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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.

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Excerpt from David Collier's Chimo

If the past is prologue David Collier’s new book Chimo, which will be widely available in early 2011, will probably receive far less attention than it deserves. For me, the four great Canadian cartoonists are Chester Brown, Seth, Julie Doucet and David Collier. Of the four, Collier has received the least praise and press. So it’s worth inquiring what makes Collier’s work so special and also ask why his appeal, so far at least, has been limited.

Thanks to the Beguiling, I got an early look at Chimo and it has all the peculiar qualities that distinguish Collier’s output. The book is a free-ranging memoir that deals with Collier’s life-long relationship with the army. He joined up in the 1980s when he was in his 20s. He initially did only a few years and then became a full-time cartoonist. Launching his eponymous comic book series Collier’s was published by Fantagraphics in 1991.  But more recently Collier rejoined the army, in part to participate in the Canadian War Artists Program but also to work as a regular soldier.

Collier has already done a few stories about his soldiering career but Chimo offers the most extensive account yet, and is his longest sustained narrative, clocking in at over a hundred pages (with samples of Collier’s earlier military cartooning filling out the book). (more…)

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Front half of Seth's wrap-around cover, CNQ 80

The new issue of Canadian Notes and Queries (CNQ) is now on stands and, as with the last issue, there is much in it of interest for comics fans. Seth’s design work, which premiered in the previous issue, really gels this time around. The writer Kerry Clare recently enthused that CNQ is “is the most beautifully designed magazine in the world right now, and I’m not even exaggerating.” Like the best recent graphic novels, the entire magazine hangs together visually as a total package.

Among the comics related items of interest: a gorgeous Doug Wright scene from Juniper Junction (a very different strip than Nipper or Doug Wright’s Family); Joe Ollmann’s adaptation of Marian Engel’s Bear, a novel about ursine love; and a new Seth strip featuring Hudson and Stanfield (a strip that is intriguingly linked to earlier Seth book). The wrap-around cover that Seth did is much lovelier than the little snapshot I’ve provided here.

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Seth's cover for Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart McLean

Seth, as I’ve said more than once, is an artist with many sides to him. It’s hard to see him “in the round” because he’s always off doing something odd in some obscure publication or out-of-the way museum. One of the nice things about the new incarnation of Palookaville as an annual modeled after the hard-covered, stiff-papered full-color luxury magazines of old is that it’ll make it easier to showcase the differnt strands of his work: his sketchbooks, photography, commercial art, card-board sculptures, essays writing and ad hoc ruminating can call be housed in one convenient location.

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Hey there. I am traveling this week and do not have access to a scanner. So that means I can’t really continue my grid talks. Forgive the interruption, True Believers. However, while driving, I pondered many topical goings on in comics. Here are my notes:

-I really liked Seth’s new Palookaville comic book. The story in the back is an interesting example of grid layout. It feels very natural and unaffected. I also liked the story because it seems to me that he is purposely playing around with public assumptions about himself and the genre of autobiographical comics. (Yes, indeed, I believe that autobio comics are a genre with their own conventions and tropes). (more…)

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This might only be of interest to Canadians and a few Canuck-ophiles but here goes: Canadian nationalism ebbs and flows but the most recent high tide was from 1967, when Canada celebrated its centennial year as a confederation, to the late 1970s. This was a golden age of nationalist cultural fervor, the period where presses such as Coach House books and the House of Anansi made their mark, when writers such as Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro gained their fame. Not every writer was a nationalist during this period, certainly Munro wasn’t. But many others were: think of the Atwood of Survival and Surfacing, a novelist and critic very interesting in exploring the geography and mythology of her native land.

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Canadian Notes and Queries, re-done by Seth.

As I’ve pointed out before, there is a side of Seth that rarely gets seen outside of Canada, the design work and writing he does for small Canadian literary concerns. A good example of the care Seth puts into these projects can be seen in the new issue of Canadian Notes and Queries (CNQ), a very smart literary journal with a ridiculous title.  Seth has re-shaped the whole magazine from top to bottom. Aside from giving the interiors a new elegance, he also did the cover and supplied a two page comic strip about the magazine’s new mascots, the lumberjack Hudson (“I handle the notes…”) and the dandy Stanfield (“And I deal with the queries.”) This comic can be found here.

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A fine greeting

Just last night keen-eyed CC reader Seth G. of Guelph, Ontario sent along some fine images by Jack Davis. Seth explains that they were published in Canada’s Weekend Magazine in 1959 to accompany an article on the legend of Big Foot. Can we pause for a moment here and marvel at this period of Jack Davis’s work? (more…)

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 First of all, I would encourage anyone reading this to take a look at the on-going auction in support of the fine work being done on Comics Comics by my co-bloggers.

Below are some entries from my Seth notebook. Earlier excerpts were published in the magazine Sequential Pulp, which was released at TCAF and can still be found on line by clicking to the link I just provided to the fine website Sequential. The version of the notebook provided below is expanded from what was published in Sequential Pulp.  

Without further ado, here is my Seth notebook:

The Englishness of Seth. Seth is of course quintessentially Canadian. Look at all his investigations into the rolling landscapes of Ontario and Prince Edward Island, his work in mapping out a Canadian cartooning tradition through the Doug Wright Awards and the Doug Wright book (among other projects), his indebtedness to Canadian artists like Thoreau Macdonald.

Still, no less than the United States or Argentina, Canada is a creole nation made up of the mix of many ethnicities. Like most Canadians, Seth is a mutt but one strand of his heritage is worth a closer look. His mother was English, a war bride who came to Canada after marrying Seth’s dad.

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Last Sunday at TCAF (aka the best comics festival in North America) I had the pleasure of moderating a panel with Jeet Heer, Seth and Evan Dorkin on the ins and outs of editing/designing/publishing/consuming comics history. It begins with Evan lamenting the lack of proper old radio fandom. Note: I forgot to ask one crucial question: Complete editions vs. “Best of” editions. Not to late to chime in, gents. Anyhow, audio is below. Enjoy.

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