takes Ed home, but her children are not convinced he is their father. After he spends some time in the house they decide "he's way better than the other one".[14] There is a resemblance between Ed and Mrs Backman, and it is revealed they were twinsseparated at birth. While at church, the Backman children are kidnapped by stone aliens and are saved byFrankenstein's monster, who brings them to Washington, D.C. where they find their kidnapped real father. Josie and Ed's zombie friend rescues the Backmans. Ed has his clown makeup restored and reverts to his cheerful self. When he goes to visit Josie, he learns her apartment building has burned down, and she was the only casualty. Her charred skeleton is brought out, clutching an unburnt severed hand.
The alternate ending from the 1992 and later versions drops most of the story that follows Chet's death,[13] replacing it with 17 new pages. In this version, Chet's severed hand visits Josie's apartment at night and rolls up her window shade. As she is a vampire, the sunlight in the morning burns her to death while she sleeps, and she and Chet are reunited in the flames of Hell.[10]
Though bearing the American president's name and position, the diminutive Reagan bears no resemblance to his namesake.[18] He comes from Dimension X, and his head becomes attached to the end of Ed's penis after falling into an interdimensional portal. The president's body remains in Dimension X,[19] where people are much smaller than in Ed's, and arehomosexual.[18]
Brown had intended to useEd Broadbent, aleft-wing politician of the CanadianNew Democratic Party (NDP), but changed it to theright-wing Reagan as he believed Broadbent would have been too obscure to his American readers. He later regretted the decision and said he could have included an explanation.[17] The idea of a talking penis has appeared in a number of other comics, such asThe Talking Head (1990) byPaolo Baciliero[20] andPete Sickman-Garner's Young Tim.[21]Ed spans a range of Brown's interests, from political skepticism toscatological humour tovampires andwerewolves. The story is dark and surreal, desperate and humorous.[6]
Christian elements especially—largelysacrilegious—are prominent in the book. They are at first innocuous and unimportant: a zombie named Christian, another character who believes he has found Christ's face on a piece of adhesive tape. With the fourth issue ofYummy Fur, Brown's surreal take on Christianity becomes central: the cover depicts the Virgin Mary holding not just the infant Christ, but also a severed hand. Within is the story of Saint Justin, whose amputation becomes a key motif: Chet loses his own hand and finds another; his own appears mysteriously under Ed's pillow. Only by praying for forgiveness for his adultery and by murdering his lover is Chet's hand miraculously restored. According to theLives of the Saints,[16] the fictional[10] Saint Justin severed his own hand,[a] but in another version Brown presents, Justin's wife cuts it off with a woodaxe when she catches her husband masturbating after rejecting her advances.[16] Despite Saint Justin's story's exposure to the reader as a fraud, Chet's faith in the official version restores his severed hand.[22] The altered ending from 1992 has both Josie and Chet reunited in Hell, and the ghost of Chet's sister becomes a devil. As Brown mixes surreal sacrilege with the sort of moralism that compels him to condemn Josie for her bloody revenge, Brian Evenson calls Brown "deft at muddying the waters in a way that makes it very hard to pin him down as either belieever or satirist, as either anti-religionist or apologist".[16]
While not part of theEd story, Brown had been serializingstraight adaptations inYummy Fur of the Gospelsof Mark andof Matthew during most ofEd's run. R. Fiore called these adaptations "the best exploration ofChristian mythology sinceJustin Green'sBinky Brown",[23] comparing Chet's excessive Christianguilt with the "almost childlike retelling"[23] ofMark.[23]Yummy Fur readers also found "I Live in the Bottomless Pit", a short strip in which a man discovers theAntichrist, who after millennia underground has forgotten his mission—a paradoxical one, as he states his orders were from God.[16]
Ed prominently featurestransgressive content including nudity, graphic violence, racist imagery,blasphemy, and profanity. Brown grew up in a strictlyBaptist household[24] in which he was not allowed to swear, as depicted in Brown's graphic novelI Never Liked You (1994).[25] Brown challenged his own anxieties by tackling subjects such as scatological humour.[b][26] Imagery such as the recurring Pygmy characters and their "ooga booga" language,Chris Lanier asserted, reinforce "old colonial imaging of 'third world natives'".[27]
According to comics historianJohn Bell, "Brown arrived in print almost fully formed as an artist". His style, while showing the influence of artists such asRobert Crumb,Harold Gray, andJack Kirby, was distinct from his predecessors. He continued to mature as an artist and draughtsman throughout the run ofEd,[8] showing enormous growth from the beginning to end of the graphic novel.[6]
Unlike most cartoonists, Brown does not compose his pages, but draws each panel on separate sheets of paper and assembles them into pages afterwards.[28] The panels inEd were on 5-by-5-inch (13 cm × 13 cm)[12] squares of cheaptypewriter paper, which he placed on a block of wood on his lap in lieu of a drawing board.[29] He used a number of different drawing tools, includingRapidograph technical pens,markers,[30]crowquill pens andink brushes. He had somephotocopies printed from his pencilled work, which he found both faster to produce and more spontaneous in feel.[12]
Brown worked freely, without ruling lines or lettering.[12] Usually he roughly sketched the artwork with a lightblue pencil, then elaborated it with anHB pencil, at which stage he has said "most of the work [was] done".[12] Brown inked the pre-Vortex stories with a brush; when he committed himself to a regular schedule, he felt inking with a brush would be too slow, and switched to cheap markers or pencils to increase his productivity. He continued to use a brush to fill in blacks and to letter hisdialogue balloons.[30] Brown came to favour the quality of the brush again toward the end of the story's run, but found it slow to work with and thus used it less than he would have preferred.[12] By photocopying before sending the artwork to the printer, Brown could ensure that the copy printed from was sufficiently black.[12]
While he occasionally scripted certain pages or scenes, more frequently he did not, and often wrote dialogue only after having drawn the artwork.[31] Brown did not plan out the stories, though he might have certain ideas prepared. Some ideas he found carried him for up to two to three issues ofYummy Fur. Brown used offlashback scenes different perspectives to alter the story to his needs—for example, when Brown revisited the scene of Josie's murder, he placed Ed behind a bush, linking the two characters' fates. When he had originally done the murder scene, he says he did not "know that Ed was over in the bushes a couple feet away".[26]
Brown found himself dissatisfied with much of the work, and later abandoning about a hundred printed pages which he intends not to have reprinted. He found that the improvisational method did not work well withUnderwater in the 1990s; after cancelling that series he turned to carefully scripting out his stories, beginning withLouis Riel.[32]
When Brown startedEd, he was largely influenced by the comics he had grown up with, especially monster stories fromMarvel Comics such asWerewolf by Night andFrankenstein's Monster by artists such asMike Ploog, and fromDC Comics such asSwamp Thing by artists such asBernie Wrightson andJim Aparo.[33]
Since graduating from high school, Brown had been inching towardsunderground comix, starting with the work ofRichard Corben and especiallyMoebius inHeavy Metal, and eventually getting over his disgust over Robert Crumb's sex-laden comics to become a huge fan of theZap andWeirdo artist.[34] He says the book that finally pulled him over into the underground wasThe Apex Treasury of Underground Comics, which included Crumb as well asArt Spiegelman's original short "Maus" story.[35] He was also affected byWill Eisner'sgraphic novel,A Contract with God.[2] Brown had already been an Eisner fan, but this book was different, "something that wasn't about a character with a mask on his face".[34] He started drawing in a more underground style, and submitting work toRaw,Last Gasp andFantagraphics. The work was rejected from these publishers for one reason or another, and Brown was eventually convinced by his friend Kris Nakamura, who was active in the Toronto small press scene, to take it and self-publish it. His minicomic,Yummy Fur, was the result, and included the earliest instalments of theEd the Happy Clown story.[36]
The book also drew inspiration frompulp science fiction, religious literature and televisionclichés.[8]Harold Gray's comic stripLittle Orphan Annie had an effect on Brown after he discovered someAnnie reprint books in the early 1980s. This was to be a primary influence on later work of Brown's such asLouis Riel.[34]
The story began in July 1983 in the second issue of Brown's originalYummy Furminicomic, the seven issues of which were reprinted in 1986–87 in the first three issues of theVortex Comics-publishedYummy Fur.Ed ran in the first eighteen issues ofYummy Fur, along other features, such as Brown's Gospel adaptations.[37] Brown envisionedEd as an ongoing character in the vein of Marvel and DC comic-book characters. In the late 1980s he came to feel restricted by the character;[38] inspired by the revealing autobiographical work ofJulie Doucet andJoe Matt and the simple cartooning of fellow Toronto cartoonistSeth, Brownturned to autobiography.[39]
WhileEd was the main feature ofYummy Fur until Brown switched to autobiographical comics in 1990, it was juxtaposed against straight adaptations of the gospels of Mark and Matthew, which filled up the rest of theYummy Fur issues starting with issue#4.[40]
| # | Date | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | February | 2005 |
| 2 | May | |
| 3 | August | |
| 4 | November | |
| 5 | January | 2006 |
| 6 | March | |
| 7 | May | |
| 8 | July | |
| 9 | September | |
In 2004 Brown set to work on a revisedEd; he pencilled a number of pages, but stopped when he came to believe the new version was no better than the original.[7]Drawn & Quarterly—Brown's publisher since 1991—reissued the contents of theDefinitive Ed collection in a nine issue series on smaller-sized pages from 2005 to 2006 titledEd the Happy Clown, with new covers, previously unpublished art and extensive commentary by Brown.[7] The contents came mainly from issues two through twelve, and some from issue seventeen. About 80 pages—a third of the originalEd material—remains uncollected, including the entire 24-page ending that appeared in issue eighteen.[37]
The first collection,Ed the Happy Clown: A Yummy Fur Book, appeared in 1989 from Vortex Comics before Brown decided to end the story. It collects theEd stories up to the twelfth issue ofYummy Fur and includes a cartoon foreword scripted byHarvey Pekar and drawn by Brown. It was this edition that in 1990 won Brown one of his twoHarvey Awards, for Best Graphic Album,[41] and aUK Comic Art Award the same year for Best Graphic Novel/Collection.[42]
The second edition came from Vortex in 1992, after Brown had takenYummy Fur to Drawn & Quarterly. Bill Marks had it labelledThe Definitive Ed Book[13] for marketing reasons.[43] The edition reprinted what was in the first edition with an altered ending and some material fromYummy Fur#17, and excluded most of the material in the series from after Chet's death.[13]
In June 2012, Drawn & Quarterly published a third edition,Ed the Happy Clown: A Graphic-Novel, reprinting the contents of theEd series of a few years earlier, including somewhat modified endnotes and annotations.[44] It had a new introduction by Brown,[45] replacing those by Pekar and Solomos in the previous editions. Compared to those editions, it was printed on higher-quality paper with highercontrast in the printing, and the artwork was reduced in size.[10] Brown subtitled the book with a hyphen: "graphic-novel". This reflects Brown's distaste yet reluctant acceptance of the term, as its usage had by then become widespread. Brian Evenson sees this as a Brown-like eccentricity and a gesture emphasizing the equal importance Brown places on both word and image.[28] The book was a bestseller.[46]
The 2012 edition also included a ten-page story called "The Door", which Brown redrew from an anonymouspublic domain story from ahorror comic book. In the story, a couple go through a door in afunhouse which leads through a passage in which they get lost for years. Their clothes disintegrate over that time, exposing their genitals, until they finally come across another door—one that leads them to Hell. Brown wrote he found the original story truly horrifying, as the couple had done nothing apparent to deserve their fate. He had originally intended to incorporate it into theEd story, but capriciously veered off in another narrative direction.[10]
| Date | Title | Publisher | Pages | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | Ed the Happy Clown: a Yummy Fur Book | Vortex | 198 | 978-0-921451-04-4 |
|
| 1992 | Ed the Happy Clown: the Definitive Ed Book | 215 | 978-0-921451-08-2 |
| |
| 2012 | Ed the Happy Clown: A Graphic Novel | Drawn & Quarterly | 240 | 978-1-77046-075-1 |
The artwork appeared at its largest in the VortexYummy Fur issues; it was somewhat smaller in the minicomics and first two collected editions. The artwork was smallest in the 2012 Drawn & Quarterly edition, a size Brown considered ideal, stating, "The smaller the better, as long as the words are still legible."[47] The 2012 edition also had wider page margins and gutters between the images.[47]
Ed was seen by many critics a high point of the earlyalternative comics scene in the 1980s, echoes of which can be seen in such later surrealistic graphics novels asLike a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron byDaniel Clowes andBlack Hole byCharles Burns.[48] The story won praise fromThe Comics Journal[23] and mainstream publications such asThe Village Voice[49] andRolling Stone, which placedEd on an early-1990s "Hot" list.[6]Time placedEd at seventh on its list of "AllTime Top Ten Graphic Novels",[50] while publisher and criticKim Thompson placedEd 27th on his top 100 comics of the 20th Century,[51] and editor and criticTom Spurgeon calledEd "one of the three best alt-comix serials of all time".[52] The book appeared in Gene Kannenberg's500 Essential Graphic Novels (2008).[53]
Ed had a large impact on a number of Brown's contemporaries, including fellow CanadiansDave Sim andSeth, the latter of whom was taken in by the ambitiousness of Brown's storytelling, saying "Those brilliant sequences where he would show a situation and then return to it later from a different perspective, like the death of Josie, really blew me away"[6]—andDave Cooper, who calledEd "the most perfect book ever".[54] Others who citeEd as an influence on their work include Daniel Clowes,Chris Ware, Craig Thompson,Matt Madden,[55]Eric Reynolds[56] and the Canadian cartoonistsAlex Fellows, whoseCanvas shows the influence ofEd, andBryan Lee O'Malley, who calls Brown "a Golden God" and whoseLost at Sea was heavily influenced byEd.[6]Anders Nilsen callsEd "completely amazing and one of the best comics ever", placing it in his top five comic books,[57] and citing it as a major influence on his spontaneousBig Questions.[58]
Critic Chris Lanier placedEd in a tradition that includedLike a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron,Max Andersson'sPixy, andEric Drooker'sFlood!;[59] he wrote that symbols appear with such frequency and importance in these works as to suggest significance, while remaining symbolically empty.[59] He finds predecessors for these works in GermanDada[60] and theTheatre of the Absurd.[27] Reviewer Brad McKay found Ed "both hopeless and funny, a trick moviemakers likeTim Burton andTodd Solondz wish they could pull off more regularly".[6]
D. Aviva Rothschild likened the story to "staring at six-day-old roadkill".[20] Brown's father was too offended to keep reading after the fifth minicomic issue, "Ed and the Beanstalk".[17]
InYummy Fur #4, there was a scene in which a fictional "Saint Justin" masturbates after putting off his wife's advances. In one panel "Saint Justin" had just ejaculated all over his hand, his penis in full view and hissemen-covered hand clearly visible behind it. Vortex publisher Bill Marks had the panel covered up with another illustration after discussing it with Brown. Brown agreed to this censorship, but was "annoyed" by it. Marks later called it a mistake that he would not make again,[61] and when Brown included a scene in the following issue of the Ronald Reagan penishead vomiting Marks made no objection, and all future collections ofEd have the original uncensored panel.[62] The censored portion of the panel was covered with a note delivered by a rabbit that Brown often used as a surrogate self; the message read:
"Sorry folks but this picture of a penis ejaculating onto a hand has been censored. If any of you want to see this page as I originally drew it send me a self addressed envelope (and an age statement) care of Vortex Comics and I'll send you a photocopy."
Brown has said that perhaps 100 to 200 readers sent requests for the uncensored panel.[64]
In stores,Yummy Fur was often wrapped in plastic with "adults only" labels on it.[65] It is not known ifEd orYummy Fur were banned from any stores, butDiamond, the largest Americancomics distributor, stopped carrying it for a time in 1988.[15] A publisher discovered that boxes of its feminist publication were lined with discarded pages ofYummy Fur, included pages in which Chet stabs Josie while having sex with her. The publisher lodged a complaint with the Ontario-based printer, which informed Vortex it would no longer handleYummy Fur.[66] The third issue of the Drawn & QuarterlyEd series wasseized at theCanadian border, but was later deemed admissible.[67]
Critic R. Fiore initially found the 1992 ending disappointing,[68] but changed his mind 2012, saying the sad ending gaveEd "an emotional punch that it wouldn't otherwise have".[11] Cartoonists such asCraig Thompson at first found the story off-putting, but later came to admire it.[6] CriticDouglas Wolk wrote that it is not surprising that Brown had not settled on one conclusion to the story, as that "would mean some kind of narrative closure", whileEd's premise is that "everything makes sense as a big picture eventually, but nothing can be relied on from moment to moment".[13]
In 2014,Uncivilized Books publishedEd Vs. Yummy Fur byBrian Evenson. The book details the differences between the various versions of theEd narrative.[69]
| Year | Organization | Award | Notes | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | Harvey Awards | Best Graphic Album[41] | For the first edition | Won |
| U.K. Comic Art Award | Best Graphic Novel/Collection[42] | For the first edition | Won | |
| 1999 | Urhunden Prizes | Foreign Album[70] | Won |
Canadian filmmakerBruce McDonald has had the rights since 1991[6] to adaptEd to film, for which he has planned to useYummy Fur as the title.[43] Such a film could usestop-motion animation,[71] but the project has yet to get off the ground.[72] At one point McDonald hoped to haveMacaulay Culkin star as Ed,Rip Torn as Ronald Reagan andDrew Barrymore asNancy Reagan. In 2000, it was reported that the movie would have a budget of $6,000,000,[73] but it was unable to get the financial backing. A script was written byDon McKellar,[6] and later withJohn Frizzell.[73]
In 2007, theCity of Toronto government commissioned Brown to create six weeks' worth of new episodes of the strip as part of theirLive with Culture campaign. The strips were published inNow magazine. In one episode azombie and his human girlfriend attend a screening of McDonald's still-unmade adaptation ofEd.[74] The same year, McDonald placed Brown's graphic novel in scenes in his filmThe Tracey Fragments.[75]
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