| Justin Green | |
|---|---|
| Born | Justin Considine Green (1945-07-27)July 27, 1945 Boston,Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | April 23, 2022(2022-04-23) (aged 76) Cincinnati,Ohio, U.S. |
| Area | Cartoonist |
Notable works | Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary |
| Awards | Eisner Hall of Fame (2023)Inkpot Award (2018)[1] |
| Spouse | Carol Tyler |
Justin Considine Green (July 25, 1945 – April 23, 2022)[2] was an Americancartoonist who is known as the "father ofautobiographical comics."[3] A key figure and pioneer in the 1970s generation ofunderground comics artists, he is best known for his 1972comic bookBinky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary.
Green was born inBoston,Massachusetts,[4] but grew up inChicago,Illinois, the son of aJewish father andCatholic mother; he was raised Catholic.[5] As a child he at first attended a Catholicparochial school, and later transferred to a school where most students were Jews.[6] He rejected the Catholic faith in 1958 as he believed it caused him "compulsive neurosis"[7] that decades later was diagnosed asobsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).[8]
Green was studying painting at theRhode Island School of Design[2] when in 1967 he discovered the work ofRobert Crumb and turned to cartooning, attracted to what he called Crumb's "harsh drawing stuffed into crookedly-drawn panels".[9] He experimented with his artwork to find what he called an "inherent and automatic style as a conduit for the chimerical forms in [his] own psyche".[10] He dropped out of anMFA program atSyracuse University[11] when in 1968 he felt a "call to arms"[9] to move to San Francisco, where the nascentunderground comix scene was blossoming amidthe counterculture there.[9]
Green's short comics pieces appeared in various titles and anthologies includingArt Spiegelman's andBill Griffith's anthologiesArcade andYoung Lust. But in 1972, he was overwhelmed by an urgent desire to tell the story of his personal anxieties.[12][13][14]Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary is a solo comic book that details Green's struggle with a form ofOCD known asscrupulosity, within the framework of growing upCatholic in 1950s Chicago. Intense graphic depiction of personal torment had never appeared in comic book form before, and it had a profound effect on other cartoonists and the future direction of comics as literature.Art Spiegelman was so inspired byBinky Brown that he thought he'd try his own memoir-type story, a strip he called "Maus" which some years later became the seed ofMaus.[15]
Green was also a master sign painter, which he described during the 1980s in his monthly comic strip for the trade publicationSigns of the Times, that later became a book entitledJustin Green's Sign Game (Last Gasp, June 1995).
In the 1990s, Green focused his cartooning attention on a series of visual biographies forPulse!, the in-house magazine forTower Records. It ran for ten years, later collected into an anthology known asMusical Legends (Last Gasp, 2004ISBN 978-0867196214).
Green still made comics the way he did when he started, by dipping a pen nib into an ink bottle.[citation needed]
Justin and his wife Carol Tyler are the subject of the documentary film "Married to Comics" which presented in 2023 at the Small Press Expo event feature at the AFI Silver Theater and Culture Center.[16]
Green's younger brotherKeith Green (c. 1951[17]–1996) was also involved in the underground comix movement, as an underground distributor from c. 1968–1975, and publishing comics under the nameKeith Green Industrial Realities (as well as the imprintSaving Grace) in the period c. 1971–1977.[18] He later became an art dealer. Keith Green died in 1996.[19]
Justin Green lived inCincinnati, and was married to fellow cartoonistCarol Tyler.[20] Green and Tyler met in San Francisco in the early 1980s; they have a daughter together, Julia, who is also an artist.[21]
Green also has a daughter Catlin b. 1976 and was first cousins with film directorWilliam Friedkin (Green's father and Friedkin's mother are siblings).[2]
Green died on April 23, 2022, in Cincinnati. His death was announced by Carol Tyler on her Facebook page.[22]
The following is a list of books by Justin Green.
| BOOK | YEAR | PUBLISHER | NOTES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary | 1972 | Last Gasp | Reprinted twice. First in Justin Green's Binky Brown Sampler in 1995, then by McSweeney's in 2009.ISBN 193478155X |
| Justin Green's Sign Game | 1994 | Last Gasp | Collection of comics originally published in Signs of the Times magazine.ISBN 0-944094-14-7 |
| Justin Green's Binky Brown Sampler | 1995 | Last Gasp | ISBN 0-86719-332-8 |
| Musical Legends: The Collected Comics from Pulse Magazine | 2004 | Last Gasp | Collection of comics originally published inPulse! MagazineISBN 0-86719-587-8 |
