Saturday, September 3, 2022

Chester Brown, Yummy Fur (1986)

 



Yummy Fur by Chester Brown (1986).

One of the greatest comic book series of all time, Chester Brown's surrealistic, scatalogical, sacred-and-profane Yummy Fur debuted as a self-published mini-comic before being picked up by Toronto's Vortex Comics (the seven issues of the mini-comic were reprinted in the first 3 issues of the Vortex series).  It was in the pages of Yummy Fur that Brown first serialized his Ed the Happy Clown graphic novel and where he debuted his groundbreaking, revelatory autobiographical pieces, some of which were collected in The Playboy and I Never Liked You. Yummy Fur was also the home for Brown's quirky, personal, unvarnished Gospel adaptations.

The critics: "It’s hard to remember this now, but when Chester first started cartooning he did seem to be a late-born underground cartoonist, someone whose roots were clearly in the comics of Crumb and Justin Green. In chronological terms, Chester’s earliest work is much closer to the heyday of the undergrounds (say 1968-1974) than we are to Chester’s first published work. The sexual radicalism of Chester’s art, his enjoyment at shocking his audience, and his direct political engagement all place him still in the underground comics tradition." --Jeet Heer, "A Chester Brown Notebook" (The Comics Journal, May 19, 2011).

Osamu Tezuka, The Mysterious Underground Men (1948)

  The Mysterious Underground Men by Osamu Tezuka (1948) Tezuka's first longform "story manga" is a charming children's sc...