Great Lakes... Great Creator!

Again, I wish to apologize about a lack of a REAL blog entry for yesterday.  I'm not going to get into specifics, but I will say that ROUGHLY from Saturday night to just into today was a VERY rough personal period for me.  (I can say that staring a car and health insurance bill in the face, tonight... with, let me remind you all, NO ACTUAL INCOME COMING IN... is also proving to be rough.  Ugh...)  But yesterday's intention is today's reality, for I bring you the entry I had ORIGINALLY planned.  Actually, this works out for the better, because a topic I was going to divulge into, today, needs a bit more subject refining.  I'll just give you a hint that it's a bit timely with a certain Marvel change.  And today's entry is kind of a personal entry.  I suppose EVERYTHING I write about contains a bit of "me" in them, but this isn't going to be me waxing poetic/insanely about the Superhero genre.  This will actually glean upon a certain creator I grew to appreciate during my initial "Independent" experiment phase in my late 20's!

During my confused 20's, where I had begun to really dive deep into my experiences with the opposite sex, and where I felt I was becoming more of a "refined" person, I wanted to try other comics outside of the capes, cowls, and MULTITUDES of belts and pouches genres.  My first official experience of something different... which I'll talk about for another blog entry... was Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman".  That series hit me at JUST the right time in my life, and yet it remained "fantastical" enough for me to feel like this was a pleasant transition from my usual comic fare.  But the REAL renaissance was around the period where books like Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home" and Craig Thompson's "Blankets" arrived on the scene.  I did sample both of these books, and while they each presented MANY wonderful artistic flourishes, and great "Adult" storytelling, they could be perceived by people as rather "self-indulgent" with their autobiographical nature.  I also can vividly recall first sampling Chester Brown during this period, as well, along with Alex Robinson.  The latter made a FAR more strong impression than the former, but that's not a mark against Brown's talent.  Sometimes creators "click" and sometimes they just miss the mark.  But out of this period of my comic book experimenting, one creator stuck out to me as THE one that really had staying power for my reading attentions.  One man that crafted stories with a slightly rough, but still stylistic, art approach, and nice slice-of-life dialogue that I could hear VERY clearly as existing in real life.  And one man that, in the course of nearly 12 years in the industry, transformed from a self-reflective "Indie" creator to being able to participate with flappin' LUCASBOOKS for his own material!  I bring you Jeffrey Brown for today.

Basically what you need to know about Jeffrey Brown is he originally hailed from my home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan.  You do get slices of that life in his various autobiographical pieces.  But the one fun piece of comic trivia in association with Jeffrey Brown is that, even as a kid, he wanted to draw comics, and he would create his own pieces to showcase at a particular local shop.  (Don't quote me on this, but it was EITHER Tardy's Collector's Corner or Apparition's.)  Anyhoo, after 25 years in the land of BOOMSTICKS... hopefully you know your Sam Raimi films for that one... Jeffrey relocated to Chicago, Illinois to attend the School of the Art Institute to try expanding his work into the painted medium.  But in due time, he would transition over to comics, fully, with his first graphic novel, "Clumsy".  "Clumsy" details an episode in Jeffrey's life that featured his coping with a long-distance relationship, and all the difficulties therein.  (And boy... I could tell YOU some stories about that, as well...)  This first blast of Jeffrey Brown had a lot of the personable charm that would feature in his current works, but there's no denying the artwork was VERY much removed from the standard style he would adopt, even as soon as the follow-up graphic novel, "Unlikely", which detailed Jeffrey's loss of virginity.  What spoke to me the most about these first two books of his was that Jeffrey... as an open character in his pieces... was someone I could identify with, and sympathize with.  Jeffrey Brown, in his stories, is not ALWAYS perfect, and can make some questionable decisions... but isn't that really what life's all about?  Don't we ALWAYS have a moment where we say something in the heat of a difficult situation that we later just wonder, "What the hell was I THINKING?!?".  Hence, why I was hooked, lined, and... er... sinkered?

A brief note: Jeffrey did not specialize SOLELY in graphic novels.  He was also a contributor to such works as "McSweeny's" and "Drawn and Quarterly".  As of 2004, he took his first break from the peeks into his personal life, and created a superhero parody book called "Bighead".  It's in that book that we had a peek at the GREAT absurdist sense of humor that Jeffrey Brown still instills into his works.  Couple that, with an assembly of one-page humor strips called "I Am Going to Be Small", and you have the PERFECT lead-in for a banner year for Jeffrey Brown.  In 2007, Jeffrey Brown unleashed into the world two VERY unique pieces.  One of which would become a LEGIT best-seller for Top Shelf Comics!  The first I'll talk about is "Incredible Change-Bots".  If you're a fan of the original "Transformers" animated series, you HAVE to read this book.  This must be one of the most brilliant skewering of the various bits of INSANITY that were present in the adventures of Optimus Prime and his loyal band of Autobots.  The best-seller... and the book that actually gave me the chance to MEET Jeffrey Brown at a local book chain called Schueler's for a signing... was "Cat Getting Out Of Bag and Other Observations".

In this book, Jeffrey details various episodes of his life with the many cats he's been a caretaker to, throughout his life.  I'm not saying I like this, and the sequel book, "Cats Are Weird and More Observations", because I AM more of a "cat person", but I can confirm I equally enjoy these two books because Jeffrey Brown PERFECTLY captures the moments of sweetness and insanity that come when you own a cat.  I mean, I love the little furballs, but MAN... They can be pretty flipping crazy-town in an INSTANT!  And these episodes of the feline experience are told simply in one-page strips, so you can indulge in little bits at a time without feeling like you have to GORGE on the matter.

After these particular books, life started to change for Jeffrey Brown, and it was reflected in his works.  His next major autobiographical piece was "Funny Misshapen Body", which talked about his struggle with Crohn's Disease, and you could say that's almost "par for the course" with "Indie" comic creators.  But becoming a father, and marriage, can add ENTIRELY new wrinkles to stories about yourself.  Hence, after a "Change-Bots" sequel, Jeffrey Brown began detailing his adventures in fatherhood in "A Matter of Life".  The simple charms that he brought to the episodes of relationships in his earlier works carried over to all of the astonishing events that occur when you become a parent.  And like his relationship pieces, you can STILL find bits of humor and that crackling Jeffrey Brown energy!

2012 didn't also just give us Jeffrey Brown's first full-length book about parenthood.  This was ALSO the year that saw release of "Darth Vader and Son", the first collaboration Jeffrey Brown had with Lucasbooks.  If you can't smile at this book, or its sequels, "Vader's Little Princess" and "Good Night Darth Vader", you have a heart that's FAR colder and blacker than Emperor Palpatine's!  Seriously, you can just FEEL the admiration that Jeffrey Brown has for the "Star Wars" legacy, while adding his own quirks of infectious humor.  I've yet to begin exploring Jeffrey's prose offerings in the "Star Wars" universe, "Jedi Academy", but it's often on the backburner of my reading intentions to get to.

Another recent work of his that comes highly recommended... both by myself and my girlfriend who read it along with me... was "Kids Are Weird".  Remember how I described Jeffrey Brown's cat books?  Well, take that, transition it over to observations of his children and the various oddities that you just CANNOT help but marvel at from kids, and you have this highly entertaining book.  And according to Top Shelf Comics, if you're TOTALLY caught up with Brown's work, hold on to your horses for September for ANOTHER "Incredible Change-Bots" sequel!

I also choose to wrap up this entry with a fun bit of life proving to be somewhat cyclical for Brown's creative interests.  You see, if you remember that comic shop story I talked about, the one drawing that was OFTEN referred to for Brown's local comic art showcase was a piece he drew of Wolverine.  Well, in due time, Marvel would invite Jeffrey Brown in to provide a story for an anthology book called "Strange Tales", AND if you do some online digging around, you can find some VERY cool Marvel tribute pieces that he created!  (I can say that if Jeffrey Brown was called upon to totally rework "Secret Wars 2" in the style he used for a cover homage, I would buy that mini-series in a HEART BEAT!  ... And it's not like he could do any worse than the "Secret Wars 2" we already HAVE in existence!)  So I hope you enjoyed a slice of my reading preference life, and a profile piece on a creator that's not exactly comic book "norm", but is still a creator that I've been VERY enthusiastic about for years on end!