I had every intention of reviewing Jeffrey Brown’s latest memoir, Funny Misshapen Body (Simon & Schuster), today. I was planning on reviewing it right up until I got to the very end of the book, and in a post-epilogue, F.A.Q. like sequence he addressed my main difficulty with the book:
Like Brown’s “Girlfriend Trilogy” books, Funny Misshapen Body is structured out of sequence with time, with different sections jumping over and over, so that he’s telling cumulative anecdotes rather than a story, and those anecdotes become the story by the time it’s finished.
In the girlfriend books, these sequences are all very short, giving the books episodic natures. Here though, the sequences are entire chapters, and rather than simply covering the course of a young person’s relationship, the cover a major chunk of Brown’s life—decades really.
It doesn’t hurt the integrity of the story, but I wonder if that story might have been served better with a structure. In the panels posted above, Brown explains why he writes his comics like that, and it certainly makes a great deal of sense, but almost all of his comics are structured the same way—even his lighthearted superhero parody Bighead or his awesome Transformers parody book—which made me wonder if Brown was choosing to tell stories that way, or if its become a default.
So I thought I might talk about that a bit in the course of criticizing his book, but then I got to the end there, and come on…
…how can you criticize a guy with a face like that? He’s so sincere in his apology! It’s okay Jeffrey, I forgive you. Maybe it’s not you anyway; maybe it’s just me.
So I won’t. I’ll just recommend that you give this book a look. If you’re interested in the creation of comics and cartooning, I think this will fall pretty far into must-read territory, as it deals with Brown’s life interest in comics and art, how he ended up becoming a comics artists after years of pursuing a fine art career, and the creation of his first graphic novel, Clumsy, while still a grad student (and having an adviser question aspects of it). There are also some sections on his childhood body issues, girls, his Crohn’s disease, and use of alcohol and marijuana as a college student.
Plus, Brown’s not the only cartoonist in the book. No sir, it is full of cartoonist guest-stars, guest-stars like…
CHIP KIDD!
DAN CLOWES!
CHRIS WARE!
JOE SACCO!
AND PAUL HORNSCHEMEIER!
June 18th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
You know, superhero comics often get knocked for doing the same thing over and over again (deservedly so in many cases), but these “slice of life” Indy comics seem just as guilty of sticking to the same old stale stuff. Do we really need another look at the mundane minutia of a boho slacker’s life drawn in a minimalist style?
June 18th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
I remember the first time i got one his books by mail, at first i was pissed because i thought i wasted my money on a shitty indie book again but i read and i couldn’t put it down. It bothered me that a book drawn so “poorly” was published heck I’ve seen better art on napkins or in old mini comix, but it was the story that sold. In the time since I first read Clumsy he has become a better artist and his stories for most part have remained awesome must reads for me.
June 19th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Hey Mark,
Let me suggest that you give Jeffrey Brown’s book a try first before you criticize it superficially. For me, the episodic structure of Funny Misshapen Body worked really well — as it has for Eddie Campbell’s Alec stories — and felt real, the highest complement anybody could make about an autobio graphic novel.
That said, another quality shared by Campbell and Brown as seen from a vantage point of someone who’s sold their books: A lot of people can’t get past their art styles and see the bigger picture and better stories. I have my own blind spots about some very popular cartoonists — mainly in the mainstream arena — whose award-winning work looks good from a distance but, on closer inspection, the stories they’re telling fail to excite.
I’ll grant you there were places in Brown’s Incredible Changebots book that the narrative was spotty, but the book was so much fun to read, especially after seeing Transformers, I just couldn’t put it down. Neither could my wife who reads maybe a graphic novel a year, if I’m luck enough to convince her…
Wayne
June 19th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
It’s not so much the art as the naval-gazing narcissism that kills my interest in so much of the Indy Comics scene.
June 19th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Hey Mark,
Just so I know what you’re talking about, could you give me an example of “navel-gazing narcissism” in comics?
Again, I like Jeff’s stories because, for the most part, they ring true to me and are very entertaining. Have you sampled his stuff before, and not liked it? If you have, that’s cool. If not, you may want to give Funny Misshapen Body and Changebots a look.
Thanks,
Wayne
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:54 am
“an example of “navel-gazing narcissism” in comics?”
I can’t say what Mark was thinking of specifically, but James Kochalka’s “American Elf” surely falls into that category. So does Dan Green’s “Binky Brown”, for that matter. Crumb does a lot of navel-gazing. So does Spiegelman. You know what? All those guys do fantastic comics, and so does Jeffrey Brown.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:51 am
I’ve been a fan of Brown’s work for awhile, but his latest graphic novels don’t seem to work as well for the reader. Whereas his early, emotionally-charged works were well-crafted in their intimate collage of relationships, these later works do come off as expected and non-specific to the point of being bland. I’ll agree with Mark to the extent that Brown’s latest work features the usual coming-to-age, trying-to-be-an-artist stereotype that isn’t what Brown can turn into a unique experience. My guess is that he’s run out of girls to turn into books and is scrambling for memoir-esque episodes in his life to maintain his career. Perhaps he’s just peaked. But if he continues to go down this road, I don’t see him lasting much longer in the limelight.