How is the comic industry? Do you make your living doing it? Do you think you will be able to soon?

I don't make a living, no, though I'll make a good deal more than I expected, I think, especially if I can sell more original art. Maybe if I can do some more freelance illustration or something. And I'll spend most of what I make from comics on self-publishing other comics and whatnot. I'm happy to just be getting work out there and getting some attention for it. I didn't even intend to publish Clumsy, originally. But all my friends seemed to enjoy it, so I started making copies.

Where did you go to college and how was it?
I went to Hope College in Holland, Michigan. It was disappointing in many ways, which may partially be my fault, but I don't feel they really cared there. They just wanted my money. I hadn't even graduated, let alone paid off all the debt, when I received my first phonecall and letters asking for contributions to Alumni funds. There were a few great teachers, though, who started to point me in the right direction toward the end there. Then I got my MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I went there because I felt kind of aimless with my art, didn't know what to do with it. At the end of my first year I had a horrible critique, almost a personal attack, and I started drawing comics after that and haven't really painted since. But in the end, I'm very happy where I am now, and I don't think I'd be here without those experiences, so it all works out, I guess.

What keeps you producing things after college? Have you ever lost energy or motivation?
I usually get depressed after finishing a really involved project like Clumsy or Unlikely (the new book out next month). I actually started producing more once I finished undergrad, although I've drawn pretty much every day since I was two. But I became more productive once I started drawing in sketchbooks after undergrad and now I've reached a point where I can become agitated if I don't have enough time to draw during a day.

For a while it seemed like everything exciting I was reading and hearing was coming from Chicago, giving me sort of lofty, romantic notions of the place. How do you find it? How much do you think it has shaped the kind of work you do?
I like Chicago a lot. Everyone seems to be trying to do something creative with their life, being in a band or writing or painting or making zines on the side. And there's always something going on, literary events and concerts and what not. There's at least one band I want to see playing every week, it seems. And of course, Chris Ware lives here, and meeting him alone was hugely inspiring, let alone becoming friends. And there's a lot of other young, really good, and full of potential cartoonists here, like the other guys on my website (www.theholyconsumption.com). I might still be drawing comics if I hadn't met Paul Hornschemeier, but I don't think the amount of attention I've gotten or the speed with which it's come about would've happened without him, in terms of becoming part of the comics world certainly.

How is living in Chicago, and in the US, these days?
It's good. Sure, there's things I'd like to change, things I'm not happy about, but I don't know where else in the world you'll find the same kind of open culture that's here, and Chicago is a big city with a lot going on, but not overwhelmingly big like New York or L.A.

Chester Brown, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, everyone else on The Holy Consumption, Sammy Harkham, Souther Salazar, Ron Rege, Julie Doucet (even if she never does comics again, I'll always love her), Debbie Dreschler, Adrian Tomine, just read Gary Panter's 'Cola Madness' and loved it, James Kochalka, Ivan Brunetti (whose painstaking obsession over his comics will hopefully not doom him to a life of being so underrated), Dave Kiersh, Allison Cole, and other mini comics artists like them, um, I'm sure I'm forgetting another couple dozen people, but it's always hard to do this off the top of my head.

What do you try to avoid in your own work?
Making myself look better than whoever else are in my stories. Getting bogged down in story or drawing when I don't want to be. Repeating myself too much.

Are you drawn to other people's documentary kind of stuff? Why do you think people find your work interesting?
Sure. I mean, that's not my only thing, I like a lot of fiction, and sometimes documentary stuff can be overdone, especially when it's done at a mediocre level. I think people find my work interesting because it's funny and it has sex in it.

What's the plan for the next months? Years?
Books: 'Unlikely' comes out in July, 'Any Easy Intimacy' in September if I have the funds, 'Bighead' in February, 'Sulk' in July or so. I still need to finish drawing Sulk. I've got two other full length books to draw after that; 'Let Things Be Good', about drinking, drugs and pining away for girls; 'Semicolon', about being sick and in the hospital and pining away for one girl in particular... I'll also be doing more minicomics, contributing to anthologies, and putting together my own minicomic anthology called 'Elfworld' And other stuff. I do too much, I think, because I can't keep track of it all.

To find homepages or samples from the artists mentioned:

The Holy Consumption (www.theholyconsumption.com) includes Jeffrey Brown, John Hankiewicz, Paul Horneschemeier and Anders Nilsen

Chester Brown, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Julie Doucet, Debbie Dreschler, Adrian Tomine can be found at: www.drawnandquarterly.com/
James Kochalka's at: www.indyworld.com/kochalka/
Dave Kiersh: scottjacoby.freewebtools.com/
Souther Salazar: www.southersalazar.net/news/
Allison Cole: www.comicsoflove.com/
Gary Panter:www.daltokyo.com/
Ron Rege: www.geocities.com/ronregejr/
Sammy Harkham: members.aol.com/maburrier/index.html

Jeffrey Brown lives in Chicago and can be reached at jeffreybrownrq@hotmail.com.
More of his work (and others') and how to buy it can be found here:
www.theholyconsumption.com.
To hear him reading excerpts and descriptions from Clumsy from This American Life, go to www.thislife.org, in the 2003 archives of 4/18, title: Regime Change.

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