Yummy Fur (comics)

Yummy Fur
Cover to issue #20 of Yummy Fur, featuring the story "Showing Helder"
Publication information
Publisher	Self-published (mini #1–7) Vortex Comics (#1–24) Drawn and Quarterly (#25–32)
Schedule	irregular
Format	Ongoing series
Genre	Alternative comics
Publication date	(mini) July 1983–September 1985 December 1986–July 1994
Number of issues	32
Creative team
Creator(s)	Chester Brown

Yummy Fur (1983–1994) was a comic book by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. It contained a number of different comics stories which dealt with a wide variety of subjects. Its often-controversial content led to one printer and one distributor refusing to handle it.

Some of Brown's best-known comics were first published in Yummy Fur, including the surreal, taboo-breaking Ed the Happy Clown and the comics from his autobiographical period, which included the graphic novels The Playboy and I Never Liked You. Also notable were the eccentric gospel adaptations that ran in most issues. The series and its collected volumes have won a number of awards, and have had a lasting influence on the world of alternative comics.

Yummy Fur started as a self-published minicomic which ran for seven issues, the contents of which were reprinted in the first three issues of the Vortex Comics series which started publication in December 1986. The series switched publishers to Drawn and Quarterly in 1991 until the end of its run in 1994, when Brown started on his Underwater series.

Yummy Fur came at a time when alternative comics was still young, and is considered one of its defining titles. It was one of the earliest examples of a comic that would have its first success as a self-published mini. It started in an era when comic books and their characters were generally considered to be ongoing, and finished when the self-contained stories of the graphic novel had begun to come into prominence. Brown's ambitions changed in step, Yummy Fur started with Ed the Happy Clown, which Brown originally didn't intend to have an ending; towards the end, he serialized two works, The Playboy and I Never Liked You, which were conceived from the start as self-complete works. Brown would thereafter make the production of graphic novels the main focus of his output.