{"id":553,"date":"2009-09-04T20:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-05T01:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/2009\/09\/john-stanley-and-the-two-gregory-gallants\/"},"modified":"2009-09-04T20:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-05T01:17:00","slug":"john-stanley-and-two-gregory-gallants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=553","title":{"rendered":"John Stanley and the Two Gregory Gallants"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the world of comics there are two Gregory Gallants, both of whom bear the imprint of John Stanley. The more famous Gregory Gallant is the Canadian cartoonist Seth (Gregory Gallant being Seth’s birth name).<\/div>\n

Stanley, it\u2019s fair to say, has many admirers but few advocates. As compared to Jack Kirby or Will Eisner, there haven\u2019t really been many books or essays celebrating Stanley\u2019s work (the fine blog Stanley Stories<\/a>, maintained by Frank Young, is an exception). The Canadian cartoonist has long been one of the most vocal champions of Stanley\u2019s oeuvre, recently designing the beautiful new series from Drawn and Quarterly that is reprinting such Stanley works as Nancy<\/em>, Melvin Monster<\/em> and Thirteen<\/em>. Seth has also written the single best essay on Stanley\u2019s work, which ran in the Comics Journal<\/em> # 238, an eloquent examination of Stanley\u2019s teen trilogy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If we\u2019re living through a John Stanley renaissance right now, Seth deserves much of the credit. (Along with, of course, the fine people at Dark Horse and D&Q).<\/p>\n

Seth\u2019s work has been strongly shaped by his love of Stanley. This can most easily be seen in Seth’s graphic novel Wimbledon Green<\/em>, which can be read as an extended homage to Stanley. From the glimpses we get of it, Wimbledon Green\u2019s favorite comic, Fine and Dandy<\/em>, seems like a lost masterwork by Stanley, with the great cartoonist’s typical focus on character and recurring plots. The hobo theme in Fine and Dandy<\/em> is perhaps a distant echo of the many tramps that populate Stanley’s universe (there is a memorable story where Tubby makes a stab at hobo-dom). And Wimbledon himself is a Stanley-esque creation: he\u2019s Tubby all grown up. Like Little Lulu\u2019s chubby pal, Green is an overgrown romantic egoist who uses his fecund imagination to bend reality to fit his flights of fancy. The way that Seth organizes his comics, with each page as a unit of attention, owes something to Stanley as well.<\/div>\n

In the introduction to their fabulous new Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics,<\/a><\/em> Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly note that, “the melancholy in many of today’s more emotionally resonant graphic novels can be found right below the surface of John Stanley’s work.” Certainly Seth’s melancholy shares an affinity with Stanley’s similar tropism towards a spirited, lightly masked disconsolation.<\/p>\n

There is also a parallel to be found in a recurring family dynamic. In Stanley’s work, the family is a mom-centered affair, with dad being a distant, absent or cold figure (most menacingly in the form of Baddy, the abusive patriarch in the Melvin Monster<\/em> series). When in trouble, Stanley’s kids almost always cry for their mom. The same family-situation, perhaps rooted in the autobiography of both cartoonists, shows up in Seth’s work.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But nearly a decade before Seth was born, there was another Gregory Gallant. In Little Lulu<\/em> #60 (June 1953), we find a story called \u201cRich Little Poor Boy\u201d which features a run in by Lulu with Gregory Gallant, described as \u201cthe big movie star.\u201d Like Seth, Gregory Gallant wears a stylish suit and has a way with the ladies. \u201cAll the girls are crazy about him!\u201d exclaims Lulu\u2019s boisterous little pal Annie. But in contrast to the modest and gentle Seth, the cartoon Gregory Gallant is stuck up and mean-spirited. (This story can be found in the Dark Horse book Queen Lulu<\/em>,<\/a> volume 14 of their Lulu reprint series).<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>Artists, I\u2019ve often noticed, create their own family tree, discovering through influence their ancestors and giving birth to unexpected descendants. In the case of John Stanley, he created Gregory Gallant twice over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the world of comics there are two Gregory Gallants, both of whom bear the imprint of John Stanley. The more famous Gregory Gallant is the Canadian cartoonist Seth (Gregory Gallant being Seth’s birth name). Stanley, it\u2019s fair to say, has many admirers but few advocates. As compared to Jack Kirby or Will Eisner, there haven\u2019t really been many books or essays celebrating Stanley\u2019s work (the fine blog Stanley Stories, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[700,1189,1319],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-j-stanley","tag-seth","tag-toon-treasury"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}