My friend Erin Crickett dropped off My Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown with groceries and movies a couple days after I began my official hunt for zines and comics and resources about health, sickness and medicalization. I read the whole thing over two bus trips, to and from the daycare I am doing a placement at.
Jeffrey's comic style is refreshing because it is engaging real life. It is out of order, but thats how we remember things. I also like to include this book in this series in part because it is not just about medicalization and sickness. It is also about other things. And I like that. I mean, I emailed Jeff because I wanted to interview him about Semi Colon, which is the chapter in this book that focuses on Jeff's story of his early years of Crohns, but I like that there are subtler references to his body, his scares and his weight gain and weight loss (resulting from drugs he was on because of the Crohns) in other parts of the book, because it is a story of his life. and i like how all those things are told in the book.
In our interview, Jeff talked about finding a drawing style that fits with the content of having Crohns. Finding a drawing style with more depth than Clumsy, and other previous works. We talked about the seemingly out-of-order-ness of the stories in the book and how we draw memories so that they are accurate to how those memories feel in our brains. Because Jeff's work is so personal, I asked him how he makes sure he is not revealing other people's secrets.
Jeffrey Brown writes comics about love that are more real than TV and film - we talked about that, and we talked about having a kid, and re-arranging his routine and approach to fit in the routine of having a child, and the routine of getting creative work done.
We finished by talking about Jeffrey's new and exciting upcoming projects: Undeleted Scenes and The Incredible Changebots.
check out www.jeffreybrowncomics.com.
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