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Template:Short description Template:For Template:Infobox comics creator
Justin Considine Green (July 25, 1945 – April 23, 2022)[1] was an American cartoonist who is known as the "father of autobiographical comics."[2] A key figure and pioneer in the 1970s generation of underground comics artists, he is best known for his 1972 comic book Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary.
Biography
Green was born in Boston, Massachusetts,[3] but grew up in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a Jewish father and Catholic mother; he was raised Catholic.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". As a child he at first attended a Catholic parochial school, and later transferred to a school where most students were Jews.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". He rejected the Catholic faith in 1958 as he believed it caused him "compulsive neurosis"Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". that decades later was diagnosed as obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
Green was studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design[1] when in 1967 he discovered the work of Robert Crumb and turned to cartooning, attracted to what he called Crumb's "harsh drawing stuffed into crookedly-drawn panels".Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". He experimented with his artwork to find what he called an "inherent and automatic style as a conduit for the chimerical forms in Template:Interp own psyche".Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". He dropped out of an MFA program at Syracuse UniversityScript error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". when in 1968 he felt a "call to arms"Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". to move to San Francisco, where the nascent Template:Not a typo scene was blossoming amid the counterculture there.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
Green's short comics pieces appeared in various titles and anthologies including Art Spiegelman's and Bill Griffith's anthologies Arcade and Young Lust. But in 1972, he was overwhelmed by an urgent desire to tell the story of his personal anxieties.[4][5][6] Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary is a solo comic book that details Green's struggle with a form of OCD known as scrupulosity, within the framework of growing up Catholic in 1950s Chicago. Intense graphic depiction of personal torment had never appeared in comic book form before, and it had a profound effect on other cartoonists and the future direction of comics as literature. Art Spiegelman was so inspired by Binky Brown that he thought he'd try his own memoir-type story, a strip he called "Maus" which some years later became the seed of Maus.[7]
Green was also a master sign painter, which he described during the 1980s in his monthly comic strip for the trade publication Signs of the Times, that later became a book entitled Justin Green's Sign Game (Last Gasp, June 1995).
In the 1990s, Green focused his cartooning attention on a series of visual biographies for Pulse!, the in-house magazine for Tower Records. It ran for ten years, later collected into an anthology known as Musical Legends (Last Gasp, 2004 ).
Green still made comics the way he did when he started, by dipping a pen nib into an ink bottle.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
Justin and his wife Carol Tyler are the subject of the documentary film "Married to Comics" which presented in 2023 at the Small Press Expo event feature at the AFI Silver Theater and Culture Center.[8]
Personal life
Green's younger brother Keith Green (c. 1951[9]–1996) was also involved in the underground comix movement, as an underground distributor from c. 1968–1975, and publishing comics under the name Keith Green Industrial Realities (as well as the imprint Saving Grace) in the period c. 1971–1977.[10] He later became an art dealer. Keith Green died in 1996.[11]
Justin Green lived in Cincinnati, and was married to fellow cartoonist Carol Tyler.[12] Green and Tyler met in San Francisco in the early 1980s; they have a daughter together, Julia, who is also an artist.[13]
Green also has a daughter Catlin b. 1976 and was first cousins with film director William Friedkin (Green's father and Friedkin's mother are siblings).[1]
Death
Green died on April 23, 2022, in Cincinnati. His death was announced by Carol Tyler on her Facebook page.[14]
Bibliography
The following is a list of books by Justin Green.
| BOOK | YEAR | PUBLISHER | NOTES |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary | 1972 | Last Gasp | Reprinted twice. First in Justin Green's Binky Brown Sampler in 1995, then by McSweeney's in 2009. |
| Justin Green's Sign Game | 1994 | Last Gasp | Collection of comics originally published in Signs of the Times magazine. |
| Justin Green's Binky Brown Sampler | 1995 | Last Gasp | |
| Musical Legends: The Collected Comics from Pulse Magazine | 2004 | Last Gasp | Collection of comics originally published in Pulse! Magazine |
References
Notes
Works cited
External links
- Green's blog
- Justin Green biography
- Justin Green interview, originally published in The Goblin Magazine #6
- Pen Grenades: Justin Green's webcomic
- Justin Green memorial tribute originally published in The Comics Journal
Template:Underground comix cartoonists
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Justin Green bio Template:Webarchive, Iconoclast Editions website. Accessed Dec. 14, 2013.
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Justin Green, Who Put Himself Into His Underground Cartoons, Dies at 76
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Template:Cite web
- ↑ Spiegelman, Art, introduction. Binky Brown Sampler. Last Gasp (1995): "Without Binky Brown there would be no Maus."
- ↑ Template:Cite news
- ↑ Keith Green entry, Who's Who of American Comic Books, 1928–1999. Accessed Dec. 27, 2016.
- ↑ Keith Green entry, Grand Comics Database. Accessed Dec. 8, 2016.
- ↑ Arsenault, Marc. "Underground Distributor Keith Green Dies", The Comics Journal #189 (Aug. 1996), p. 34.
- ↑ Mautner, Chris. “'I Was Dipping a Pen at My Dying Mother’s Bedside': An Interview with Carol Tyler", The Comics Journal website (June 26, 2013).
- ↑ Ramos, Steve. "Drawn to Be an Artist: Clifton cartoonist Carol Tyler is a late bloomer Template:Webarchive". Cincinnati CityBeat (August 31, 2005).
- ↑ Template:Cite web