Newsflash: New Seth Graphic Novel
by Jeet Heer
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Wimbledon Green will be back.
I don’t know why this hasn’t gotten more attention, but a few days ago Bryan Munn reported the happy news that a new Seth graphic novel will be coming out later this year. It’s a prequel to Wimbledon Green, offering a look at the early days of The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists. I suspect that the work Seth has done researching the lives of Jimmy Frise, Doug Wright and other classic Canadian cartoonists might inform this work. In any case, this is certainly a title to add to the growing “books to look forward to” list.
Labels: Canadian identity, Seth
Excellent news indeed! I think WG is Seth’s best work to date. Much though I enjoy his more self-consciously “serious” works (Clyde Fans, George Sprott, etc.) I’ve always felt that they seemed to lack a personal dimension and that he was trying too hard to make them seem obviously “literary”. But in WG, he’s writing about something he actually knows – comics collecting – and although the characters and situations aren’t remotely realistic, it actually rings true for me in a weird way that CF, GS etc. don’t. The sophistication of WG emerges more from its formal devices (multiple viewpoints, unreliable narrators, etc.) than from the plot or story per se. And of course Wimbledown Green himself is a delightful cartoon character: vain, arrogant – a perfect example of the self-styled connoisseur who is, in the end, just another fanboy.
Of course now that the news has leaked out so early I’m deathly afraid it will be another one of those situations where everyone talks about the book alot in anticipation to the point where the actual publication seems anticlimactic and it will be all my fault (speaking of vain arrogant fanboys).
Just ignore the hype/speculation. It’s easier than you might think.