Nicolas back

Brave, bold, Brown (Jeffrey), brief, basic, banal.

This is, I think going to polarise people. Lazy people who think it's clever to start each word with a 'b'. The good news for the likes of Porcellino and Penfold is that it'll take the heat off them when superhero readers want to cite autobiographical comic creators who "can't even draw". Fuck you, by the way!

It's a 70-page confessional from a Canadian cartoonist whose younger brother died when he was barely more than seven or so himself. The first and last three pages show them play-acting together as the Ghostbusters; by the fourth page Pascal is sitting on his own outside on the pavement. How do you react to such an abrupt hole in your home and heart - at the very centre of your world? Inconsistently. And as E.M. Forster would have it, we shouldn't be afraid of being inconsistent.

For a start, a child's desires are innocently self-centred, so games and Christmas presents bring as much joy as ever, and a parent's grief during these early anniversaries merely spoil the fun for the young Pascal. It's only as he grows older that he begins to understand what happened and by that point self-awareness comes with the additional price-tag of guilt. That's why I call this a "confessional" and I'd wager it will speak volumes to those who've been bereaved at any age: there's a gnawing gut-level guilt that perhaps you weren't devastated enough at the time and therefore didn't care, and a suspicion (or even determination) that you shouldn't be enjoying yourself now - it's just not right. Girard makes no such clumsy evaluations on the printed page, electing instead to offer up the simplest of fragments of what he recalls: moments when he's struck by his brother's death or even benefits from it through sympathy. Judge him if you want, but it's just human nature and nothing to be ashamed about. Brave and bold for me, then, and also brilliant; and yes, very Jeffrey Brown - particularly his girlfriend.