Bighead By Jeffrey Brown
One of a growing sub-genre of comix artists who create art out of their (often failed) sex life, Jeffrey Brown's work has stood out as among the best. "Bighead" marked a change for Brown from the autobiographical, comix-verite style of last year's "Unlikely," to using the tropes of superhero comix to explore the author's own insecurities and power fantasies. Bighead fights absurd villains like Mutatoe but is baffled by the smarmy powers of The Brit, a pipe-smoking lothario with designs on the lovely Rebessica. Drawn in a style that veers from childish scrawl to a hilariously crude version of the mainstream's "house style," "Bighead" looks and reads like an unselfconscious fanboy's labor of love -- which it is, sort of. Besides being a superior parody, "Bighead" slyly reveals the author's personal issues and in some ways, everyone's.