Unproductive Cartoonist Joe Matt Preferred not to be Prolific
By Dan BrownCartoonist Joe Matt died last month at age 60. He was at his drawing table when the (unconfirmed) heart attack took him, but Matt’s friend Seth pointed out in an online tribute he likely wasn’t creating comics.Which is Matt’s tragedy. He will go down in comics history as someone who could have done more, but chose not to. The truth is, after his 14-issue run on Peepshow ended in 2006, Matt found other things to do apart from publishing his highly personal comics.That’s why, in my mind, I classify Matt alongside Bob Burden, Paul Chadwick, Michael Golden and David Mazzuchelli. They are all comic creators who, for whatever reason, aren’t consistently productive. As much as I enjoy their work, which is a lot, none of them are cursed with the gift of being prolific.It doesn’t mean the comics Matt made in his brief life are of poor quality. It just means, like many other comic fans, I have an itch that will never be scratched because with his sudden passing, the hope that Matt would ever draw and write another story disappears(None of this applies and all bets are off if some publisher finds a treasure trove of material he worked on, but never got published during his lifetime. I can only hope.)Matt came to prominence alongside his cartoonist friends Seth and Chester Brown, who all hung out in Toronto in the 1990s. Matt, an American, was in Canada illegally and eventually ended up settling in Los Angeles. A rumoured HBO series based on his comics never materialized.Matt was known for autobiographical stories that were embarrassing in the extreme. He specialized in detailing his own quirks and obsessions, such as spending a good chunk of every day masturbating to pornographic videos. He was kind of like comedian Larry David in that the essence of his work was describing the price he paid for being himself.In the coverage of his death, there have been hints Matt had been dealing with some kind of creative block. (I don’t believe in writer’s block, but that’s a subject for another column.) There were also indications his perfectionism got in the way.One way to measure his output would be to compare him to Seth and Brown, also autobiographical creators. What jumps out when you look at their bibliographies is how Seth, for instance, balances the need to be creative with the need to be perfect, and has produced a long list of books and other projects. Or you could compare him to a comics legend like Jack Kirby, who enrolled in New York’s prestigious Pratt Institute for illustrators when he was 14 years old. He ended up dropping out.“I wasn’t the kind of student that Pratt was looking for. They wanted patient people who would work on something forever. I didn’t want to work on any project forever. I intended to get things done,” Kirby would say later in his life.The consequence is that Kirby’s comics, all these decades later, are still being reprinted and sold to new generations of comic lovers. Meanwhile, Matt’s anthologies have already gone out of print.A modern example would be Southwestern Ontario’s own Jeff Lemire, who is always working on multiple books, never seeming to be at a loss for inspiration or motivation. He once credited his prolific nature to the work ethic he developed being raised on a farm.For whatever reason, Joe Matt wasn’t interested in living like that. The sad fact is, he will go down in comics history as a footnote. He will forever be “the other guy” of the Toronto Three.Dan Brown has covered pop culture for 30 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
