A review in search of an opinion-- thoughts on Chester Brown's ED THE HAPPY CLOWN
In the back of Drawn & Quarterly's new edition of ED THE HAPPY CLOWN, Chester Brown provides notes and commentary about the creation of his comic. It's basically a DVD commentary track about what was happening to him and what was going through his mind during the 1980s when he was writing and drawing this series in his YUMMY FUR comic book. After reading ED, I'm not too sure if I want to dive into Brown's thought process at all. After all, do I really want to know what led Brown to put the miniature head of an alternate universe's Ronald Reagan on the tip of Ed's penis? Isn't enough that I now that is in the book without getting into Brown's headspace?
Actually, I read enough of Brown's notes to find that he was interested in surrealism and that's as good of a word as any for this book. Ed the titled happy clown is pulled into mischief involving vampires, homosexual alternate realities, pygmys and just too many other weird things to catalog or to want to remember. In Brown's quest for comic surrealism, he finds a freedom on the page to explore his own dark neuroses. At least, I hope these are his neuroses, such as the fate of Reagan's head and Ed's penis because thanks to Brown, I can now list these and a ton more as my own fears and trepidations.“Surreal” is a word that Brown uses to describe his explorations in this book but another book word would also be “absurd” as in he tries to put in any new absurd thing that can eclipse the absurdity of the previous page. He works himself into these corners with Ed such as Reagan’s head ending up on his penis and has to figure out how to get out of these corners. It’s hard to find any meaningful story in ED THE HAPPY CLOWN because it ends up being an unfortunate series of events that are ultimately meaningless or capricious because that’s how the world is in Brown’s cartooning world view.
Actually there are two characters who have something resembling a story. Chet (not to confused with Chester) is a man suffering guilt over his affair with Josie. His guilt is so strong that he dreams of his hand falling off during sex with her. Determined to end the sorrid affair, Chet kills Josie only she comes back as some form of spiritual vampire. While Ed’s misadventures crosses over with theirs, Chet and Josie’s story seems locked into some great guilt than just those of comic book characters.
Brown draws out the obvious sacredness and profaneness of their relationship, knowing that Chet is horribly guilty but somehow his sins are transferred to Josie. While Chet lives, Josie survives as some kind of vampire seeking redemption or another shot at life only to be killed over and over again. She’s Chet’s guilty desires, Ed’s savior but she’s Brown’s victim. She dies again and again, the victim of a cruel creator but also as a symbol of some perceived guilt of the characters and maybe even the cartoonist.
All of this oddball story and imagery is wrapped in Brown’s perverse humor, starting off with the title of ED THE HAPPY CLOWN. There’s nothing happy in this book other than Brown’s freedom to follow the story down these dark paths. But Brown captures these moments and images that cause a chuckle even as the actions of the story may be a bit repulsive. His thin, crude line is actually very funny, applying such a simple line to such a perverse story. He creates this humorous tension between what what’s being told and what’s being shown that things like penis-Reagan become that much more darkly funny as the book goes on. Without knowing where the early jokes were going, he sticks with them, until he can find a way to incorporate them into the larger story he’s carving out.
Even after 800 words, I’m not too sure if I know what ED THE HAPPY CLOWN is supposed to be about. I’m not too sure what I’m supposed to get out of it, if anything. At this point, I can just as easily see this being a book I never really look at again just as easily as it will be one I return to again and again trying to find a clue to deciphering it. If nothing else, I’ll probably pick up another Chester Brown book to see if there’s anything else here for me to grab onto. ED THE HAPPY CLOWN is actually very fascinating because I haven’t come away from it with more than a curious confusion and that’s not really a bad thing.
