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- Author: Seth
- Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
- Published: October 2011
- ISBN-10: 1770460535
- ISBN-13: 9781770460539
- Format: Hardcover
- Copyright: 2011
- Subject: COMICS-GENERAL
The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists
By Seth
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Product Description
THE COMPANION GRAPHIC NOVEL TO WIMBLEDON GREEN
Whenever you're in Dominion, on Milverton Street you will stumble across an arresting array of handsome old buildings. The one with the pink stone façade and the familiar Canadian cartoon characters over the doorway is the Dominion branch of the Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, erected in 1935 and the last standing building of the once prestigious members-only organization. For years, this building, filled with art deco lamps, simple handcrafted wood furniture, and halls and halls of black-and-white portraits of Canada's best cartoonists, was where the professionals of the Great White North's active comics community met—so active that there were outposts in Montreal and Winnipeg, with headquarters in Toronto. Everyone from all branches of the industry—newspaper strips, gag cartoons, nickel-backs, comic books, political art, accordion books, graphic novels—gathered in their dark green blazers to drink cocktails, eat, dance, and discuss all things cartooning.
Seth opens up his sketchbook to an unseen world of Canadian comics, sometimes fictional and sometimes not, sometimes humorous and sometimes bittersweet, but always fascinating in its creative exploration of Canadian comics history. Whereas Wimbledon Green celebrated the comics collectors, The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists celebrates the cartoonists the comic collectors love.
Editorial Reviews
Although published after Seth's wondrously satirical look at the ossified nostalgia of the world of comics' collectors in Wimbledon Green, this similarly styled work was mostly created earlier. It's an initially chirpy but eventually downbeat narrative by a member of the Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, an august if imaginary guild and tradesmen's club that has fallen on the same hard times as most other fraternal organizations. Seth uses this superbly drawn narrative tour of one of the G.N.B. Double C's meeting halls as an excuse for some grand mythmaking and wish fulfillment. In this alternate universe, Canadian cartoonists were once the toast of the land, billboards advertising their work, and posh meeting halls in city after city offering plush armchairs and work cubicles for their diligent and productive members. The book's haunting nostalgia for something that never existed—a curiously effective way of damning the present reality—includes lengthy and engrossing exegesis of many imaginary Canadian cartoons. By the time Seth threatens to pull the rug out from under you, he has you convinced that such a golden era of popular success and imagination could have existed; more important, he convinces you that it should have. (Oct.)
[Page ]. Copyright 2011 PWxyz LLC
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