Chester Brown, Joe Matt, and Seth: The Toronto Trio and the Great Canadian Graphic Novel.
Introduction
The work of Chester Brown, Joe Matt, and Seth—collectively referred to here as the Toronto Trio, a moniker of my own coinage—represent a unique experience in the annals of the Canadian alternative comics scene. Particularly (but not limited to), the autobiographical work popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Their works, published primarily through Brown’s Yummy Fur, Matt’s Peepshow, and Seth’s Palookaville, offer a complex tapestry of autobiographical, semi-autobiographical, and fictional narratives that, when viewed together, form a cohesive story arc akin to a "Great Canadian Novel."
This retrospective argues that the original single issues of Yummy Fur and Underwater—including their letters columns and essays—trace Chester Brown’s personal development from childhood to adulthood, reflecting his struggles with religion, sexuality, and societal norms. When combined with Joe Matt’s raw, unfiltered autobiography in Peepshow and Seth’s faux-autobiographical It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken, these works collectively narrate the divergent paths of three men whose choices define their characters. Joe Matt descends into a personal hell of porn addiction, Chester Brown seems happy but displays a lack of self-awareness, and Seth, despite being the least technically gifted artist, emerges as the most functional human being, crafting a fictional story that reflects a conscious rejection of the self-destructive tendencies of his peers.
Chester Brown: The Evolution of a Storyteller
Chester Brown’s career, as seen through the lens of Yummy Fur (1986–1994), Underwater (1994–1997), and later works like Paying for It (2011) and Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus (2016), is a chronicle of an artist wrestling with his religious upbringing, transgressive instincts, and a struggle to reconcile his adult choices with his childhood beliefs. The serialized nature of Yummy Fur, with its blend of surreal horror, gospel adaptations, and autobiographical strips, serves as a narrative arc that charts Brown’s transformation from a rebellious, shock-driven cartoonist to a man seeking to justify his lifestyle through intellectual and theological arguments.
Yummy Fur’s early issues, particularly the Ed the Happy Clown material, showcase Brown’s natural storytelling instincts, even as he leans heavily on stream-of-consciousness surrealism. The second issue stands out, with the Ed story offering engaging and entertaining storytelling that contrasts with less coherent pieces like Catlick Creek and The Eyelid Burial. The latter, with its unclear relationship between dialogue and drawings, highlights Brown’s early reliance on surrealism to mask narrative shortcomings. However, Ed’s blend of dark comedy, body horror, and theological undertones—paralleling the Book of Job and Christ’s suffering—demonstrates Brown’s ability to craft compelling narratives, even if the story’s open-ended conclusion underscores his limitations as a writer in tying up complex arcs.
The evolution of Brown’s thoughts on sex, censorship, and religion— communicated through the main Ed strips, letters columns, and gospel adaptations—make the serialized Yummy Fur issues a superior reading experience to the heavily revised and truncated graphic novel editions of Ed and the autobio work. Ed in particular suffers from removing the Biblical material, while the early autobiographical comics in Yummy Fur are best read following the Ed storyline. If the juxtaposition between Ed’s nihilistic cruelty with the initially straightforward, though increasingly bitter gospel adaptations illustrate Brown’s questioning of Christianity, then the comics recounting Brown's strict religious upbringing, his fear of relationships with the opposite sex, and his reliance on pornography paint a portrait of the cauldron in which all the ingredients were brewed that were necessary for birthing Brown the cartoonist.
Underwater, Chester Brown’s ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at a long-form fictional narrative, represents a significant low point in his career, revealing both the limits of his experimental instincts and the challenges of moving beyond the autobiographical and surreal frameworks that defined Yummy Fur. Launched in 1994, the series’ central premise—depicting the world through the perspective of a baby named Kupifam as she gradually learns language and navigates abstract concepts—was initially intriguing for its bold attempt to visualize cognitive development. In early issues, Brown’s use of nonsense words, fragmented dialogue, and surreal imagery effectively conveyed the disorienting experience of a child’s perception, transforming mundane domestic scenes into psychedelic tableaus. However, by issue five, the novelty wears thin, and the narrative stagnates. The lack of discernible plot progression, coupled with an overreliance on repetitive surreal interludes and linguistic experimentation, renders the story increasingly incoherent, alienating readers who struggle to find meaning in the disjointed visuals and text.
This incoherence stems from Brown’s decision to forgo a structured script, a choice he later acknowledged as a critical error in interviews, admitting that his improvisational approach led to a narrative that “didn’t know where it was going.” The absence of a clear arc contrasts sharply with the intuitive cohesion of Yummy Fur’s Ed the Happy Clown, where Brown’s storytelling instincts compensated for structural looseness, weaving disparate vignettes into a compelling, if chaotic, whole. Underwater’s failure also highlights Brown’s discomfort with sustained fictional storytelling, as he struggled to maintain momentum without the scaffolding of autobiography or pre-existing texts, a pattern that would shape his later reliance on adaptations (Louis Riel, Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus) and memoirs (Paying for It). The accompanying gospel adaptations, particularly the visually stunning Gospel of Matthew, remain a high point, showcasing Brown’s illustrative prowess and his ability to distill complex theological narratives into clear, evocative comics. Yet, the pedantic essay in the letters column—reminiscent of Dave Sim’s sprawling prose in Cerebus—underscores Brown’s growing tendency to prioritize intellectual arguments over narrative integration, a trait that becomes more pronounced in his later works. Like Sim’s Cerebus, Underwater’s essays and letters (notably My Mom Was a Schizophrenic) reveal Brown’s personal struggles with mental illness, religion, and societal norms, painting a clearer portrait of his psychological and ideological evolution than the main narrative itself. Brown’s eventual abandonment of Underwater after eleven issues reflects not only his recognition of its flaws but also a pivotal moment in his artistic development, as he retreated from experimental fiction to safer, more structured formats. This misstep foreshadows his later works’ dependence on autobiographical and historical frameworks to avoid similar pitfalls, while also underscoring the tension between his desire for creative risk and his limitations in executing it, a recurring theme in his arc from rebellious youth to introspective adult.
Paying for It and Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus continue Brown’s trend of using comics to explore personal and ideological themes, but they highlight his limitations as a writer. Paying for It, a memoir about Brown’s experiences as a john, argues that romantic love is inferior to prostitution but fails to convey this through the narrative, relying instead on dry conversations and extensive notes. Despite Brown’s pacing and visual storytelling skills, the work feels intellectually hollow, as he struggles to integrate his libertarian politics into the story.
Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus is similarly flawed. Brown posits two conflicting theses: that prostitution was a holy rite in early Christian communities and that God favors disobedience over worship. The comic strip portions, particularly the visually striking adaptation of Job, are well-crafted, but the notes section—comprising nearly half the book—fails to resolve the paradox between these ideas. Brown’s assertion that mental illness does not exist, first explored in Underwater’s My Mom Was a Schizophrenic, reappears in Louis Riel and Paying for It, but his arguments remain unconvincing, presented in dense, nearly unreadable essays rather than integrated narratives.
As a character study, Mary Wept serves as an epilogue to Brown’s arc, reflecting his attempt to reconcile his adult lifestyle—marked by pornography use and sex work patronage—with his religious upbringing. From Yummy Fur’s contrast between grotesque surrealism and gospel adaptations to Paying for It’s rejection of romantic love, Brown’s work traces a man shaped by a schizophrenic parent, religious guilt, and alienation from society. However, his lack of self-awareness prevents him from fully articulating this journey, leaving his works compelling but incomplete.
Joe Matt: Descent into a Personal Hell
Joe Matt’s Peepshow offers a stark contrast to Brown’s intellectualized struggles, presenting a raw, unfiltered autobiography that descends into a Dantean inferno of porn addiction and self-destruction. Matt’s work, particularly The Poor Bastard (1996), Fair Weather (2002), and Spent (2007), reveals a man trapped by his flaws, unable to escape the cycle of selfishness, manipulation, and addiction.
Matt’s early Peepshow strips, originally one-page vignettes, adopt Robert Crumb’s confessional “I’m a piece of shit” style, a choice Matt admits was “easier than coming up with characters and a story.” While initially novel, the strips grow repetitive, only gaining depth when Brown and Seth are introduced, setting the stage for The Poor Bastard. This arc, centered on Matt’s failing relationship with Trish, showcases his selfishness, manipulative behavior, and sex addiction, culminating in a moment of apparent self-revelation as Trish leaves him. However, this epiphany proves hollow, as subsequent works reveal no growth.
Fair Weather and Spent mark Matt’s artistic and personal decline. Fair Weather’s interchangeable scenes of childhood cruelty serve no purpose beyond reinforcing Matt’s unchanging character, while Spent depicts him lusting after teenagers, masturbating to pornography, and enduring abuse from Seth. Matt’s lack of self-awareness, unlike Crumb’s introspective creativity, renders his work monotonous. His technical skill as a draftsman, initially superior to Brown and Seth, deteriorates under Seth’s influence, particularly in Spent, where his cartooning loses its earlier vibrancy.
Matt’s reliance on Crumb’s shtick highlights his lack of originality. Unlike Crumb, whose autobiographical work was a small fraction of a diverse oeuvre, Matt’s comics are exclusively self-focused, lacking the creativity or insight to transcend his personal failings. His “luck” in having the Trish narrative unfold in Peepshow’s early issues masks his inability to say anything new, leaving him trapped in a repetitive cycle of self-pity and addiction.
Seth: The One Who Learns
Seth’s It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken (1996) stands as the linchpin of the Toronto Trio’s collective narrative, offering a faux-autobiography that reflects on the consequences of Brown and Matt’s choices. By moving from early autobiographical strips in Palookaville to fictional narratives, Seth demonstrates a self-awareness and narrative coherence absent in his peers’ work.
Masquerading as autobiography, It’s a Good Life follows Seth’s research into the fictional cartoonist Kalo, who represents an idealized version of the artist—a man who balanced cartooning with a grounded life. Unlike Brown and Matt, whose dedication to comics and nostalgia stunted their emotional growth, Seth uses Kalo to explore why his peers remained in a state of arrested development. The work’s melancholic tone contrasts with Matt’s self-pity and Brown’s detachment, offering an introspective critique of the Toronto Trio’s lifestyle.
Seth’s decision to abandon autobiography after Palookaville’s early issues reflects his rejection of the self-destructive paths of Brown and Matt. While technically less accomplished than his peers, Seth’s ability to craft a narrative arc with emotional depth makes him the most functional as a human being and the only member of the trio to tell a complete story.
The Great Canadian Novel: A Collective Narrative
When viewed together, the works of Brown, Matt, and Seth form a narrative arc that mirrors a novelistic structure. Brown’s Yummy Fur and Underwater trace his personal development, from a rebellious youth challenging religious norms to an adult grappling with his choices. Matt’s Peepshow depicts a descent into addiction and isolation, a cautionary tale of unexamined flaws. Seth’s It’s a Good Life provides the resolution, reflecting on the consequences of their choices and choosing a different path.
The irony lies in Seth’s technical limitations as an artist, contrasted with his narrative strength and personal stability. Brown, the best storyteller, lacks the self-awareness to fully articulate his arc, while Matt, the most skilled draftsman, has nothing to say. Seth, the least gifted artist, emerges as the trio’s moral and narrative center, crafting a story that transcends the limitations of his peers.
Conclusion
The Toronto Trio’s works, particularly the original Yummy Fur and Underwater issues, Peepshow, and It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken, form a cohesive narrative that reflects the divergent paths of Chester Brown, Joe Matt, and Seth. Brown’s journey from surrealist provocateur to ideological apologist, Matt’s descent into a self-inflicted inferno, and Seth’s reflective rejection of their flaws create a story arc that rivals the complexity of a great novel. While Brown and Matt’s technical prowess shines, it is Seth’s narrative clarity and self-awareness that ultimately define the Toronto Trio’s legacy, proving that the strength of a story lies not in its draftsmanship but in its ability to reflect on the human condition.