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There’s a new Chester Brown book coming out, and it’s a doozy. It’s called Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, and it examines stories of bibles heroines via their relationship with prostitution. This profession was at the heart of Chester Brown’s previous book, Paying For It, which is all about how he switched to […]

The D&Q blog has a tempting preview of a new edition of ED THE HAPPY CLOWN, Chester Brown’s early surrealist masterpiece about a man who has Ronald Reagan’s head grafted onto the end of his penis.

Okay, so the book is a little ways away from being in your local comic or bookstore but it exists. Of course, this being Chester there are tons of notes and even a little bonus strip that has nothing to do with Ed really. And since people have asked, this is what Chester considers the proper Ed the Happy Clown story. There isn’t extra work and in fact some of those later Vortex issues are not included. Feast your eyeballs!!

ED THE HAPPY CLOWN started as “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop” in the self piblished YUMMY FUR, then was reprinted as a collection, went out of print, was reprinted in an edited pamphlet form, with Brown substantially editing and redrawing the story. So, while we look forward to this “Directors Cut” edition, on the great Comics LIbrary of the Sky, we’ll also keep ALL of our old editions for comparative textual analysis.

Comics 2012 thus far: complete FLEX MENTELLO and ED THE HAPPY CLOWN. A good year!

Chester Brown in Vancouver // Tonight @ 7 pm // Vancouver Public Library // 350 W. Georgia St.

A while back we predicted Chester Brown’s I-was-a-john memoir, PAYING FOR IT, would be one of the most talked about graphic novels of the years. Surprise! We called it!

The Star looks at the book in light of Brown’s run for Parliament on the Libertarian ticket:

Initially, I was a bit annoyed by the timing of the election but it might turn out to be a good thing that I’m getting publicity at this time. I’m pretty sure I’m the only ‘out’ John who’s running as a candidate,” says Brown, who also represented the party in the riding in the previous federal election, finishing with 490 votes (23,932 shy of winner Olivia Chow).

“I phoned him up and asked, ‘Have you heard what my new book is about?’ He had no idea, so I had to explain it to him. I said, ‘I’ll understand if you guys don’t want me to run as a candidate.’ He said, ‘No, no. Libertarians believe in decriminalizing prostitution, so we have no problem with you running.’

“That’s the kind of party it is, I guess,” he concludes. “Or maybe that’s how desperate they are for candidates.”

Via House of Substance, we see that Brown’s non-campaign campaign didn’t exactly jell with voters (the election was held Monday):

AND ELSEWHERE:

The Globe and Mail notes that the book’s initial print run was 20,000 copies and talks about a shelved concept:

Brown initially conceived Paying for It – a title he’s not entirely keen on since it implies moral and physical “burdens” he claims not to have suffered – as a much larger opus “about my whole sexual history, starting with my childhood. … But when I ran the idea by the ex-girlfriends I’m still friends with, neither was very keen on it, so that kind of put the kibosh on it. I had to narrow down.”

Also at the Globe and Mail James Brown analyzes the storytelling:

Brown adopts a slightly bird’s-eye perspective here, almost as if he is being watched from a two-way mirror positioned across the room. It’s a perspective – combining discretion and distance with notions of surveillance and voyeurism – Brown adopts throughout the entirety of Paying for It.

I read an interview with Spalding Gray several years ago where he was questioning—why do people even have secrets? M

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