<DIV><DIV><B>A LONG-OUT-OF-PRINT CLASIC BY A MASTER OF UNDERGROUND COMICS<BR><BR></B><DIV>In the late 1980s, the idiosyncratic Chester Brown (author of the muchlauded <I>Paying for It </I>and <I>Louis Riel</I>) began writing the cult classic comic book series <I>Yummy Fur</I>. Within its pages, he serialized the groundbreaking <I>Ed the Happy Clown</I>, revealing a macabre universe of parallel dimensions. Thanks to its wholly original yet disturbing story lines, <I>Ed </I>set the stage for Brown to become a world-renowned cartoonist. <BR><BR><I>Ed the Happy Clown </I>is a hallucinatory tale that functions simultaneously as a dark roller-coaster ride of criminal activity and a scathing condemnation of religious and political charlatanism. As the world around him devolves into madness, the eponymous Ed escapes variously from a jealous boyfriend, sewer monsters, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and a janitor with a Jesus complex. Brown leaves us wondering, with every twist of the plot, just how Ed will get out of this scrape. <BR><BR>The intimate, tangled world of <I>Ed the Happy Clown </I>is definitively presented here, repackaged with a new foreword by the author and an extensive notes section, and is, like every Brown book, astonishingly perceptive about the zeitgeist of its time.</DIV></DIV></DIV>