Most Popular Books by Chester Brown

A memoir of shocking honesty by the graphic novelist behind 2011''s acclaimed comic Paying for It As with every Chester Brown book, The Playboy—originally published in 1992—was ahead of its time, illustrating the fearlessness and prescience of the iconoclastic cartoonist. A memoir about Brown''s adolescent sexuality and shame, The Playboy chronicles his teenage obsession with the magazine of the same name, but it''s also a work that explores the physical form of comics to their fullest storytelling capacity. In it, a fifteen-year-old Chester is visited by a time-traveling adult Chester, and the latter narrates the former''s compulsion to purchase each issue of Playboy as it appears on newsstands. Even more fascinating than his obsession with the magazine is his need to keep his habit secret and the resulting lengths to which he goes to avoid detection by his family and, later, his girlfriends. The comics that became The Playboy first appeared in issues of Brown''s controversial, groundbreaking comic Yummy Fur more than twenty years ago, and yet the frankness of the work makes it seem avant-garde even now. As in every work by this master cartoonist, The Playboy uses no extra words, no extra panels, no extra lines, conveying environment and emotion through perfectly chosen moments. Fans of his acclaimed and controversial memoir Paying for It are sure to be drawn in by this early autobiographical portrait of blazing honesty. The expanded reissue includes all-new appendixes and notes from the author.

Collected interviews with the unconventional comics creator of Yummy Fur (1983-1994), comics memoirs such as The Playboy (1991/1992) and I Never Liked You (1991-1994), and his best-selling memoir Paying for It (2011)

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.

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.

The idiosyncratic master Chester Brown continues his thoughts on sex work The iconoclastic and bestselling cartoonist of Paying for It: A comic-strip memoir about being a john returns with a polemical interpretation of the Bible that will be one of the most controversial and talked-about graphic novels of 2016. Mary Wept over the Feet of Jesus is the retelling in comics form of nine biblical stories that present Chester Brown’s fascinating and startling thesis about biblical representations of prostitution. Brown weaves a connecting line between Bathsheba, Ruth, Rahab, Tamar, Mary of Bethany, and the Virgin Mother and reassesses the Christian moral code by examining the cultural implications of the Bible’s representations of sex work. Mary Wept over the Feet of Jesus is a fitting follow-up to Brown’s sui generis graphic memoir Paying for It, which was reviewed twice in the New York Times and hailed by sex workers for Brown’s advocacy for the decriminalization and normalization of prostitution. Brown approaches the Bible as he did the life of Louis Riel, making these stories compellingly readable and utterly pertinent to a modern audience. In classic Chester Brown fashion, he provides extensive handwritten endnotes that delve into the biblical lore that informs Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus.

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.

The critically lauded memoir about being a john. Now in paperback! Paying for It was easily the most talked-about and controversial graphic novel of 2011, a critical success so innovative and complex that it received two rave reviews in the New York Times, and sold out of its first print run in just six months. Chester Brown’s eloquent, spare artwork stands out in this paperback edition. Paying for It combines the personal and sexual aspects of Brown’s autobiographical work (I Never Liked You, The Playboy) with the polemical drive of Louis Riel. Brown calmly lays out the facts of how he became not only a willing participant in, but a vocal proponent of one of the world’s most hot-button topics—prostitution. While this may appear overly sensational and just plain implausible to some, Brown’s story stands for itself. Paying for It offers an entirely contemporary exploration of sex work—from the timid john who rides his bike to his escorts, wonders how to tip so as not to offend, and reads Dan Savage for advice, to the modern-day transactions complete with online reviews, seemingly willing participants, and clean apartments devoid of clichéd street corners, drugs, or pimps. Complete with a surprise ending, Paying for It continues to provide endless debate and conversation about sex work.

"One of the medium''s brilliant mavericks." — time.com The Little Man: Short Strips, 1980-1995 is a collection of short-story works by the celebrated and bestselling Louis Riel cartoonist Chester Brown. From his early experimental comedic surrealism to his later autobiographical and essay strips, we see not a major talent in development but a fully realized storytelling virtuoso. Included are his early autobiographical stories "Helder" (a story about a young man''s tentativeness when pursuing a woman), "Showing Helder" (a blow-by-blow account of the construction of the previous story), and "Danny" (a strangely compelling moment-by-moment account of Brown waking up and trying to avoid contact with a fellow rooming-house tenant). Other standouts are Brown''s controversial essay on schizophrenia (specifically his own mother''s) and various medical views on this baffling disease, and the title story, "The Little Man," a Freudian classroom romp fantasy by a adolescent Brown that ties into the schizophrenia essay in a surprising way. The acclaimed compendium, culled mostly from his groundbreaking comic book series Yummy Fur, provides a fascinating insight into Brown''s psyche; he rounds out the collection with exacting notes on each story.

''[A] clear-eyed, not-even-slightly-erotic, compulsively readable, sometimes painfully honest account of his time, reasons and experiences paying for sex...[W]ill engage your mind and force you to think about things in ways you may never have done before.''-Neil Gaiman A CONTEMPORARY DEFENCE OF THE WORLD''S OLDEST PROFESSION Paying For It is a natural progression for Brown as it combines the personal and the sexual aspects of his autobiographical work with the polemical drive of Louis Riel. Brown calmly lays out the facts for us of how he became, not only a willing participant, but a vocal proponent of one of the world''s most hot-button topics-prostitution. While this may appear overtly sensational and just plain implausible to some, Brown''s story stands for itself. Paying For It offers an entirely contemporary exploration of sex work from the timid John who rides his bike to his escorts, and reads Dan Savage for advice, to the modern-day transactions complete with online reviews, seemingly willing participants, and clean apartments devoid of cliched depictions of street corners, drugs, or pimps.

Condamné à la traditionnelle messe dominicale, le jeune Chester ne peut détourner ses pensées du Playboy qu''il a entraperçu la veille au drugstore. Surmontant la peur et la honte, il finit par acquérir la sulfureuse revue dans l''après-midi. Nous sommes le 23 mai 1975, la vie de Chester Brown vient de basculer. Un rituel s''installe rapidement autour de la parution du magazine : les risques liés à son achat, le plaisir fugace qu''il procure, la recherche d''une cachette pour s''en défaire. Une version diabolique et narquoise du Chester adulte commente les efforts réalisés par son double adolescent pour maintenir cette obsession secrète. Oscillant entre désir et déni, le jeune garçon grandit dans la honte et la transgression, s''émancipant avec difficulté d''une éducation qui a fait du sexe un tabou. Cette culpabilité adolescente ne le quittera pas une fois adulte et c''est cette histoire de rejet et de fascination pour Playboy que l''auteur détaille ici avec malice. Les lecteurs de Vingt-trois prostituées seront une nouvelle fois conquis par ce portrait attachant, d''une précision maniaque et d''une honnêteté déconcertante. Publié initialement en 1992, The Playboy a marqué son époque et la bande dessinée autobiographique. Vingt ans plus tard, Chester Brown a choisi d''en réécrire les textes, le redessinant partiellement, supprimant les cadres noirs qui l''alourdissaient et le complétant de notes éclairantes et parfois cocasses. C''est cette version inédite que nous publions aujourd''hui.

Brown offers an examination of the jurisprudence of a range of international courts and tribunals relating to issues of procedure and remedies, and assessment whether there are emerging commonalities regarding these issues which could make up a unified law of international adjudication.