Justin Green (cartoonist)

Justin Considine Green (born 1945) is an American cartoonist who is known as the "father of autobiographical comics." 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 attended the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 1969.

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. 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. Green's roommate at the time, Art Spiegelman, was so inspired by Binky Brown that he thought he'd try his own story, Maus.

Green is 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).

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.

Green still makes comics the way he did when he started, by dipping a pen nib into an ink bottle.

Personal life

Green lives in Cincinnati, and is married to fellow cartoonist Carol Tyler. Green and Tyler met in San Francisco in the early 1980s; they have a child together.

Green is first cousins with film director William Friedkin (Green's father and Friedkin's mother are siblings).

Bibliography (collections)

• 1972 â€" Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. Last Gasp; re-issued by McSweeney's in 2009. ISBN 193478155X
• 1994 â€" Justin Green's Sign Game. Last Gasp. ISBN 0-944094-14-7
• 1995 â€" Binky Brown Sampler. Last Gasp. ISBN 0-86719-332-8
• 2004 â€" Musical Legends (Monumental Musical Memories). Last Gasp. ISBN 0-86719-587-8

References

External links

• Green's blog
• Justin Green biography
• Justin Green interview at the Wayback Machine (archived December 25, 1996)
• Pen Grenades: Justin Green's webcomic