'Remembering Be-Ins', American Splendor issue #1, 1976.
Brian Bram is an American graphic designer, illustrator and animator, with a pioneering role in the fields of special effects and interactive computer graphics. His short excursions to comics have included drawing autobiographical comic stories written by Harvey Pekar ('American Splendor', 1976-1977) and Jonathan Baylis ('So... Buttons', 2023).
Early life and career
Brian Bram was born in 1955 in Chicago, and raised in Deerfield, Illinois. His mother was a painter, his father a creative director at an advertising agency. As a teen, Bram discovered underground comix, and his early artworks were clearly inspired by this movement. Among his main artistic influences have been the underground cartoonists Robert Crumb, Gary Hallgren and Rand Holmes, as well as Will Eisner, Bernie Wrightson, and the EC Comics staples Wallace Wood, Reed Crandall, George Evans and Angelo Torres.
Brian Bram's first paid work was designing a logo for Bunion Stew, a local band. He then began contributing to Triad, a Chicago-based alternative magazine that published work by Skip Williamson and others. At age eighteen, Bram served briefly as Art Director for Triad. In 1975, Bram enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he studied Design & Illustration. Later, in 1979, he also studied animation at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
"Butcher shop of the future", cartoon for Triad magazine (1972).
American Splendor
Through one of his underground cartoonist friends, Jay Lynch, Brian Bram was introduced to Cleveland's Harvey Pekar, who hired him in 1975 to illustrate stories in his autobiographical comic book series 'American Splendor'. At the time still a student, Bram had been working in a humorous "bigfoot" style influenced by underground comix. However, Pekar said to him: "I already got a Crumb; I don't need another one," so Bram's contributions to the first two issues of 'American Splendor' (1976-1977) were done in a more serious style. Besides Bram and Crumb, the first 'American Splendor' issues had artwork by Gary Dumm and Greg Budgett.
'May 4-5, 1970', American Splendor, issue #2, 1977.
Graphic designer
After his studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Bram spent most of his professional career as a graphic designer, illustrator, and animator. Still in Rochester, New York, he opened The Effects Factory, a film animation and special effects studio. A couple of years later, he also produced and hosted the all-night movie and alternative music program 'All Night Live' on the independent local television station WUHF. In 1985, Bram created the Computer Graphics department at CGI, a state-of-the-art video post-production facility. Since 1987, Brian Bram has been living in Boston, Massachusetts, where he continued his computer design work as Design Director at Editel. In 1991, he founded one of the world's first interactive agencies, BigBad, which provided internet and web-based solutions for customers in the United States. Over the years, Brian Bram has won multiple awards for his design work.
Return to comics
In 2023, Brian Bram returned to comics after nearly 50 years. Much like his earlier work in the medium, he illustrated a story in issue #13 of Jonathan Baylis’s self-published autobiographical comic book series 'So... Buttons'. Among the other contributors are more former 'American Splendor' cartoonists, such as Gary Dumm, Michael T. Gilbert, Dean Haspiel and Joe Zabel. Since his collaboration with Baylis, Brian Bram has been working on new comic projects.
'So... Wrung', Brian Bram's single-page contribution to Jonathan Baylis' 'So... Buttons' #13 (2023).