Crenshaw's Books & Decks

This is the first book by Brown I read, and the first book in the "Girlfriends Trilogy". 

Clumsy is a glimpsed window to Brown's personal love life and her long-distance relationship with Theresa.  A memoir structured in short episodes of his daily life that tell us about meeting, dating and falling in love with Theresa, but also the day to day elements that make a relationship grow despite how mundane: from hugging, to farting, sex tons of sex, condoms, insecurities, discussions, moments of indescribable happiness and others of tension. Life as you live it when you relate to somebody. A depiction of intimacy in its beauty and rawness.

Brown is good at telling a story with honesty and in a way that appeals to the reader disregarding the gender. Being a woman, I especially appreciate how Brown tells his love story, so very different from any woman's way of telling it and living it. I am sure that if Theresa had written or drawn her version, the tone of the story, the elements and moments selected would have been very different. The book, for obvious reasons, is appealing to men, especially those who, like Brown, are a bit clumsy, weird, sensitive and a bit needy, the post-modern male if you want.

However, what makes the book appealing is not only the approach to the memoir genre, and the way the story is built by decomposing it in micro-pieces, but also the fact that Brown puts his heart in there.  The result is a very charming naughty and tender love story.

Visually speaking, the book is drawn in a "rudimentary" sort of style. Like a comic strip in a newspaper. The pages are filled with six vignettes, drawn in a clear black and white, with lots of white space, very clean and clear, with little elements of distraction. Despite the simplicity and the lack of shadow work, the images are very well composed and framed, and Brown does a terrific job at creating complex expressive intimate images with very few strokes. I especially love his use of horizontal and vertical lines to create perspective and depth in images that, otherwise, would be flat. I love the way he draws nudity, the way he depicts body hair, and the facial expression of the characters.  All very cute.

The book is for adults, adult themes, sex, nudity and all the goodies that we want to find in comic and graphic goods. If you don't, well, back off.

I have to confess, that this book's cover is one of the most boring ugliest cover I have ever seen on any book. A major sin and put down, taking into account that the author is a graphic artist! Hellooooo.