At his career peak, Matt was one third of a trinity himself, with Chester Brown and Seth, all published by Montreal’s Drawn & Quarterly.Supplied
The cartoonist Joe Matt once encountered Art Spiegelman, whose Pulitzer-winning graphic novel Maus told the story of how his Jewish parents in Poland survived the horrors of the Second World War. Matt felt his own boring life could not possibly compete with that of his artistic hero.
“What do you do” he asked Spiegelman, “if you don’t have a father who was in the Holocaust?”
Spiegelman’s reply is unknown. But the answer is in Matt’s work. Matt, who died of a heart attack at age 60 on Sept. 17, made a career, for a short burst of time anyway, cartooning autobiographically with a comedian’s flair and an exhibitionist’s courage. (His passion for pornography – he called them “nature films” – was not hidden.)
“Everybody’s life is interesting in some way,” says Chester Brown, a close friend and fellow cartoonist. “Joe had a mundane existence, and yet his comics were so fascinating.”
A native Pennsylvanian who lived and worked for 15 years in Toronto, Matt produced four unfiltered works of autofiction between 1992 and 2007: Peepshow, The Poor Bastard, Fair Weather and Spent. The main character, named Joe Matt, was the worst, heightened version of himself – cheap, compulsive, immature, egocentric. His misery was hysterical; his openness alarming. And his flaws? Utterly human.
“His satire was revealing the worst of people,” says broadcaster and musician Sook-Yin Lee, a close friend of Matt’s. “And it is really brave to put your face in there and say it’s Joe Matt, and then go and expose the worst possible things about yourself, and even fabricate it and make it worse.”
Early influences were Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar and Spiegelman – his 'holy trinity of autobiographical comics.'Supplied
Matt left Toronto in 2003 for Los Angeles, where he died, reportedly slumped over his drawing board. Because he had a reputation for laziness and had not produced a book in years, the thought that his last moment on Earth was spent toiling away struck some as ironic.
Others insist Matt was not a slacker. “He put an incredible amount of thought into every decision in the panels,” says friend and fellow cartoonist Gregory Gallant (better known by his pen name, Seth). “Every page was too much of a hassle to do. He had an obsessive quality to his thinking that ultimately led into his artistic block.”
According to Lee, who visited Matt in L.A., he was still working. “He showed me pages. He was such a perfectionist, it was hard for him to finish a drawing.”
If he was not, strictly speaking, lazy, he wasn’t exactly a go-getter either. Born in Norristown, Pa., on Sept. 3, 1963, Joseph David Matt III claimed to have worked at only two proper jobs in his entire life: at a Roy Rogers burger joint as a teenager and at a broom factory during summers while he attended the Philadelphia College of Art, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in illustration in 1985.
In a letter written to American cartoonist Mari Naomi, Matt said he hated real jobs – “the kind with co-workers, lunch breaks and waking up early” – and wanted no part of what society deemed a “normal life.” He renounced materialism in all forms, except books, comics and Pez dispensers.
Early influences were Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar and Spiegelman – his “holy trinity of autobiographical comics.”
At his career peak, Matt was one third of a trinity himself, with Chester Brown and Seth, all published by Montreal’s Drawn & Quarterly. Matt’s confessional opus The Poor Bastard chronicled his relationship and breakup with his then-girlfriend, known as Trish, who wasn’t comfortable being written about. Years after they split, Matt had no regrets, at least professionally.
“As a writer, you can second-guess or worry about someone’s reaction,” he said. “But, ultimately, I think that’s a mistake. It impairs and inhibits good writing, plain and simple.”
If his uncomfortable candour cost him the girl, it won him fans, including celebrities Matt Groening and Ben Stiller. Even Crumb was an admirer: “I can’t wait to see what happens next.”
Though Matt’s annoying version of himself on page was true, there was crafted exaggeration at work.Supplied
What happened next was a lot of nothing. Matt stopped producing. Tastes changed. His books are out of print in English.
“Right now, I feel like the mainstream world would not be as willing to embrace what Joe was doing,” Seth says, “for the simple reason that people seem to be very nervous about work that is conflicted and treading on dangerous territory. It’s a different world today.”
Matt’s humour was entertaining, even if it dealt with harsh stuff such as loneliness and an addiction to pornography. His self-degradation was disarming, and his unblinking frankness was liberating to the readers who not only laughed at Matt’s dark secrets, but became more comfortable facing their own.
“It felt like he was showing everything, but of course he wasn’t,” Brown says. “It’s rare, though, for someone to be so honest about their life. I don’t think he could do anything else – that was Joe’s contribution.”
Though Matt’s annoying version of himself on page was true, there was crafted exaggeration at work. “In real life, he was an extremely irritating, odd character,” Seth says. “But he wasn’t a folk artist. He knew exactly what he was doing when he constructed those narratives to make people irritated with him. He wanted that kind of visceral reaction from the audience.”
As he became more well known, Matt began to resent the autobiographical label. “I’m not as bad as I appear in these books,” he insisted to The Globe and Mail in 1993. “People forget that I write this stuff down and I choose to tell them [only] some things.”
He told them a lot, his intimacy being a form of comedic sacrifice. If his readers remember a jerk who led a bleak existence, others knew a more complicated figure in the flesh. “He was a hilarious guy,” Lee says. “And he had a funny face – a worried brow and a big smile together.
“He was a very vibrant human and artist who also lived in a vibrant, artistic way.”
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Brad Wheeler