Reception
As one of "The autobiographical comics from Yummy Fur", along with I Never Liked You and several shorter pieces, The Playboy placed #38 on The Comics Journal's list of the 100 best comics of the century. It was also nominated for a Harvey in 1991 for Best Single Issue or Story for "The Playboy Stories" in Yummy Fur #21-23.
The book is admired by critics and many of Brown's fellow cartoonists. Gilbert Hernandez, of Love and Rockets fame, has said, "The Playboy and I Never Liked You are probably the best graphic novels next to Maus". Critic Frank Young said it was the "pivotal work" in the autobiographical comics trend of the early 1990s, and Darcy Sullivan called it a "landmark look at an artist's growth", talking about the pace with which Brown's work matured over the course of three issues. Sullivan calls it required reading for those who are serious about comics.
Brown says a number of women took offense at the book, saying it glorified pornography. Hugh Hefner sent Brown a letter after The Playboy's publication, giving Brown "bewildered fatherly advice", showing concern that a someone who grew up during the sexual revolution could still have suffered through the confusion and anxiety that Brown did.
Read more about this topic: The Playboy
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)