Chester Brown
Chester William David Brown (born 16 May 1960) is a Canadian cartoonist and, since 2008, the Libertarian Party of Canada's candidate for the riding of Trinity—Spadina in Toronto. Brown has gone through several stylistic periods in his comics work. He gained notice in alternative comics circles in the 1980s for the surreal, scatological Ed the Happy Clown serial. After bringing Ed to an abrupt end, he delved into confessional autobiographical comics in the early 1990s, and was strongly associated with fellow Toronto cartoonists Seth and Joe Matt, and the contemporary autobiographical comics trend. Two graphic novels came from this period: The Playboy (1992) and I Never Liked You (1994). Surprise mainstream success in the 2000s came with Louis Riel (2003), a historical-biographical graphic novel of rebel Métis leader Louis Riel. Paying for It (2011) was controversial as a polemic in support of decriminalizing prostitution. Brown draws from a range of influences, including monster and superhero comic books, underground comix, and comic strips such as Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie. His later works are known for a sparse drawing style and narratives with flat dialogue. Rather than the traditional method of drawing complete pages, he draws one panel at a time without regard for page composition, assembling the panels into pages after completion. Since the late 1990s Brown has had a penchant for providing detailed annotations for his work, and extensively altering and reformatting older works. Brown at first self-published his work as a minicomic called Yummy Fur beginning in 1983; Toronto publisher Vortex Comics began publishing the series as a comic book in 1986. The content tended towards controversial themes: a distributor and a printer dropped it in the late 1980s, and it has been held up at the Canadian border. Since 1991, most of Brown's output has been published by Montreal publisher Drawn and Quarterly. Following Louis Riel Brown gave up on serializing his work, preferring to publish it directly as graphic novels. He has received grants from the Canadian government to complete Louis Riel and Paying for It.