The Playboy

by Chester Brown

A memoir of shocking honesty by the graphic novelist behind 2011's acclaimed comic Paying for It As with every Chester Brown book, The Playboy ―originally published in 1992―was ahead of its time, illustrating the fearlessness and prescience of the iconoclastic cartoonist. A memoir about Brown's adolescent sexuality and shame, The Playboy chronicles his teenage obsession with the magazine of the same name, but it's also a work that explores the physical form of comics to their fullest storytelling capacity. In it, a fifteen-year-old Chester is visited by a time-traveling adult Chester, and the latter narrates the former's compulsion to purchase each issue of Playboy as it appears on newsstands. Even more fascinating than his obsession with the magazine is his need to keep his habit secret and the resulting lengths to which he goes to avoid detection by his family and, later, his girlfriends.The comics that became The Playboy first appeared in issues of Brown's controversial, groundbreaking comic Yummy Fur more than twenty years ago, and yet the frankness of the work makes it seem avant-garde even now. As in every work by this master cartoonist, The Playboy uses no extra words, no extra panels, no extra lines, conveying environment and emotion through perfectly chosen moments. Fans of his acclaimed and controversial memoir Paying for It are sure to be drawn in by this early autobiographical portrait of blazing honesty. The expanded reissue includes all-new appendixes and notes from the author.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Memoir, Nonfiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Bande Dessinée, Canada

172 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Chester Brown is a Canadian cartoonist.
Brown was born in Montreal in 1960 and grew up in the nearby suburb of Chateauguay.
At 19, Brown moved to Toronto, where he found a day job while practicing cartooning in his free time. In 1983, he began to self-publish his work in photocopied mini-comics under the title Yummy Fur. These pamphlets attracted some attention in the industry, and in 1986 the Toronto-based comic book publisher Vortex Comics approached Brown. The first Vortex issue of Yummy Fur sold well, so Brown quit his day job to become a full-time cartoonist.
In the pages of Yummy Fur, Brown serialized the story Ed the Happy Clown, which was published as a graphic novel in 1989 and went on to win several awards.
Brown's following book The Playboy (1992) was the first graphic novel released by the Canadian comic publisher Drawn & Quarterly. It was followed by I Never Liked You (1994) and the collection of shorts tories The Little Man: Short Strips, 1980-1995 (1998). From 1998 to 2003 Brown worked on Louis Riel: A Comic Strip Biography. His latest books are Paying for It (2011) and Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus (2016), both tackling at some level the theme of decriminalisation of prostitution.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I mean there is really no point to this one. This is a pretty surface level recounting of a few years in the teenage life of Chester Brown. Nothing happens. I think I could do much the same if I typed out around 50-100 pages that describe the way I made eggs from the age of 14 to 17. But then again, that would probably be slightly more captivating.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long before Joe Matt cornered the market on confessional autobio comics about obsessing over porn, Chester Brown drew and illustrated this candid, affecting series on his love/hate relationship with Playboy Magazine as a teen and young man. Some of his shame and embarassment seems almost quaint in 2009, since porn is much more mainstream now that it is readily available to almost anyone with an Internet connection. Brown has a much more deft touch than Matt, however, both in terms of style and storytelling, and despite the reader's personal feeling about porn, one can certainly identify with young Brown's confusion and guilt about the magazines, which he hides in the woods and fields near his house. This detail especially rang true to me -- as a kid, my friends and I frequently stumbled across discarded porn mags in the woods near our suburban development. At the time, we never really questioned where they came from -- porn magazines were like mushrooms, sprouting up unexpectedly across the forest floor -- but reading Chester's story makes me realize now this Canadian had quite a few compatriots across the border reading porn and reacting in a very similar way.

[Immigration Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a memoir in graphic novel form, about one teenage boy's fixation with Playboy magazine. It is a story that rings true. The stages of a teenager's relationship with Playboy magazine went something like this: buying the magazine at the newsstand (embarrassing, especially if the clerk at the register was your mom's age); "studying" the photographic contents of the magazine (furtive! exciting!); the constant fear of getting caught with Playboy in the house (terrifying); getting rid of the magazine at some point due to worry and shame (dispiriting).

Playboy magazine loomed large in the life of teenage boys of a certain era (the early 1950s - early 2000s). As a test, if you have the time, ask any guy who was a teenager at any point during this 50 year period. They will tell you that the obsession with naked ladies was real, and that the place to see what needed to be seen, in the world of naked ladies, was in Playboy magazine.

As time marched on, sadly, Penthouse, Hustler, and internet porn wrecked everything. Playboy, somehow wasn't all about porn, all of the time. It was a cut-above. Sure it was about naked ladies, but it was also about political and celebrity interviews, restaurants, car reviews, new cocktails to try, stereo reviews, and the Little Annie Fanny funny pages. It was about growing up, sorting out yourself, and your place in the world, and figuring out how to meet a lot of naked ladies. 4 Stars. Truth.

[Yas Tébourbi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main idea is interesting, however the main issue that I had was his repetitive the whole story was. I feel like a shorted version would have been more impactful.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Playboy" tells the story of Chester Brown's introduction to women via Playboy magazine. He buys an issue, then another, then another. He becomes something of a connoisseur then gets over it when he becomes an adult and gets a girlfriend. It still fascinates him but not in the obsessive way it did when he a teen. And that's it really. There's one scene where hes disappointed to find the playmate is black and realises he's a bit racist and throughout we get scenes showing Brown's guilt over masturbating but there isn't much else to this comic.

Which is to say it's not terrible but you kind of think "So what?". Doesn't every guy go through some kind of porn phase in their teens? It's not abnormal. The only weird thing now is buying magazines to look at porn when it's so ubiquitous on the net (this book came out in '92 so it's already something of a relic).

Chester Brown is an amazing comics artist and if you're interested in his work I highly recommend "I Never Liked You" and his most recent book "Louis Riel" but I can see why "The Playboy" has come to be out of print. Good, not great.

[Kitty · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was sort of fun in a titillating kind of way, and I like its unvarnished honesty, but I didn't find the author's experiences to be interesting or unusual enough to be noteworthy.

[Alexander Lisovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

До мемуаров из своего детства "I Never Liked You" Честер Браун написал довольно смелый, откровенный комикс о своём знакомстве с эротическими журналами в конце семидесятых и сопутствующих проблемах — как ему приходилось эти журналы незаметно от всех стыдливо покупать, где хранить, о чувстве вины после мастурбации, о своих вкусах в журнальных девушках (есть довольно любопытная сцена, где юный Честер, всегда придерживавшийся либеральных взглядов, вдруг обнаруживает, что его физически отталкивает чернокожая модель, и он боится, что это проявление скрытого расизма; в послесловии он ещё занятно комментирует эту сцену; Адриан Томине в своём творчестве позже касается этой щекотливой темы, только применительно к азиатским девушкам).

Здесь же Честер рассказывает, как это его увлечение трансформировалось с годами, как оно влияло на его половую жизнь и отношения с партнёршами (опять же, в послесловии он промежду прочим объясняет одну неоднозначную сцену, которую некоторые читатели истолковали неправильно — где он при сексе с девушкой представлял вместо неё журнальную модель). Я не могу представить, чтобы подобное произведение вышло в Америке, но Честер, к счастью, канадец. В целом очень здорово и ещё мне понравился нарративный приём, где рассказчиком служит путешествующий во времени и по воспоминаниям ангелочек-честер.

Прикладываю превью.

[Joey Shapiro · Rating 3 out of 5]

read this in the bookstore and didn’t buy it shhhhhh don’t tell

I really like Chester Brown and the sort of uncomfortable honesty of his memoir-ish comics is way more appealing to me than that of R. Crumb, who feels more like an actual slime ball. That being said, this entire graphic novel is 100% about teenage (and eventually adult) Chester’s obsession with Playboy / the shame that came with it, and it feels both ultra mundane and kind of pointless ultimately. Like some of his other memoirs, there’s not really a conclusion ultimately so while I enjoyed it for the most part, I was left wondering why I read it. Still, all that said, I liked it and found it charming in the same way something like Welcome To The Dollhouse is charming.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4. I’m a fan of Brown’s and while I don’t think this book is amazing I appreciate his honest telling of a problem many young men struggle with. I wonder what this book would look like if he had grown up in the age of internet porn.

[Kyle Burley · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been a while since I read this, and, happy to report it holds up very well. Honest, and insightful, where it could have been a sordid, and awkward.

[Betzim Gdolot · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an ok story that I believe to be Chester Brown's weakest work to date.

The story follows the experience of shame and guilt of young 15 yo Chester Brown. It doesn't have anything to say other than admitting those feelings and showing the life of young Chester.

I believe there are other who tackle this topic better.

[Enrico Ribeiro · Rating 1 out of 5]

1,5

[Titus · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the oldest of Chester Brown's three long-form autobiographical comics, but I read it after having read – and greatly enjoyed – the two that followed it (I Never Liked You and Paying For It). Reading with this perspective, The Playboy feels like a rough early work in which Brown's still trying to find his voice. His drawing is already sublime, with a subtle, delicate precision, but his storytelling leaves something to be desired. The main problem is that the comic gets bogged down by excessive narration, rather than letting the excellent cartooning speak for itself. As a result, The Playboy feels less minimalistic – and therefore less honest, raw and emotionally resonant – than the aforementioned other two comics. My other gripe is The Playboy's lack of interpersonal interactions: for most of the comic, Brown is on his own, or he just has fleeting, superficial exchanges with other people. Simply put, I just don't find this very engaging. The few passages that show Brown having actual conversations (most of which come in the epilogue) are the only parts where he seems to really come to life as a character, and they leave me craving more of the same.

In the trajectory of Brown's career, and even in the history of comics as a whole, The Playboy may have been an important landmark. However, reading it today, it feels like a decidedly minor work. It's not bad, but it's one-note, and pales in comparison to Brown's later output.

[Michael Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

In The Playboy, Chester Brown explores the world of incipient sexuality. We see the young Chester discovering, confused in the beginning, increasingly more explosive afterwards, the mystery of the woman. It just happens that young Chester is a nervous, skinny, a bit social boy and that Playboy, the men's magazine with sexy photographs, is available regardless of age. Overall, I found this work less interesting and mature than Paying for It, and rated it accordingly.

The Playboy has the premise of a mature story about security and growing up. Brown's story delivers, in general: the shame, the hiding of the magazine, the evolution of the character's choice, the reaction of the society, the general ideas about sexism life. However, I dismayed profoundly the narrator-- was the angel necessary? It's not even a sarcastic angel, more like a sad, unsuccessful joke. I also did not understand much the character: why no real girl? Where were his friends? Where were his brother's friends; perhaps they would have worshipped the gangly lad and boosted his self-esteem. In other words, the distractions from the main story and the sick-like characters-- except for Chester-- let me down.

Graphics-wise, I was not impressed. The sure hand of Paying for It is here still tentative and the rendition of the angel was disappointing (although I found some of the aerial landscapes and urban scenes very, very good.)

[Jay Daze · Rating 4 out of 5]

We sure are confused. Brown perfectly captures a young teens' experience of pornography. The way he shows the waves of desire and shame, how his alter-ego collects, then discards, collects, then discards the magazines; how he clips favourite pictures; and even his discovery of the adult comic 'Little Anny Fanny' is eerily similar to my own experience with porn as a boy.

What probably distinguishes Brown from many of his auto-biographical comic imitators is how masterful he is at treating such a sensitive, and easily mawkish subject. His use of a tiny devil self (I assume it is a devil) and the way he resolutely stays out of the mind of his younger self, except as told us by that devil, give the work a kind of honest rigor that some guilt ridden confession about liking/needing to look at naked women could never achieve.

Yet the epilogue, with him as a cartoonist who has published the first part of 'The Playboy', feels necessary too, especially his final somewhat convoluted questioning of his girlfriend Gerbs. There is an unknowable beauty on her face at the end, it's Brown drawing parallels with the woman in the magazines, but it also captures something at the heart of pornography, of art, and desire. I sure am confused and probably always will be.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chester Brown's first longform autobiographical work (he'd done a few shorts prior, collected in The Little Man is a stunning, innovative study of compulsion and guilt. Brown presents a fourth wall breaking narrator in the form of a mini demon-self, talking to the audience and tempting Chester to indulge in Playboy. This one concession to fantasy gives the book a remarkable depth and texture. Carefully conceived (or so it seems, though Brown has indicated in interviews that he was basically winging it when he began), beautifully drawn, this is a great graphic novel.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually made me quesy. It's not Chester Brown if you don't feel uncomfortable, though. His drawing style isn't fully formed yet, but it's still distinctive and uncompromising.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say? I'm a big fan of Chester Brown.

[Leopoldo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sencillez y honestidad en estas memorias gráficas sobre los descubrimientos de Chester Brown en el erotismo, la pornografía y la vergüenza.

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not a big fan of Chester Brown back in the 90's when I was heavily reading alternative comics. I much preferred his pals, Joe Matt & Seth. I remember at the time Chester seemed to get more respect, at least possibly in The Comics Journal. I bought 2-3 issues of Yummy Fur, out of sequence, and didn't get him, wasn't a fan of his skinny-figured drawing style or the subject matter. Recently after re-reading all my Joe Matt Peep Shows I went back and re-read those Yummy Fur issues and thought there was something there after all, I went on the internet and bought like the last six or seven issues and now I find myself a huge fan, love the poignancy of his 1970's memories as he unfurled them in the late 80's and early 90's, as well I can definitely see the artistry of his cartooning style. His style is singular, an achievement in itself. Anyway, Wowcool.com, just had a sale on it's website and I picked up this book and a couple of others by Brown even though I had read most of the Playboy story recently in Yummy Fur issues I picked up. This recent reprint of The Playboy is packaged amazingly, it's presented in retro paperback style as comic reprints were presented in the 70's, there was no graphic novel trade paper backs as we know them today. The story itself is of course rather seedy and in a couple of panels a bit icky showing the physical manifestations of masturbation . . . but it's all true, especially for us guys. Chester very accurately portrays this universal cycle of lust crazed yearning and then, after the fact, instant shame and negation of all that's taken place. Oh boy, it's not for the faint-hearted, kids!

Anyway, it's Chester Brown the king of autobio comix, and the Playboy is a terrific paperback volume portraying Brown's wild & ashamed youth into young manhood. The notes at the end of the book are great.

[The_Mad_Swede · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I find this (early) autobiographical work by Chester Brown much less impressive than Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus , his comics work on prostitution and obedience in the Bible, and his even more stellar Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography , I find it well-constructed comic with fluent visual storytelling and an interesting insight into the views on pornography, sexuality and shame of the society in which the adolescent Brown grew up. This is also heightened by the notes at the end, made for this (or at least an earlier) collected edition of the series, on occasion offering interesting insights into Brown's development as a person and artist, and also providing insight into the nature of memory (details that have now faded or were interpreted differently at the time, and so on).

All in all, it was an interesting and well-made comics memoir, and it reminded me of the fact that I do want to read more of Brown's oeuvre.

[Reinhard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Praised by such comics legends as Eddie Campbell and Gilbert Hernandez, Chester Brown's autobiographical comics have been a celebrated part of comics history for a long time. An while I agree that Chester Brown is in the same league as the aforementioned authors, I don't feel The Playboy is a work that cements that legacy.

I read The Playboy a few weeks after reading Louis Riel, and a year or so after reading I Never Liked You, and felt that while Brown's art is as beautiful as ever, the story lacked the depth of his later works. The Playboy is a perfect example of what comics can achieve, of what it can capture, but I felt that Brown could have achieved more, could have discussed the broader impact of his secret sexuality the way he would do in later years.

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 2 out of 5]

I once read a review of one of his other (much better) memoirs that was three words long: "pathetic and genuine." That is about the best that could be said about this footnote in Chester Brown's work. I can see the seeds of his obsessive self-reflexive thought fully played out in his later sex-worker duology. But here it is mostly empty, apart from a few shallow laughs that might be had by any other male honest enough to recognize himself as once being an anxious and deluded teenage boy. I'd say this one is only for the completists. His artwork is still great though.

Sidenote: What's with the two-hand thing? And the chair? Chilling stuff.

Read on a library copy with pages so stiff that I think I may have been the only person ever to open it.

[Vittorio Rainone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Se in "Io le pago" ci parlava senza peli sulla lingua del suo soddisfacente rapporto con le prostitute, qui CB svela la sua relazione con la madre di tutte le riviste soft core, Playboy, e con essa la solitudine e la vergogna delle seghe giovanili (e delle successive seghe, per un'abitudine mai cessata da parte dell'autore). La storia è ipnotica, manco a dirlo, perchè la consueta padronanza del mezzo di Brown rende fluido e interessante il racconto, anche quando rischia di scivolare nella riproposizione piana di eventi senza importanza di un'esistenza normale. Ma qui di normale c'è davvero poco: una tale sincerità è l'elemento che per primo colpisce, avvince e catalizza l'attenzione.

[Radu Stochita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Recently got into graphic novels as a way of procrastinating. Instead of going on Facebook, I pick up something, read, and then continue work.
Picked this up for 3 bucks and truly disappointed. While the topics of addiction, pornography and sexual education could have made an incredible story, this book does not even try hard.
I found out that a guy was buying playboys, masturbating, hiding them and sometimes thinking about the magazines. That is it.
Tho, I liked the graphics, that is why I won’t give it only a star.

[Grégoire Maillard · Rating 3 out of 5]

found this one for a few bucks at @cheapthrillsmtl; it’s a pretty quick read as each page has only 1 or 2 boxes; however, it definitely deserved its place on this page as Chester Brown is one of the author that made what Drawn and Quarterly is and used to be (w/ Joe Matt and Seth as well); in the same vein that the Joe Matt that I recently talked about, the author reflect on its past self, here as a Chateauguay teenager obssessed with Playboy magazine and little events of his life and personal reflection; not a must-read but a fun one!

[Niklas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ihan hauska pohdinta tekijän viehätyksestä (addiktiosta?) Playboy-lehtiin ja niiden keskiaukeamatyttöjen elämään. Kertoja ostaa Playboy-lehtiä ja hankkiutuu niistä eroon polttamalla tai metsään piilottamalla runkattuaan. Myöhemmin hän kerää kokonaisia vuosikertoja, mutta hankkiutuu niistäkin eroon aloitettuaan seurustelun. Playboysta muodostuu jatkuva halun ja katumuksen kehä.

[Erik Wirfs-Brock · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chester Brown is an excellent cartoonist and a thoughtful writer, but no matter how thoughtfully he examines it this is still a pretty routine, not especially interesting anecdote blown up to book length.

[Jiro Dreams of Suchy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brown is as authentic as they come, and as they cum. An oddly relatable story about feeling weird about jacking your little pecker those first few times.

Read this one for an honest account of that time for boys. The book version of picking up a hard sock.

[Jared · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chester Brown's art and storytelling is always great although I liked this a lot less than his other work "I Never Liked You."

I'd give it 3 stars for story, and 5 stars for the quality of the drawings, so 4 stars it is.