Killjoy (1,2 & 3) by Robert Brown

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL comics at their very best make us feel less alone in the world, opening their hearts and their memories to us and inviting us to share the things that made them laugh, cry, or just feel alive.

I've found writing about Robert Brown's wonderful Killjoy series difficult. I actually found myself resisting starting to read it. I didn't realise why until recently. 

In Killjoy, Brown has achieved something remarkable and something that I am deeply envious of. 

In his good, honest, slice-of-life storytelling Brown has created a resonance that I would very much like in my own work and find myself reaching for often.

It's a simple model. Brown tells us stories of varying length from his childhood - stories about growing up, siblings, parents, first girlfriends and best friends, rules and taboos and breaking them - and successfully weaves a spell that carries us back to our own childhood, to our own first kisses and fleeting romances and asks us to remember again, and find a way, as Brown has done, to keep those formative memories close. 

Brown's production as a whole is superb and his books have an incredibly professional look to them, with each of the first three issues retaining an individual personality that allows them to stand alone effectively. 

A lot of that is due to the three strong covers Brown has used, all three of which tease a moment from the books they wrap around, diving deep into those events with lush, strong colours that draw us in and beg us to read more.

Within, Brown's artwork has dreamy note to it, with backgrounds that fade at the edges - as memories do - challenging us to fill in the gaps ourselves and drawing us further into the moment until we almost find ourselves walking alongside his characters.

That sensation is only emphasised by the studied and accomplished way Brown's characters act, wearing their emotions like masks in the way only children can, and letting us feel their pain, their joy, their embarrassment or their anger all that more acutely. 

The children in Brown's stories are wide-eyed and joyful, innocent and full of life. 

But they're also malicious, nervous, frightened, angry, humiliated, distraught, scheming and petulant. 

To achieve all that, with a style that on the surface is such a simple one marks Brown as a truly exceptional cartoonist, for whom magic flows from the pen as naturally as light does from the sun. 

He also shows a skilled touch with words, successfully employing straight dialogue, narration and, in book three, diary entries, to create a variety of unique languages throughout his books, lettering each beautifully to stand alone - and that's saying nothing of the visual language perfectly complementing those words in every panel.

At times he can verge on overly verbose - particularly in the opening narration of book three - and where he does it can be jarring, but it's rare and only reflects a desire to allow his confessional stories the appropriate weight, and share with us the space they so obviously occupy in his own heart.

The balance between the longer stories Brown wants to tell - of his first time away from home at Cub Camp in issue one and his first romance in issue three - and his shorter stories is a deft touch, and coupled with Brown's self-professed 'total disregard for chronology', reflects the erratic nature of our memories and the way we link them together to preserve them with little need for any overt connection.

Killjoy evokes so much in me, memories of my own childhood and experiences, but almost moreso, it reminds me of the reason I love the autobiographical genre and fight so hard to achieve in it myself. 

Because what Robert Brown has created here is a timeless work that deserves to occupy a space on the shelves of any fans of slice-of-life comics, whilst at the same time, being the kind of book capable of reaching people we aren't regular comic readers and might be surprised by the power of cartoons to reach us in profound and meaningful ways.

Because so many of us share experiences and memories like this, so many of us were hurt or touched by those seemingly insignificant events of our childhood, and in many cases so many of us still are. 

In Killjoy Robert Brown invites us to celebrate those memories, to hold them close and dear and to be brave enough to share them with others.

Because if we do and if just one person feels the same way, if just one person is left feeling less alone in the world, then we've achieved something far greater than anyone ever gave comics credit for. 

Robert Brown has achieved that with Killjoy. 

You can find Robert Brown on Twitter @pygmyking or online at www.robertbrowncomi.cz/