Jeffrey Brown
After growing up in Michigan, a 25-year-old Jeffrey Brown moved to Chicago in 2000 to pursue an MFA at the School of the Art Institute. By the time he completed his MFA, he had abandoned painting and started drawing comics seriously. He splashed onto the comics scene with the self-published relationship memoir Clumsy, which earned praise from cartoonists and readers alike, and was eventually picked up by Top Shelf. Many acclaimed graphic novels followed, establishing Brown as both a hyper-sensitive chronicler of bittersweet romance (Unlikely, Any Easy Intimacy) and a deadpan master of absurdist humor (Incredible Change-Bots, Sulk, I Am Going to Be Small).
Additional projects include: directing a music video for Death Cab for Cutie; the autobiographical collections Little Things, Funny Misshapen Body, and Undeleted Scenes; and the observational books Cat Getting Out of a Bag and Cats Are Weird. His work has been featured in Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, and he occasionally teaches comics at the School of The Art Institute. A film he co-wrote, Save the Date, premieres at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival starring Alison Brie and Lizzy Caplan. The prolific Mr. Brown lives and works in Chicago.
You can write to him at: PO Box 120, Deerfield IL 60015-0120, USA.
Reviews & Interviews
Top Shelf 2.0 Comics
May 5 Incredible Change-Bots gallery 
Top Shelf Action Pack #1
by McLeod, Venditti, Huddleston, Lemire, Moore, Campbell, Kochalka, Brown, & Powell
A DIGITAL EXCLUSIVE RELEASE!
Welcome to the Top Shelf Action Pack! This 168-page monster is a FREE digital smorgasbord of Top Shelf talent, an explosive expo of some of our greatest authors and artists.
Inside you'll find pulse-pounding chapters from Infinite Kung Fu, The Homeland Directive, …
Loved and Lost: A Relationship Trilogy
"An extremely impressive debut, full of all the things that make a story good — doomed relationships, embarrassing personal details, and the insatiable need to put it all down on paper." — Chris Ware, author of Jimmy Corrigan and Rusty Brown
"You can open to any page and find something …
I Am Going To Be Small (Hardcover)
I Am Going To Be Small is also available in a deluxe hardcover edition. Limited quantities available.
Clumsy
"You can open to any page and find something unusually bare and honest about these stories. They're surprising, even though half the moments in the book are ones you've probably experienced yourself. Hard trick to pull off." -- Ira Glass, host and producer of public radio's This American …
Unlikely
"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, creator of Ghost World, Art School Confidential, and Eightball
"A million little brilliant and …
AEIOU or Any Easy Intimacy
"Jeffrey Brown's work is not precious, broken-heart type stuff, but instead renders the terrific blanches and indelible happiness one can inflict upon another." -- Jennifer Przybylski, Rain Taxi
"Brown is a consummate storyteller, with a mixture of believable dialogue that carries both wistful …
Every Girl is the End of the World for Me
"An unsparing portrait of male anxiety and twenty-something lassitude, all rendered in drawings that are too crude to be anything but expressive." -- Jeff Salamon, Austin American-Statesman
"It seems Jeffrey Brown has been anointed Our Next Great Cartoonist." -- Mark David Nevins …
Undeleted Scenes
"Thoroughly engaging and loaded with charm to burn, this latest work from Brown is a perfect example of how to do autobiographical comics right. ... this is good stuff that solidly resonates with a palpable and universal humanity and bears repeated readings." -- Publishers Weekly
"It's …
A Matter of Life
"[A] characteristically heartfelt memoir." -- Booklist
"Jeffrey Brown's new autobiographical work, A Matter of Life, will sit next to Craig Thompson's Blankets as one of the most touching and wise graphic memoirs we have about growing up in a religious household and grappling with faith... It is …
Incredible Change-Bots One
“This pocket-sized volume is to The Transformers what Avenue Q is to Sesame Street -- a mocking, fawning, idiotic, adoring paean to a pop culture phenomenon inseparable from the artist’s person. Although allegory without substance, all action and no moral, it’s delightful fluff.” -- Library …
Incredible Change-Bots One -- HARDCOVER
Also available, a special HARDCOVER edition of Incredible Change-Bots One. Limited quantities available.
$24.95 (US)
Details
Incredible Change-Bots Two
"Hilarious. Brown's drawings have a charming crudeness to them, and the book gives the impression of a couple of kids playing with their toy robots, making 'bew! bew! bew!' noises and spouting absurd dialogue. It's also really clever, though. Incredible Change-Bots is a parody by someone who …
Incredible Change-Bots Two -- HARDCOVER
Also available, a special HARDCOVER edition of Incredible Change-Bots Two Limited quantities available.
$24.95 (US)
Details
Incredible Change-Bots Two Point Something Something
From bestselling author Jeffrey Brown (Darth Vader and Son, Jedi Academy) comes the latest installment of his humorous shape-changing robot adventure, Incredible Change-Bots. Collecting previously published and rarely seen material, Change-Bots Two Point Something Something includes short stories, …
Incredible Change-Bots Two Point Something Something -- HARDCOVER
For true Incredible Change-Fans, a special HARDCOVER edition of Two Point Something Something. Limited quantities available.
$24.95 (US)
Details
Bighead
"... Besides being a superior parody, Bighead slyly reveals the author's personal issues and in some ways, everyone's." -- Andrew Arnold, Time
"Bighead is great, great fun to read; it crackles with energy and a love for the genre of the super hero. Brown takes the silly conventions that weigh …
Sulk (Vol 1): Bighead and Friends
Top Shelf presents a new one-man anthology series showcasing the tireless creative energy of Jeffrey Brown! SULK is a series of pocket-sized standalone mini-graphic novels, providing the world its regular dose of 100% pure Jeffrey. What will he come up with next!?
SULK (VOL 1): BIGHEAD & FRIENDS …
Sulk (Vol 2): Deadly Awesome
Top Shelf presents a new one-man anthology series showcasing the tireless creative energy of Jeffrey Brown! SULK is a series of pocket-sized standalone mini-graphic novels, providing the world its regular dose of 100% pure Jeffrey. What will he come up with next!?
In SULK (VOL 2): DEADLY …
Sulk (Vol 3): The Kind of Strength...
Sulk (Vol 3): The Kind of Strength That Comes From Madness explores the world of fantasy and science fiction, and turns it on its head. Or rather, just kind of tilts it slightly to the side. Stories include "Being Awesome Is Its Own Reward," where two brothers deal with a giant monster rampaging …
I Am Going to Be Small
"Jeffrey Brown is one of the best humorists in modern American comic book." -- Comic Book Bin
Everyone needs something funny to stick in their pocket to read on the train, or on a lunch break, or in line at the DMV. This is that something. Jeffrey Brown sets aside the sappy sentimentality of his …
Minisulk
"'Not everything in here is true,' it says in the indicia, but enough of it feels true that Brown's well-earned reputation as one of today's better autobiographical cartoonists is secure." -- Alan David Doane, Comic Book Galaxy
Jeffrey Brown takes a break from books about girls for this humorous …
Feeble Attempts
Collecting some of Jeffrey Brown’s favorite anthology and mini-comic stories, Feeble Attempts is at turns comedic and meaningful. It's densely packed with autobiographical musings, political jabs, Jesus, superheroes, funny job stories, childhood goofiness, and...okay, yes, even a little …
Conversation #2
In this issue, James Kochalka goes up against rising indy-comics star, Jeffrey Brown. The two cartoonists draw together, exchanging pages back and forth, and trade metaphorical jabs in a discussion that quickly devolves into an argument, which quickly devolves into a brawl about art and comics and …
Be A Man
"Be A Man skews and distorts the portrait of Jeffrey Brown to fulfill the modern, unhealthy, masculine paradigm." -- Read Yourself Raw
Jeffrey Brown's own self-parody of his "ultra-sensitive" graphic novel, Clumsy. A heaping of in-your-face male chauvinism, over-the-top machismo, and …
