{mosimage}Ivan Brunetti was born in a small town in Italy on October 3, 1967. His misspent childhood consisted entirely of self-absorption, spontaneously generated hallucinations, bad drawing, and disappointments to his family. He was named after Ivan The Terrible, but as part of some apparent cosmic drollery, he turned out to be an overly sensitive, severely introverted, sad little sissy-boy. At the tender age of 8, he moved from his grandparents’ farm in Italy to the industrial South Side of Chicago; he has lived in this fair city for about 5000 years, rarely venturing outside of its bittersweet confines. He has worked at a series of unglamorous occupations, gone to college, fallen in love, and then watched his life unceremoniously crumble. Somewhere in there he started drawing intensely personal, notoriously suicidal, and just-plain vile comic strips, perhaps as a reaction to a life of bitter regrets and dashed idealistic hopes. He’s actually a wistful, heartbroken, sweet-natured fellow. He stupidly quit a decent job during a depressive fit, most likely brought on by a soured marriage and hellish divorce, and then promptly and utterly failed to eke out a living as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist. He now works as a web designer, another cruel irony of fate for this hermit-like, nostalgic Luddite. Recently, he has also started teaching cartooning, which he thoroughly enjoys. Who knew?
He currently lives with his girlfriend and their three cats. His girlfriend thinks it’s weird that they have three cats, that they’ve turned into those “weird cat people.” He respectfully disagrees. Three cats is surely on the cusp of being excessive, but it’s not weird, at least not for a two-bedroom, plus there’s the sun-room, don’t forget. So that’s like almost three bedrooms, really. Four cats is weird. And, OK, if we had a one-bedroom with three cats, yeah, that would be weird. Three cats in a large two-bedroom is not weird. Four would be weird.
Anyhow, he has made his tentative peace with this cruel world and lives in relative harmony with the universe. He collects old toys, whimsically designed packages of any kind, functional and aesthetically pleasing Sanrio products, useless art deco artifacts, printed ephemera featuring dead movie starlets and/or anonymous flappers, European and Japanese knockoffs of 1920s/1930s Disney and Fleischer Brothers characters, “girlie”/”nudie” memorabilia, and anything with stylized, unapologetically romantic depictions of female faces and hands. He also likes old newspaper strips (up to and including Peanuts), Drew Barrymore (as well as a small handful of other modern-day actresses), painfully introverted, intimate music, art, and literature (although he has a soft spot for simple, happy pop songs), classic screwball comedies, and Frank Capra movies. Also pornography. That pretty much covers it, folks.
Featured books by Ivan Brunetti (click covers for complete product details & ordering information)
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