BIOGRAPHY:

"...I think Jeff Brown's cartoons are really great. He gets closer to the feeling of real experience better than most cartoonists, yet he works in a very unaffected, diary-like style... In fact, his work is at its best when it's not drawn at all, when you can actually feel him trying to just find the figures on the page; he's not trying to be fancy or anything."
Chris Ware

Jeffrey Brown (1975- ) was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 2000 he moved to Chicago where he received an MFA from The School Of The Art Institute. While studying, he gave up painting to begin drawing comics, inspired by fellow Chicago cartoonist Chris Ware. He was nominated for the 2002 Ignatz Award for promising new talent and finally won an Ignatz in 2003 for Outstanding Mini-comic for I Am Going To Be Small.

Interviews:
Newsarama (2006)
Earth-2 (2004)
Portland Tribune (2004)
Silver Bullet Comic Books (2004)
Silver Bullet Comic Books (2004)
Samurai Comics (2003)
Newsarama (2002)

Resources:
The Holy Consumption

Reviews:
Warren Ellis: Any Easy Intimacy
Time.com: Unlikely
The Fourth Rail: Unlikely
Ninth Art: Clumsy & Unlikely
iComics: Clumsy
The Comics Reporter: Be A Man

Clumsy
Top Shelf, 2002
Clumsy is the bittersweet story of a year long, long distance relationship, told through snippets of everyday life, drawn in a simple and elegantly awkward style that heightens the emotional impact and leaves you reminiscing about your own past love affairs. It also has a lot of sex.

"Clumsy is the story of a new relationship and is stunning in it's realism and honesty. The frailty of the drawn line perfectly matches the human frailty portrayed within the story. It's just so damn human. This is my favourite graphic novel ever. Even if Jeffrey Brown never draws another line again, he has already won a permanent place in my heart. Still, I want more."
James Kochalka

"Basically when I did Clumsy I was in the middle of my MFA at School Of The Art Institute here in Chicago. I was in the painting and drawing department and I was kind of trying to reject a lot of things. I wanted to draw comics like I did when I was a kid. So I tried to forget everything about rendering to react against a lot of things at art school. I wanted to create something completely human and honest to try to have a purity of expression... It has less to do with the skill than what you are trying to express. I found that when I was drawing in my sketchbook that the stuff that was speaking to me the most was this crude simple cartoony drawings much more then the heavily rendered realistic stuff which people tend to like. But I felt those drawings don't say as much."
Jeffrey Brown

Unlikely (or How I Lost My Virginity)
Top Shelf, 2003
The tear inducing tale of Jeffrey Brown's first sexual relationship, the build up to that telling moment and the inevitable complications that follow. Unlikely is a tale of young love, sex, drugs heartbreak and comedy.

"Mr Brown seems to understand perfectly the day-to-day rhythms of the modern young adult relationship. Unlikely, like his first book Clumsy, is pretty much impossible to put down."
Daniel Clowes

"Brown eschews any sort of narration or insight into what the characters are thinking. Instead, Brown lets the humor and pathos speak for itself and allows us to more easily project ourselves onto the characters. This way, even though the story is deeply personal, it becomes completely compelling. Funny, sad, and a little embarrassing, Jeff Brown's Unlikely, delivers the look at real life that other forms of 'reality' entertainment falsely promise."
Time.com

Be A Man
Top Shelf, 2004
An outrageous parody of Clumsy. Where Clumsy is sweet and awkward Be A Man skews and distorts the portrait of Jeffrey Brown to fulfil the modern, unhealthy, masculine paradigm.

"A few months ago I realised I was much too sensitive and pathetic in Clumsy, so I wrote Be A Man and fixed myself, creating the Clumsy you all wanted to see."
Jeffrey Brown, from the introduction

Books:
Every Girl Is The End Of The World For Me (2006)
Minature Sulk (2005)
Bighead (2004)
AEIOU or Any Easy Intimacy (2004)
Unlikely or How I Lost My Virginity (2003)
Clumsy (2002)

Comics:
Be A Man (2004)
I Am Going To Be Small (2003)
Maybe We Could Just Lie Here Naked... (2003)

Anthology Short Stories:
Blood Orange #3 (2004)
Drawn & Quarterly Showcase #2 (2004)
McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #13 (2004)
Project Telstar (2003)
True Porn (2003)
Kramer's Ergot Vol 4 (2003)
Spark Generators II (2003)