Books by Chester Brown

A memoir of shocking honesty by the graphic novelist behind 2011's acclaimed comic Paying for ItAs 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.

The idiosyncratic master Chester Brown continues his thoughts on sex workΓÇ£The Bible is Chester BrownΓÇÖs holy harlot. He plumbs the mysteries of her depths while she schools him in the ways of love. Like all of ChesterΓÇÖs work, Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is confounding, yet addictive, instantly re-readable, and expands with revelations in his hundred pages of notes. A work of passion, research, and elegant clarity. My new favourite.ΓÇ¥ΓÇöCraig Thompson, author of Blankets and HabibiΓÇ£Chester Brown is both GodΓÇÖs and the devilΓÇÖs gift to the world.ΓÇ¥ΓÇöDavid Henry Sterry, author of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent BoysΓÇ£ChesterΓÇÖs work never fails to surprise and delight me. Since I always enjoy mythic and legendary tales of harlots, I knew I would like Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, but I was pleased and impressed by the way he used all these stories to illustrate a larger theme about humanityΓÇÖs relationship to Divinity and the role my profession plays in that relationship. Chester shows that spirituality and sexuality, which are so often depicted in our culture as opposed to one another, are actually deeply intertwined.ΓÇ¥ΓÇöMaggie McNeill, author of The Honest CourtesanThe iconoclastic and bestselling cartoonist of Paying for It: A comic-strip memoir about being a john and Louis Riel returns and 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. He 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.