Ed the Happy Clown

Ed the Happy Clown
Author: Chester Brown
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2021-04-22
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1770461922

A long-out-of-print classic by a master of underground comics In the late 1980s, the idiosyncratic Chester Brown (author of the much-lauded Paying For It and Louis Riel) began writing the cult classic comic book series Yummy Fur. Within its pages, he serialized the groundbreaking Ed the Happy Clown, revealing a macabre universe of parallel dimensions. Thanks to its wholly original yet disturbing story lines, Ed set the stage for Chester Brown to become a world-renowned cartoonist. Ed the Happy Clown is a hallucinatory tale that functions simultaneously as a dark roller-coaster ride of criminal activity and a scathing condemnation of religious and political charlatanism. As the world around him devolves into madness, the eponymous Ed escapes variously from a jealous boyfriend, sewer monsters, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a janitor with a Jesus complex. Brown leaves us wondering, with every twist of the plot, just how Ed will get out of this scrape. The intimate, tangled world of Ed the Happy Clown is definitively presented here, repackaged with a new foreword by the author and an extensive notes section, and, as with every Brown book, astonishingly perceptive about the zeitgeist of its time.

Ed Vs. Yummy Fur

Ed Vs. Yummy Fur
Author: Brian Evenson
Publisher: Critical Cartoons
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780984681495

A smart and passionate exegesis of Chester Brown's seminal comic book, Yummy Fur.

Louis Riel

Louis Riel
Author: Chester Brown
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2021-04-22
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1770460853

Chester Brown reinvents the comic book medium to create the critically acclaimed historical biography Louis Riel. Brown won the Harvey Awards for best writing and best graphic novel for his compelling, meticulous, and dispassionate retelling of the charismatic, and perhaps insane, nineteenth-century Metis leader's life. Brown coolly documents with dramatic subtlety the violent rebellion on the Canadian prairie led by Riel, an embattled figure in Canadian history, regarded by some as a martyr who died in the name of freedom, while others consider him a treacherous murderer.

I Never Liked You

I Never Liked You
Author: Chester Brown
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2021-04-29
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1770461930

A harrowing memoir of loss and the struggle to connect, Brown's story is told with a spare poetic elegance. A self-absorbed teenager, Chester Brown strays into the difficult territory of friendship and early love while at home there is a slowly building crisis over his mother's mental health. Emotionally intense, the story veers unsteadily between the extremes of eerie detachment and sudden desperate outbursts of need. A complex and disturbing true story told with a nuanced, queasy visual style that lingers in the mind long after the book has been put away.

Heroes of the Comics

Heroes of the Comics
Author: Drew Friedman
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2014-09-10
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1606997319

Featuring over 80 full-color portraits of the pioneering legends of American comic books, including publishers, editors and artists from the industry’s birth in the ’30s, through the brilliant artists and writers of behind EC Comics in the ’50s. All lovingly rendered and chosen by Drew Friedman, a cartooning legend in his own right. Featuring subjects popular and obscure, men and women, as well as several pioneering African-American artists. Each subject features a short essay by Friedman, who grew up knowing many of the subjects included (as the son of writer Bruce Jay Friedman), including Stan Lee, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Will Elder, and Bill Gaines. More names you might recognize: Barks, Crumb, Wood, Wolverton, Frazetta, Siegel & Shuster, Kirby, Cole, Ditko, Werthem… it’s a Hall of Fame of comic book history from the man BoingBoing.com call “America’s greatest living portrait artist!”

The Playboy

The Playboy
Author: Chester Brown
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1992-12
Genre: Art
ISBN:

D&Q's first ever graphic novel, published in 1992,this is an excellent companion to I Never Liked,You. Stark and expressionistic, this is Chester,Brown's frank and unsettling account of first his,adolescent and then adult relationship with,pornography. It begins in 1975 with an abandoned,copy of Playboy..

The Great Clowns of American Television

The Great Clowns of American Television
Author: Karin Adir
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2001-12-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780786413034

There are generations that have never seen Sid Caesar become an automobile tire or Red Skelton stick his thumbs in his armpits and intone, "Two theagulls...," never journeyed with Ernie Kovacs to a surrealistic world of his warped imagination. Here seventeen comic talents are profiled (with photographs): their early years, marriages and personal challenges, anecdotes about them, the characters they created, their styles, and often representative dialogue or sketch descriptions. There is a listing of all television shows in which each comic starred (giving length, network, air dates). The comics include Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, Carol Burnett, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Tim Conway, Jackie Gleason, Danny Kaye, Ernie Kovacs, Olsen and Johnson, Martha Raye, Soupy Sales, Red Skelton, Dick Van Dyke, Flip Wilson, Jonathan Winters, and Ed Wynn.

Clowns

Clowns
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN: 9788758829128

Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith
Author: Frederick Luis Aldama
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2019-10-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1496824814

First with his magisterial fantasy Bone to his mind-bending, time-warping sci-fi noir RASL, Paleolithic-set fantasy Tüki: Save the Humans, arthouse-styled superheroic miniseries Shazam!, and his latest children’s book Smiley’s Dream Book, Jeff Smith (b. 1960) has made an indelible mark on the comics industry. As a child, Smith was drawn to Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, Carl Barks’s Donald Duck, and Walt Kelly’s Pogo, and he began the daily practice of drawing his own stories. After writing his regular strip Thorn for The Ohio State University’s student paper, Smith worked in animation before creating, writing, and illustrating his runaway success, Bone. A comedic fantasy epic, Bone focuses on the Bone cousins, white, bald cartoon characters run out of their hometown, lost in a distant, mysterious valley. The self-published series ran from 1991 to 2004 and won numerous awards, including ten Eisner Awards. This career-spanning collection of interviews, ranging from 1999 to 2017, enables readers to follow along with Smith's development as an independent creator, writer, and illustrator.