Ed the Happy Clown (2012 Hardcover edition)
by
Chester Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve had this hardcover edition of EtHC on my to-read shelf for the better part of a couple of years now. Not because I didn’t want to read it, just never got around to it. First and foremost, it is definitely a dramatic and hugely different experience than the authors other more renowned works like “Louis Riel” and “Paying For It”. It is the first book that he turned into a single long-narrative back in the 1980s when he was still focussed on comic strips – a history that is expanded on nicely in the very extensive notes section that is at the end of this edition. This hardbound collection of the series is pretty much the definitive version as far as creator Chester Brown himself states – collecting all the entries that came together to go from a couple of random, unconnected comic strips in the comic “Yummy Fur” and then coalesced into a surreal and frankly insane and yet very entertaining story that become a single graphic novel.
WARNING: Some graphic descriptions are ahead (because otherwise I can tell you little about the book…)
The titular protagonist, Ed, is at the start very much a simple happy clown who wants nothing but to get to the hospital to entertain the sick children – but reaches to find it has burned down and then heads off to the orphanage to ply his laughter-inducing trade and maybe raise some juvenile spirits. But thereafter we meet the rest of this crazy world, tiny chapter by tiny chapter and to say that it is weird is an understatement.
You will meet anarchists, naked pygmies in the sewers, utterly insane politicians, a man who cannot stop shitting (literally), completely insane doctors, bounty hunters, a delusional religious janitor, ghosts, homophobic scientists, vampires and hunters, unethical surgeons, a very specific cannibal and oh yes, at one point Ed finds his that the head of his penis has been replaced by the head of Ronald Reagan – not just visually but it speaks and has a mind of its own. Literally, the presidents head is on his penis.
And there’s some interdimensional stuff that comes into play as well along the way.
Our poor “hero” Ed of course is not exactly your traditional hero in all this. In fact he is more like the poor reader who is flowing helplessly along this endless tide of events than I think even the author intended, because Brown admits in the commentary notes that the project as a whole became a kind of stream of consciousness exercise in stretching his creative muscles and seeing what he would create along the way. I do not think anyone could have suspected that he would end up creating a chaotic and surreal work that would have the longevity that this book has had these past decades.
Overall it is an exercise in testing yourself as a reader. Not because the book is a slog or boring, not that at all! Personally I started it when I had a short bit of a time to kill and ended up reading it cover to cover in one sitting.
I mean more that it there are few books to which I put the tag of “surreal” and mean it completely and totally and that is not everyones cup of tea – but if you are intrigued by things that dip into this style and want something completely different from the general reading out there, it is better than you would expect. So long as you remember that it is first and foremost an exercise in free-reign creativity, you can smoothly roll past the extremely minimal characterisation and the oft chaotic and at times nonsensical plot elements because there is a shocking amount of coming together of a few things as the narrative progresses and the conclusion is very much in keeping with the story that has gotten us there and seems oddly fitting – a point that the author himself notes.
The only point remaining is the artwork: Much like the story content it depicts, the art is weird, at times crude and a bit simplistic. This all fits with the both haphazard and freewheeling approach to it all. However, like much of his other works, there is something very clean and stark about the black and white style that Brown uses and it keeps it from looking rushed or of poorly drawn. Nothing is unclear or messy (unless intended) and we can see the early stages of the skill that is more crystallised in his later works.
One Happy Monk 
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