Graphic artist Ivan Brunetti brings wit and dark humor to his work.

Brunetti spoke on campus Wednesday night about his comics.

A slideshow accompanied his presentation to display his work.

Brunetti has done many works, including four issues of a comic book titled “Schizo,” covers for The New Yorker and an anthology for Yale University called “An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories.”

“Schizo #4” won the Ignatz award for Outstanding Artist of the Year.

Ironically, Brunetti never attended art school and was an English major in college.

He said in “Shizo” every single piece has a different story, and some of his works are simply doodles where he was in the process of teaching himself how to draw.

One of the cartoons Brunetti presented in the slide show was about his first wife in what he considered “a marriage from hell.”

He also showed naked cartoon drawings of himself.

“I am getting rid of my persona or faade,” Brunetti said.

In some of his works, he made fun of his co-workers.

Brunetti said usually people are OK with it.

“One co-worker was angry,” he said. “But the drawing wasn’t even of her, anyway.”

Brunetti’s comics sometimes relate to the danger of life and death, being depressed, meeting a deadline and becoming a hermit.

“It was ironic because I didn’t finish the strip about being depressed, and it is about not being able to get your work done,” Brunetti said. “I would have months on and off of not getting anything done.”

When he came across a cartoon of a girl he used to date during his presentation, Brunetti said he did not want to talk about it.

“She broke my heart,” he said.

Brunetti also showed a cartoon depicting how he is such a horrible person and how his present girlfriend is so nice.

“It was about how I want to try to change and better myself,” he said.

Brunnetti did a strip about nothing, which he noted appeared in The New Yorker twice and laughed about this.

He also did a cartoon with different figures such as Mickey Mouse, Wonder Woman and Popeye where in one they were all normal and in the other they were wearing each other’s clothes and had different expressions.

“Popeye was embarrassed to be wearing Wonder Woman’s outfit,” Brunetti said.

He said a comic strip should not contain too many words and should come out more like action drawings.

The work he is the most proud of is the Anthology he edited for Yale that has 125 artists represented.

Brunetti said he has always liked comics.

“I gave them up in high school because my parents didn’t support me drawing them,” he said. “In college, I started up again to try to make my friends laugh and even had some appear in the student newspaper.”

Brunetti attended Columbia College in Chicago.

He said he even started his own comic book with money from the school.

“When I was ready to graduate college, I would draw on evenings and weekends,” Brunetti said. “It took a lot about five years to teach myself how to do it right.”

He said sometimes he would give up and quit, but he would always come back to drawing.

“It was like a weed that kept coming back,” Brunetti said. “I had other jobs like copy editor, proof reader and web designer, but I always came back to comics.”

He has now been doing it for about 41 years.

In the presentation, Brunetti also showed the process of making a comic.

“I felt like he was very articulate and allowed us to see the complexity of something very simple,” said Shannon Johnson, an art graduate student. “He allowed us to see the complexity of something very simple.”

Ann Coddington, assistant art professor, said she liked hearing about Brunetti’s personal and professional life.

“He is a really respected figure in his field,” Coddington said.

Patricia Belleville, art professor, said people all have moments in their life where they laugh at horrible things that happened to them, and Brunetti brings this forth in his work.

Heather Holm can be reached at 581-7942 or haholm@eiu.edu.