| The Playboy: A Comic Book | |
|---|---|
Cover of the first edition of The Playboy from Drawn and Quarterly |
|
| Publisher | Drawn and Quarterly |
| Date | 1992 |
| Page count | 172 pages |
| Creative team | |
| Creator(s) | Chester Brown |
| Original publication | |
| Published in | Yummy Fur |
| Issue(s) | 21-23 |
| Language | English |
| ISBN | 978-0-921-45108-2 |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Ed the Happy Clown: The Definitive Ed Book |
| Followed by | I Never Liked You |
The Playboy is an autobiographical graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, dealing with the author's obsession with Playboy Playmates, his desire to keep his collection hidden, and how it affected his ability to relate to women into adulthood.
The book was originally serialized in Brown's Yummy Fur. It forms part of his early-1990s autobiographical period, and was his first book-length comic to be conceived as a complete story. It was originally intended to be part of a longer work together with what became I Never Liked You, his next graphic novel, but found the larger story too complex for him to handle at once.
The story has attracted much praise and criticism. It was controversial for its graphic depiction of the adolescent Brown masturbating, and came off to some as a defense of pornography, while seeming to others to condemn it.
Contents |
The book is an autobiographical story about Brown's obsession with the Playmates in Playboy magazine. Brown's character obsessively masturbates in secret, terrified of being found out, but unable to resist the urge to masturbate. Afterwards, he feels guilty, sometimes getting rid of the magazine(s), only to come back to them again later, sometimes years later buying copies again of issues he had guiltily discarded.[1]
The story happens mostly during Brown's adolescence, but winds up at the time of the book's creation. Along the way we see how Brown's Playboy obsession affects his ability to relate to women. The narrator of the story is a winged, not-quite-angelic version of Brown himself, who often talks to the Chester Brown character. Brown never acknoledges the narrator, though, who appears to be visible only to the reader. The "angel" talks about Brown in the third person in the adolescent parts of the story, but as the story comes to Brown's adult self, the "angel" begins to speak of him in the first person.[1]
Brown depicted actual Playmates and issues of Playboy throughout the book.[2] The book also touches on Brown's prejudices, as in his disgust at seeing a black Playmate.[1][note 1]
Set in Brown's hometown of Châteauguay, Quebec[3] in Canada in 1975 when Brown was 15,[4] the story opens in church, with Brown's angel-demon (Brown's id[4]) cajoling him into buying a Playboy magazine he had seen for sale. He works up the courage to do it at a convenience store at a considerable distance from his house, hoping that at that distance he won't be caught.
After bringing the magazine home and masturbating over it, he disposes of it by hiding it under a plank of wood in the woods near his house. His building obsession battles his guilt, though, and eventually goes back for it, a binge and purge situation[4] which repeats itself several times throughout the story, even into adulthood, when he alternately hunts down back issues of Playboy and disposes them over the guilt he feels or his fear of being found out by a girlfriend.[4]
His obsession so overcomes him that, even when his mother passes away while he is at camp, his first thought at returning home is to retrieve the Playboy he has hidden in the woods.[1] As an adult, he hunts down back issues, and becomes something of a connoisseur of Playmates, memorizing dates an names. His obsession interferes with his relations with women, however—he admits that, while seeing one girlfriend, he could only maintain an erection for her by fantasizing about his favourite Playmates, and that he preferred masturbation to having sex with her.[1][4]
The story finishes with himself drawing the story we are reading. Though he knows his friends will be reading about it shortly, he still feels embarrassment, and is unable to talk about it with them face-to-face.
Brown ran into problems doing contemporary autobiographical stories, as his story interconnected with the stories of those around him — the friends he portrayed did not always agree with the way they were portrayed (as can been seen in Showing Helder). Brown then decided to turn to his teenage years, as he had lost contact with most of the people he knew from that time.[12]
The story was originally called Disgust[13] when serialized in issues #21-23 of Brown's Yummy Fur comic book, at the time still being published by Vortex. The collection was published by Drawn and Quarterly in somewhat different form after Brown moved publication of Yummy Fur there, and was the first graphic novel D&Q published.[14] At first, Brown intended The Playboy and I Never Liked You to be one story, but found it too complex to handle when he started to plan it out.[15]
Like Brown's other acclaimed autobiographical graphic novel, I Never Liked You, originally was, the panels of The Playboy are set on black pages. In 2002, Brown revised the pages of I Never Liked You, making the pages white, saying, "I like austerity. The white background looks more austere to me."[16] However, he has left the The Playboy as it is with the original black pages.
The book was dedicated to "Seth for his example as an artist".
While Brown had a clear idea of the stories from his life that he would use, and the general shape of the book, there was a "sense of improvising", as he did not script it out beforeheand.[17]
Brown had been simplifying his drawing style since bringing Ed the Happy Clown to an end, as he didn't like the style he had at the time,, and had been looking at cartoonists with simpler styles, like John Stanley and his friend Seth.[18] He abandoned the grid layout that he had used, "and replace[d] it with a more organic collaged sequencing using panels of a more varied shape."[13] He would make the drawings, and only lay down panel borders afterwards, which would conform to the shape of the pictures they enclosed, and were done in a wobbly free-hand much like the Hernandez brothers or Robert Crumb.[19]
Brown distorted his images to convey emotion, but not in traditionally "cartoonish" ways. For example, when the adolescent Brown comes across friends of his parents, he shrinks with embarrassment through distortion of the artist's "lens", rather than literally shrinking, as one often sees in cartoons.[1]
As one of "The autobiographical comics from Yummy Fur", along with I Never Liked You and several shorter pieces, The Playboy placed #38 on The Comics Journal's list of the 100 best comics of the century. It was also nominated for a Harvey in 1991 for Best Single Issue or Story for "The Playboy Stories" in Yummy Fur #21-23.
The book is admired by critics and many of Brown's fellow cartoonists. Gilbert Hernandez, of Love and Rockets fame, has said, "The Playboy and I Never Liked You are probably the best graphic novels next to Maus",[20] and critic Frank Young said it was the "pivotal work" in the autobiographical comics trend of the early 1990s,[21] and Darcy Sullivan called it a "landmark look at an artist's growth", talking about the pace with which Brown's work matured over the course of three issues,[1] and calls it required reading for those who are serious about comics.[22]
Brown says a number of women took offense at the book, saying it glorified pornography.[12] Hugh Hefner sent Brown a letter after The Playboy's publication, giving Brown "bewildered fatherly advice", showing concern that a someone who grew up during the sexual revolution could still have suffered through the confusion and anxiety that Brown did.[23]
Critic Darcy Sullivan called The Playboy stories "[t]he most honest sex in comics" in the early 1990s, "and the most damning expose [sic] of pornography", dealing "with nothing more than Brown's relationship with Playboy".[24] He praises how quickly Brown matured over the course of The Playboy, and for making the scenes, which may or may not have happened as Brown depicted them, so believable. While seeming to acknowledge feminist complaints, he depicts himself as "a victim of his urges",[1]"Playboy has kept him mentally separate". The book shows, however, that pornography does not merely satisfy a need, but creates that need, an addiction in those who consume it.[11] Brown's comics are not didactic—they are revelatory, and raise questions, rather than trying to answer them.[22]
Sullivan goes on to compare Joe Matt's less-subtle work (which details his porn obsession, as well) unfavourably to Brown's,[11] to which Brown responded in a later issue of The Comics Journal. Matt's comics analyze (and rationalize) his obsession, Sullivan says, while Brown's reveal.[11]
| Translations | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Title | Publisher | Date | ISBN |
| French | Le Playboy[25] | éditions Les 400 coups | 2001 | 978-2-845-96035-0 |
| Spanish | El Playboy | Ponent Mon | 2008 | 978-8-492-44403-8 |
| Portugese | A Playboy[26] | Loja Conrad Do Brasil | 85-87193-20-1 | |
| Korean | 플레이보이[27] | Sai Comics | 2008-09-20 | 978-8-990-78185-7 |
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