Book Review: Chester Brown

 Reviewed by Christina Pasqua, University of Toronto

Frederik Byrn Køhlert. Chester Brown. University Press of Mississippi, 2025. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/C/Chester-Brown3

  

Earlier this summer, I bumped into Chester Brown while perusing the aisles at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. This was not an unusual occurrence, since we both live and work in the same city. I’ve seen him riding past me on his bike downtown and spotted him in line at one of the college book sales on campus. It’s safe to say that Toronto knows Chester Brown and Chester Brown knows Toronto. It’s where he launched his career in the early 1980s, and where back issues of his serialized comics can still be found in boxes at The Beguiling, a local comic shop founded in 1987. Sook-Yin Lee’s recent film adaptation of Brown’s graphic novel Paying For It (2011) stands out as a love letter to how quintessentially Toronto-based both his work is, and that moment in their lives was, especially as key figures in the city’s alternative scene. Frederik Byrn Køhlert’s Chester Brown, fifth in the University Press of Mississippi’sBiographix series, is a concise biography of the cartoonist’s life and work that is very much aware of his rootedness in the city. Early on, Køhlert notes how Brown circulated his self-published mini comics on the streets of Toronto before signing with Vortex Comics in 1986, and that he ran as a Libertarian Party of Canada candidate in the 2008 and 2011 federal elections in his riding. These details speak to larger themes that Køhlert’s book contends with, such as Brown’s fiercely independent and anti-authoritarian spirit, both politically and creatively, leading to the conclusion that when it comes to Chester Brown, it is “nearly impossible to separate the artist from the art” (10). While this can be said about many artists, Køhlert develops this observation into a strong argumentative thread that sustains the book; namely, that Brown is a transgressive thinker and creator with a clear interest in self-examination that he performs through an autobiographical mode that can be traced visually and polemically throughout his career. In particular, the book locates Brown’s self-reflexiveness in his dedicated use of paratextual materials to expand on his arguments about and personal experiences with sex, love, religion, and politics.

That said, the book is well conceptualized into six thematic chapters that place Brown’s life and publications in a chronology that outlines his contributions to the form and the broader status of comics production in Canada through Brown’s relationships with his publisher, Drawn & Quarterly, and cartoonist contemporaries (and friends), Seth and the late Joe Matt. The book’s focus, however, is on the progression of Brown’s career through close readings of his changing visual technique, panel design, and storytelling methods rather than a study of Toronto’s “new wave” of underground comix. The first and second chapter, for example, highlight the narrative incoherence and surrealism of Brown’s early serialized work in Yummy Fur (1983-1994), which expands from fictional stories into esoteric explorations of Christian scriptures, such as the gospels of Mark and Matthew. Køhlert’s attention to the centrality of religion in Brown’s biography as a cartoonist distinguishes it from other critical work on the artist, but effectively shows how religious inquiry is a form of self-expression that resurfaces in Brown’s later work, most obviously Louis Riel (1999), a graphic biography of a nineteenth century Métis figure and mystic who led a rebellion against the Government of Canada, and Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus (2016), a visual adaptation of several biblical stories on sex and disobedience.

Besides religion, another commonality between these publications is Brown’s increasing visual minimalism and emotional restraint evident in the drawing style of both his autobiographical and nonfiction work, the focus of chapters three and four. Køhlert’s main contribution to the literature on Brown is laid out, however, in chapter five and expanded upon in chapter six, which consider the ethics of telling other people’s stories, the emergence of conspiracy thinking in his comics, and, most importantly, “Brown’s penchant for revision,” which Køhlert argues is “an attempt to produce a sense of retroactive continuity around the idea of ‘Chester Brown’” the author, the person, and the character (99). In practice, what this looks like for Brown is thoroughly rewriting, redrawing, and restructuring earlier versions of his comics, including detailed explanations of his visual choices and thought processes in the annotation section of his books, as well as in more intimate venues, such as letter columns and subscription-based social media platforms. Ultimately, what Køhlert’s biography shows through an analysis of various panels from and comparing different editions of Brown’s work is how the cartoonist relies on “the textual and paratextual tools available to him to . . . guide his audience’s understanding of both his comics and his current authorial persona.” (108). In other words, Brown perpetually attempts to craft and control his own narratives and public perception.

For an avid fan, collector, or scholar of Brown’s comics who has read the copious notes that accompany his publications, there is not much in this volume that is new when it comes to his biography and creative process. Much of these details are documented by Brown himself on Patreon and in print, and in the many interviews he has given over his forty-year career. However, Køhlert’s ability to synthesize this material into a cohesive narrative is impressive and important work that will certainly prove useful as a reference text for those who do not have access to or wish to expedite their understanding of this extensive, mostly public archive. That said, I would be curious to read more about Køhlert’s methodology for compiling Brown’s biography. For example, what details were included and excluded, or even omitted? Were new interviews conducted with Brown (and the people who know him) to help fill any gaps in the literature? Although some evidence of this research process is found in the acknowledgments and bibliography sections, as well as in the careful citation of journalistic interviews and academic conversations about Brown and his work, an account of how Køhlert constructed the narrative would be useful. Has Køhlert spoken with Brown? And if so, is he reconstructing the cartoonist’s life and work from the cartoonist’s own constructions?

I raise these questions not as a critique of the book, but rather as an acknowledgement that biographies as a genre often tend to take much of this processual work of coming to know for granted. What’s interesting about writing a biography about a person who openly shares his life and ideas in his comics is that reading his work can feel like one is encountering the author himself. As Kohlert suggests elsewhere, comics produce an “embodiment of the self on the page.” So, if Brown were to run into this version of himself, would he recognize him? And further, would he wish to revise him?

 

 Christina Pasqua is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Toronto’s Department for the Study of Religion and in the Book History and Print Culture Collaborative Program. She researches and teaches the study of visual Christianities in the Americas. Her current project focuses on the role of creativity and craft in how comic book artists read, interpret, and illustrate biblical stories within the context of their own lives. She also writes about autobiography, Catholic horror, and depictions of gendered bodies in popular culture. Her film criticism on these topics is published in The Revealer.