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An Interview with Jeffrey Brown
Jeffrey Brown is a comic artist and writer best known for his autobiographical relationship stories: Unlikely, AEIOU, and Clumsy. He was nominated for the 2002 Ignatz Award in Promising New Talent and has been praised by such noted comic writers as James Kochalka and Chris Ware. Brown is originally from West Michigan, although he eventually moved to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute. There, he shifted his focus away from painting and into comics, self-publishing his first novel to huge success. Since then, he has continued to publish his unique blend of pessimism and hope, including a self-parodying revision of his popular Clumsy titled Be a Man. Samples of his work can be found online at [his website]. He conducted this interview with Tom Fleischmann over email in late February.
Tom Fleischmann is a recent graduate of Grand Valley State University. He writes for Between the Lines newspaper and plans to attend graduate school next year.
UpInMichigan.org: Your first major comic (Clumsy) didn't come out until after you had moved to Chicago. Were you very involved in writing and self-publishing comics when you lived in Grand Rapids, or is that something that came later?
Jeffrey Brown: Although I was doing a lot of drawing and painting while I was in GR, I hadn't started writing comics really. My friend Daniel and I did print up 50 or so copies of a free pamphlet that had some comics in it. I had been in Chicago half a year before I really started drawing proper comics in long form stories.
UIM: Chicago definitely has a growing comics community. Do you feel that living there has given you significantly more opportunities to share your work than Michigan might have, or are you able to distribute your work nationally (through Top Shelf) enough that your geographic location isn't much of a consideration?
JB: Aside from the comics community, the size and location has afforded many other opportunities fro my work as well, for example, the NPR show This American Life which had a segment on Clumsy. A large number of authors, comics artists in particular, make stops in Chicago. There's a thriving music scene with lots of venues for both local and national bands, and in general I find that I'm exposed to a lot of things I wasn't seeing while I was in Michigan. It's also true though, that you can live about anywhere and do the kind of work I do, because computers have made information so easily transferable. I could easily be living in Michigan and continue my career, but I think moving to Chicago was an important step for how my work has developed, because it's been a very stimulating environment for me, whereas it was much harder in Grand Rapids to find a cohesive community. Maybe because people like me keep moving away.
UIM: Along those lines, you mentioned that you haven't gotten much press coverage in Michigan. Do you think that some areas just aren't receptive to the idea of comics as art yet?
JB: I don't think it's a question of being receptive so much as not having been exposed to it, which is true on a national level as well, where graphic novels are still working to gain wider recognition as literature or art. Phoebe Gloeckner, who's a great comic artist, teaches comics at the University of Michigan, and I've also worked with Davy Rothbart from Found magazine. The shop I went to growing up, Tardy's Collector's Corner, was actually really great for promoting the more arty comics, and is probably another reason I am where I am now. Interstingly enough, cartoonist Dan Clowes lived in Grand Rapids for a year, and credited Collector's Corner with keeping him sane.
UIM: Grand Rapids is fairly significant in your work, especially the girlfriend trilogy. Can you cite any specific ways growing up in West Michigan influenced your aesthetic, subject matter, etc.?
JB: I've talked with several other cartoonists—Paul Hornschemeier who's from Ohio, Anders Nilsen from Minnesota, Kevin Huizenga who went to college at Calvin in Grand Rapids...it seems there's a midwest sensibility in our work.
What that means exactly, I'm not sure. I think my visual aesthetic comes from everywhere, but the attitude and underlying feelings, I think, very much come out of growing up in Michigan. You can tell I'm not from California or New York, I think.
UIM: How about Chicago? Can you see any changes in your work since you've moved to such a different place?
JB: Again, it's hard to define exactly, because my work changed here in the biggest way in that I'm drawing comics now. I think the more recent stories are becoming more about the city, maybe. If I was still in Michigan I'd probably draw more trees. I think I'm more jaded here too, having had my car egged, my girlfriend mugged at gunpoint, seeing more homeless...things which I don't think were as evident in GR.
UIM: When you studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, you focused more on painting. You've said that you got fed up with a lot of the pretension and insincerity of the art world—do you find the comics world to be more genuine and open, or is this still a problem you encounter?
JB: I think it's a problem you encounter everywhere, but maybe it's just a matter of finding the people who aren't like that. There were a few people in art school who were more genuine, but it's been easier for me to find and connect with those people in the comics world. I also think that, because comics is still a new and relatively undeveloped medium, there's less pressure to conform to certain ideas, and the system is less fixed, so it's easier to do your own thing and not feel like you need to be a certain way, or that your work needs to be a certain way, in order to be successful.
UIM: How did you get involved in the Holy Consumption of Chicago? It's a great collaborative effort of four Chicago-based artists. Has it been very beneficial in finding larger audiences for your work?
JB: The Holy Consumption has certainly been helpful in getting the word out for my work; there's something very basic about having a website to introduce something to people, like a basic primer of a subject. So it's a great place for people to start finding out about things. The Holy Consumption was the idea of Paul Hornschemeier, one of the artists on the site. He also runs the site. I think the site is less collaborative in nature maybe, and more like a gathering of like-minded work. It's the whole midwest sensibility thing again.
UIM: Self-promotion always seems important in the comics world. Has being picked up by Top Shelf early in your career helped you focus more on creating, or do you still spend much of your time finding new audiences?
JB: Because Top Shelf is a relatively small publisher without a big advertising budget, I still do a lot of self-promotion. Which means saying yes to pretty much every interview, contributing work to a lot of publications for little pay, setting up signings and travelling to comic conventions, etc. I also rely a lot on word of mouth, and have been fortunate that people who like my work have generally been eager to share it with others. Having a publisher does free up a lot of time to work on projects though, because I no longer have to deal with printing books, filling orders, and a lot of the tedious business side of things.
UIM: You've been working on more superhero stories and parodies lately, particularly the Wolverine zombie comic, Bighead, and the Transformers parody. Does your perspective as an indie writer affect how you view mainstream comics and characters?
JB: I don't think it's a matter of perspective as much as a matter of interest. I'm just not as interested in taking the superhero genre seriously, for me it's more of a nostalgic and entertainment genre. Which isn't necessarily inherent to superhero stuff; I'm also not particularly interested in, say, vampires, or westerns. I do like fantasy and scifi, and may enjoy reading or watching serious endeavors in those genres, but as a creator, I'm more interested in those genres as a place to amuse myself. Even my autobiography, which is generally viewed as being 'serious,' is really more of a comedy, and often full of self parody. Self parody on a more subtle level than the outright self parody of my comic 'Be A Man', which parodies Clumsy specifically. I tend to follow my muse, I don't really have an agenda about what I'm trying to say about superheroes or comics or genres.
UIM: Finally, are there any Michigan or Midwestern artists that have strongly influenced your work? Any new artists you'd suggest people check out?
JB: I have to admit there aren't any Michigan artists that have specifically influenced me, at least no one that I can think of offhand as being from Michigan, other than my friends who helped shape my creative efforts growing up—Jeff DeVries, Daniel Diedrich, Nate Bultman, Tim Novak, Tim Nanzer...there are some Michigan musicians who I like, and music is a big influence on my work in a roundabout way. Whirlwind Heat, who are from Grand Rapids, and the White Stripes, of course. I also really like Sufjan Stevens.
Chicago has been a kind of breeding ground for cartoonists and transplanted cartoonists who have been big influences on me. Aside from my colleagues on The Holy Consumption, there's Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Archer Prewitt, Ivan Brunetti. There's also some good young cartoonists here who are headed in the right direction—Lilli Carre, Grant Reynolds , Jeremy Tinder, and Jesse McManus. All three have produced scattered small works, but have the potential to become standout cartoonists. Alot of this work you can find at Quimby's, the premier store for alternative comics in Chicago, if not for the entire country. St. Louis is another midwest city with some great cartoonists working—Kevin Huizenga, Dan Zettwoch and Ted May are three up and coming talents who also run a [website].
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