Jeffrey Brown's Kids Are Still Weird

It's funny to see where cartoonists wind up in their careers. Jeffrey Brown burst onto the alt-comics scene over 20 years ago with his self-published memoir, Clumsy, which was about losing his virginity. He was one of the central figures of what Tom Spurgeon called "Sad Boy Comics." This term has been subject to parody in later years, but at the time, this was more of an extension of the thoughtful, vulnerable, and even poetic comics of cartoonists like John Porcellino and Dave Kiersh. Brown's comics, especially in his first three books (which he dubbed "The Girlfriend Trilogy"), built on that template and added a structural, narrative solidity that set his work apart. His visual style was a mix of the ratty line typical of the Fort Thunder era that was also informed by Gary Panter and a highly palatable, cartoony simplicity. Jeffrey Brown's figures were and are cute, which at once made them more approachable for a reader but also acted as a distancing device for the more jagged emotional moments of his books. 

However, at heart, Brown was always a humorist. In his many years publishing with Top Shelf, Brown drew a bunch of superhero parodies, Transformers parodies, and other total nonsense. Part of the fun was seeing him draw genre comics in his resolutely anti-commercial style. However, what really made them interesting was Brown's keen instincts as a parodist who genuinely admired these kinds of stories. His first more mainstream humor book was Cat Getting Out Of A Bag And Other Observations, but what really made his career was Darth Vader And Son, an improbably warm and funny use of the arch-villain and young Luke Skywalker. This led to an entirely new career doing these kinds of Star Wars-related comics (Jedi Academy became another one) at around the same time he became a father. He stopped doing memoir comics altogether, perhaps because he was too busy with other work or perhaps because the narratives he had been doing no longer made sense. 

He did, however, do a book called Kids Are Weird, a "kids say the darnedest things"-style collection of observations about his first son, Oscar. Now publishing with NBM, he dipped his toes back into smaller press publishing with Kids Are Still Weird, which is about his younger son, Simon. Brown's ability to create verisimilitude in his dialogue without it feeling clunky or forced has always been one of his best assets, and that particular ear for dialogue is the lynchpin of this book's success. That ear led him to use a variety of compositional structures to highlight the particular gag or feeling expressed by Simon. Sometimes Brown uses his old, trusty four-panel grid. However, he also sometimes uses, on a given page, a gag that's two or three panels (like a comic strip) with a single image below it that is its own separate gag. 

Brown gently depicts Simon's frequently defiant, aggressive, and oppositional energy as a toddler. As a three-year-old, Simon is just starting to push boundaries and assert his agency on the world. Whether it's yelling at the GPS on a phone to stop talking, yelling at his mom during playtime that he's "talking to Daddy," or telling his older brother he doesn't love him, his pugnaciousness is also an expression of his overall curiosity. At the same time, Brown observes him doing ninja moves, debating whether or not he's a "big boy," and declaring that his preferred superpower is to shoot lasers out of his eyes. He also expresses moods and emotions, like saying his brain doesn't feel good, or that he can only come up with horrible stories. Brown creates a pleasant rhythm from comic to comic that doesn't overstay its welcome. Wisely, he doesn't attempt to create a more coherent narrative; instead, he favors little moments in time. Small struggles, tiny triumphs, moments of wisdom, and plenty of just-plain weirdness (as promised!) fill this collection. It's all done in Brown's familiar style, and in color; Brown's overall expressive line is the key to filling these amusing anecdotes with their own sense of life.