Palookaville Number Twenty One; Seth

 Palookaville, written and drawn by Canadian cartoonist, Seth, started off as a very irregularly published comic book, now it's an irregularly published handsome hardcover graphic novel series. Seth is one of my very favorite cartoonists (It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken being one of my all time favorite graphic novels) and I'm loving Clyde Fans, which we get another chapter of here in Palookaville Number Twenty One. As much as I love Clyde Fans, which is a fictional story about a traveling electric fan salesman, I wonder how much longer the story is and how long it'll take Seth to complete this story (maybe he's having a "race" with another great cartoonist, Jason Lutes, whose epic comic book narrative, Berlin, started probably about the same time as Clyde Fans, also has one wondering when we'll see the conclusion of said story - the race being who can hold out for the end appearing longer).

 

The above sequence is another story from Seth's Palookaville Number Twenty One, titled, Nothing Lasts, which is exactly about what it sounds like it's about. This story is drawn in Seth's more simplistic style, but it's no less a great reflective narrative on what most people would call mundane things occurring in life. The third "story" in this newest Palookaville book is called Rubber Stamp Diary and is more semi-biographical (?) musings by Seth, drawn using a few rubber stamps he had made, with really bad lettering (of which Seth apologizes for). I'd have to say that Rubber Stamp Diary is the only thing Seth has done, that I can remember, that doesn't resonate with me on any level.

Palookaville Number Twenty One is pricey ($21.99), but it is a gorgeous production (except in my opinion, the Rubber Stamp Diary middle section) and it is a good, long read that you'll want to revisit in the future if you like auto-biographical, slice of life sequential art narratives. For those of you who aren't already rapid Seth fans as myself, I'm sure there will be an uber nice collection of Clyde Fans whenever it gets completed and I'm sure that will be regarded as one of those benchmark works of this medium.