The Little Man: Short Strips, 1980-1995

by Chester Brown

Book Overview

"The Little Man" contains numerous rare and otherwise impossible to find gems that appeared in a string of long out-of-print anthologies and early issues of the classic comic book series Yummy Fur. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1896597165
• ISBN13: 9781896597164
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
• Length: 172 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Cartoon Strip of the Artist as a Young Man

"The Little Man" is one of many strips contained within this excellent collection. "Helder" is the story of an unruly tenant in a shared house Brown is living in and he memorably depicts Helder as a scary, tragic figure. "Showing Helder" is Brown showing the strip "Helder" to his girlfriend and fellow artist Seth and their reactions. Both strips are better than you'd think given these brief descriptions. "Danny's Story" is another angry, stupid and dislikable tenant who bothers Brown in the morning with strange and banal stories about his previous night's escapades. Besides these and "My Mom was a Schizophrenic", there's a lot of humour in the material. "The Little Man" is an adventure involving Brown's penis while "The Weird Canadian Artist" mocks artistic dignity juxtaposing peoples' reactions to art and the reality of the artist. There are lots of other smaller strips varying from a page to 3 or 4 but those mentioned above are the best of the bunch. This is my favourite of Brown's work. It shows his range as a storyteller while the reader sees the development of his art from the early 80s to the mid 90s. His drawing style is eye catching, impeccable and beautiful, unlike any other comics artist around. I highly recommend his other books "I Never Liked You" and "Louis Riel", but this is a fantastic book too.

Acquired Taste For the Bizarre

Chester Brown is an eclectic, yet diverse innovator. Upon first glance his drawings & artwork look crude & unfamilar, but upon further inspection one becomes engrossed in his unusual storytelling. His stories range from the bizarre and surreal as in his Yummy Fur stories, to the autobiographical, which deals with the growing pains of adolescence to even Biblical and historical, yet they take on a mixture of emotions from endearing, to humorous, to heartbreak and shocking. Chester is a true originator.

Like eating rusty staples. One...by one...by one...

He never fails to confound, delight, shock, nauseate, charm and confound again with his way of somehow keeping one gnarled claw rooted in the sacred and the other hoof equally grounded in the scatological. Now if only he'd reprint ED THE HAPPY CLOWN, but with its complete final Yummy Fur disgressions into the inner workings of the First Family. Anyway, "The Little Man" is priceless.

Wonderful Comic

Chester Brown is one of the greatest comics artist ever and in this book you'll see why. This book collects various stories from Brown's acclaimed comic Yummy Fur and some stories done for now defunct anthology titles, including some of his earliest works. The stories range from sci-fi to horror to religous to autobiographical. Almost all of the stories are superb. But the real value of the book is in the way it shows Chester Brown's growth and development into a master of his artform.