For many cartoonists, reading cartoons as a kid ignites a love of comics. For Jeffrey Brown, comics were the culmination of his childhood interests in writing, drawing, and telling stories. Brown’s interest in comics started at a young age, saying that his dream was to either draw “Garfield” or “X-Men.”
Originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, Brown is a cartoonist, illustrator, and teacher who has been making comics since he was a child. Brown moved to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s MFA painting and drawing program where graduated in 2002.
In college, he drifted away from comics as a medium to focus on fine arts, such as painting. But eventually, Brown found himself returning to comics through things like his sketchbook practice.
Today, Brown is a lecturer at SAIC and has been teaching here since 2010. He began his SAIC teaching career when a friend of his, teaching at the school, asked him if he would be interested in taking over their class for one semester. (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t for only one semester.)
For Brown, teaching is not just a way to share his knowledge, but also a way to continue learning about comics.
“I’m learning about how to verbalize the mechanics of comics in a way that I hadn’t really [had to] think about necessarily in my own work, and so I can apply those lessons to my own work,” said Brown. He described teaching as a joy, especially at an interdisciplinary art school.
Brown is known for his young readers and middle grade comics, like his “Star Wars: Jedi Academy” series, but recently, he’s been working on a number of autobiographical graphic novels, like “Kids Are Still Weird: And More Observations from Parenthood.”
Though Brown often has an audience and age demographic in mind for his work, he does not change the process of his writing to the age demographic of that audience. Brown also talked about his love of reading children’s comics with his child.
“I don’t write to an audience — when I’m writing my middle grade books I’m thinking about what a middle grade reader would be getting out of the story, but I’m not writing any different than I would if [the work] was for an adult or even a younger reader,” said Brown.
Brown said that he always focuses on themes of humor and heart, adding that a part of his writing process involves having “multiple irons in the fire” so that he can move between projects.
Brown has just released a sequel to his “Hulk” middle grade series called “Hulk Teach: A Tale of Two Teachers,” and he is currently working on an un-announceable project with an unannounced property.
