My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Product Description

One of the most promising young talents in cartooning makes his debut with a dazzling collection–part freakish dreamlife, part quirk-o-rama autobiography, all genius.

Long a fixture in comics anthologies, David Heatley's deceptively crude, wickedly observant drawings have begun showing up on the New York Times op-ed pages and the cover of the New Yorker, introducing him to a vast new audience, Now, in My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (title courtesy of the Ramones song), we are treated to the full range of Heatley's remarkable, wildly unique voice and vision.

My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down is Heatley's life story told in six different but connected narrative threads. "Sex History" describes every sexual encounter dating back to kindergarten, with details that would make a therapist blush. "Black History" is an unflinchingly honest meditation on his own racism. "Portrait of My Mom" and "Portrait of My Dad" are beautifully paced vignettes, skewering and celebrating his lovably dysfunctional parents. "Family History" tells the story of his family from his great-great-grandparents' lives and closes with the birth of his own children. Woven in and around the larger pieces are "dream comics" that expand on the same themes with a baffling unconscious logic. Every inch of My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down is filled with visceral art and emotionally resonant storytelling at once stunning, truthful, and uncomfortably hilarious.

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From Booklist

Autobiography, particularly of the self-lacerating variety, has been a staple of alternative comics since such groundbreaking 1970s and ’80s works as Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Heatley presents his life thematically. He opens with his entire “Sex History,” from prekindergarten explorations to postmarital attempts to kick his addiction to masturbation and including vividly disquieting pages from a dream journal. Subsequent sections depict a life’s worth of encounters with African Americans and relations with Mom, Dad, and other kin. From it all, we acquire a comprehensive portrait, from mildly troubled youth and conflicted sexuality to recent religious conversion and fatherhood. Like Chris Ware, Heatley uses postage-stamp-sized panels to cram a massive amount of narrative onto each page. But his naive, slapdash drawings couldn’t be farther from Ware’s neurotically meticulous style; their lack of sophistication implies an unshielded honesty. Although more conventional prose memoirs may be the ones ensconced on best-seller lists, it’s hard to imagine Heatley’s story being told as effectively in any other medium than comics. --Gordon Flagg

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037542539X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375425394
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #479,838 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's about "the tough questions", September 30, 2008

By	armchairinterviews.com (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This graphic autobiography is a collection of David Heatley's comics that are darkly and explicitly funny. He leaves very little to the imagination as he takes us through his sex life (and eventually his love life), his relationships, good and bad, with people of other races, and his relationship with his parents and family.

As an autobiography, the book gives us rare insight into the feelings and experience of another human being. It doesn't hold anything back, and doesn't let us as readers, either. You might put the book down in disgust after the first couple of pages, or read in mesmerized fascination as David alternately destroys and rebuilds his life. In neither case, will you be entirely comfortable. That is good. What David does brilliantly here is hold up the weakness and frailty of the human condition, then show us that it is possible to overcome it to be something more than what we were.

The book is graphic in more than one sense. It is as much about the drawings as the text. They are simple but effective, but in many cases the subject matter is very sexually graphic-about what you would expect in a book in which one section is titled "Sex." He draws his characters as real human beings with or without their clothes. This is one comic book that you don't leave out for the children to see.

As I read through My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down, a theme emerged of needing to ask ourselves the tough questions. What is sex? What is love? Why are they different? Am I a racist? Do I really know my Mom or Dad, or even myself?

For those with an open mind, this book will help you ask these questions of yourself.

Armchair Interviews says: Thought-provoking read.

5.0 out of 5 stars This book will surely make you laugh and think at the same time, February 12, 2009

By	Urban Reader (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

While reading My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down, I guarantee you will laugh outloud, and not necessarily at the author, but at your own circumstances. You will ask yourself, "how can anyone know what I am going through?" Another reviewer rated this as "self-entitled and whiny"--but that's exactly the author's point--to bring out the "pity-party" animal in all of us, expose it, and shed some light on it, in the end to bring us around to a more relaxed and self-aware view of who we are. Through humor and incredible drawings, reading My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down is a truly transformative experience!

4.0 out of 5 stars Heatley Lets It All Hang Out, December 8, 2008

By	Sacramento Book Review "SacramentoBookReview.com" (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews

A frequent contributor to comic anthologies, My Brain is Hanging Upside Down is Heatley's first solo collection. Autobiographical to an uncomfortable extreme, one almost hopes Heatley is exaggerating some of the stories, particularly those in the Sex History and Black History chapters. His artwork is crude, but consistent, very recognizable characters from story to story. In between the chapters on his life, he has interspersed other dream stories that relate to his life, and provide a different perspective on those subjects. In Sex History, Heatley goes through every sexual experience he had, from kindergarten to going to sex addiction group meetings. Race History covers his own views of his racist behaviors. Fans of Gary Panter will enjoy Heatley's first book.