The Comix Files: Chester Brown

One of the advantages of being a perpetual amateur cartoonist is that I get contacted by amazing artists early in their careers before they really get discovered. Such was the case with the incredibly talented Toronto-based Chester Brown during our correspondence from 1984-1986. At the time he was producing a photocopy digest called Yummy Fur.

I loved the way he usually included a bunny graphic with his signature. It was fun jamming with Chester on our mini Lump Soup Sciopluieas in 1985.

During this era I sent Chester a Morty Comix that was something like 100 or 200 pages long. He shot back his own version, which was just as long, and is now in the comix collection at Washington State University.

Lump Soup Sciolpluileas!

Here's one I'm betting not many of Chester Brown's fans know about.

Starhead Comix in Seattle published both editions. The first was in 1985. The second printing in 1990 had some color in the cover.

At the time this comic was first drawn, Toronto cartoonist Chester Brown had yet to become a household name in comix. Yummy Fur was a small digest-sized comic at that time, but Chester's considerable talent was already obvious. His character Ed the Happy Clown was pretty much of a polar opposite to Morty the Dog. Perhaps that is why I played up Morty in this comic to be more of a jerk than ever in an effort to increase the comic tension.

The proposed title here was Lump Soup Sillies, but Chester threaded the word "copula" into the title and created a new word. I think we produced this by sending the art back and forth, a process I enjoyed with a fellow storyteller. It was fun wondering what Chester was going to do next with Ed.

Scanned and posted with permission from Chester Brown.