Art & Creativity Quote by Chester Brown

Brown is describing a creative ethic that sounds almost quaint in today’s era of prestige-format minimalism: the page as a bargain you have to earn. The line is disarmingly plain, but it carries a polemical edge. He’s not talking about “maximizing content” in some corporate sense; he’s defending density as respect. Comics, especially in their disposable, stapled origins, were never supposed to feel like gallery objects. They were meant to be read hard, reread harder, then shoved in a backpack. Packing a page becomes a moral stance: don’t waste the reader’s money, don’t waste their attention.

The subtext is a quiet jab at the drift of comics toward decompressed storytelling, where a single gesture or reaction can sprawl across multiple panels like it’s being paid by the sigh. Brown’s phrasing, “I think the thinking is,” signals how much of this is inherited craft wisdom, almost shop talk passed between cartoonists. It’s an argument for an older rhythm: jokes that land fast, ideas stacked, images doing double duty as plot, mood, and punchline.

Context matters because Brown emerged from alternative comics, where formal experimentation coexisted with a scrappy economy. When budgets are tight, every square inch has to perform. That constraint can look like limitation, but Brown frames it as generosity: the “cheaper format” doesn’t excuse less ambition; it demands more. In an attention marketplace full of padding, his instinct is radical: compress, clarify, deliver.