Palookaville 19: The Last Pamphlet

Issue 19 concludes part 3 of "Clyde Fans".  In the comic, Abraham and Simon put their mother in a nursing home.  Here are some random thoughts on the comic:

*This was the last comic book Palookaville.  The next issue saw cartoonist Seth switch to a graphic novel format.  Not many alternative comics were still around in 2008, when this issue was published.  Some of Seth's contemporaries such as Chester Brown and Dan Clowes seemed to abandon serialization altogether and just published their work as complete graphic novels.  Others such as Peter Bagge continued to serialize work in the comic book pamphlet format.  Seth opted to continue serialization but turn Palookaville into a graphic novel, similar to what the Hernandez Brothers did with Love & Rockets.  Presumably, economics was behind all of these moves.  Alternative cartoonists probably sell better in the bookstore market than in the comic shop market.

*Seth continues to cram more panels on a page in this issue.  The page with the least panels on it still has 8 panels on it, and some pages have 24 panels on a page.  So even though the last Palookaville comic book cost $4.95, readers got a lot of comics for the money.

*Seth also does a lovely layout on page 4 wherein Simon crosses a landscape divided into panels, with the panels forming into an overall image of the landscape.  Alan Moore is fond of layouts such as this one as well, and they're always nifty.

*Simon's bird fantasy from last issue appears to just be a flight of fancy since his brother snaps him out of it by yelling at him some more.  Simon apparently lives until 1979.  I'm still not sure what the big secret about the father is.  I guess that's what part 4 is for. 

Palookaville 18: More 12-Panel Pages!

Issue 18 shows Simon philosophizing and really freaking out (he imagines himself turning into a bird).  Here are some random thoughts on this comic:

*Ah!  It's a pleasure that cartoonist Seth knows that comics work sequentially.  He crams 12 panels on a  number of pages, and the result is a pleasure to read as the words and images work together to convey to the reader Simon's state of mind in 1966.  This is much better than most comics of the time which were rocking 3 or 4 panels on a page, many of which just read like separate images instead of a set of images that really built on one another to tell a story.

*Though reading the issues in order in a short amount of time allows me to see the connections among the parts of "Clyde Fans" better, which is one of the chief pleasures of reading a narrative originally read with months and years between issues as it was serialized, I don't know what the hell is going on with the bird thing in this issue.  I get that Simon is looking for freedom from his mundane existence and wants to fly away, but is the bird sequence just a, pardon the pun, "flight" of fancy into his imagination to escape the negative emotions caused by his brother yelling at him about how Simon has been failing at taking care of their mother, a psychotic breakdown, or an artful metaphor for suicide?

*There's something about an empty light fixture as well.  Simon keeps staring up at it.  The mother had claimed in a previous issue that things came out of it at night.  Did the father of the family commit suicide in the attic above the light fixture or something?  Perhaps more is revealed in the next couple of issues.

*It looks as if Seth did another book tour in 2005.  I'm familiar with two of his stops.  I've read at Quimby's in Chicago, and I've visited Skylight Books in Los Angeles.  Both are great stores and sell far more than comics.  Pick up a copy of The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus at them!  And, if they're out of stock, then just buy something else cool (and order Emus from me).  One of the reasons "Clyde Fans" has been so delayed over the years are all the other projects Seth gets involved in.  In addition to his commercial illustration work, he also was designing the Fantagraphics Peanuts reprints, putting on art exhibitions, publishing graphic novels, and going out on book tours.

Palookaville 17: Yet Another Continuation Of "Clyde Fans"!

In this issue, Simon talks to toys and puts his mother to bed.  Here are some random thoughts on the comic:

*One of cartoonist Seth's chief charms is his self-deprecation.  You can see this in the line on the cover.  It's not exactly selling the comic with sizzle, is it?  This issue came out in 2004, at which point he'd been serializing this story in Palookaville longer than he did all the other stories combined.  He might have been getting tired of it dragging on as well.  Now it's eight years on and we're about all in the same place, though the story has advanced a bit.

*I don't have much to say about this issue, other than I'm surprised that I didn't notice that I had missed the previous issue after I bought this one.  My comic collection was in a couple of different places, so that probably explains how I didn't discover that 16 was missing until a few years later.

Palookaville 16: The Missing Link!

Issue 16 moves ahead to 1966 and starts part 3 of "Clyde Fans".  In it, Simon is shown taking care of his senile elderly mother and pottering around the same building his brother will be pottering around in 1997.  Here are some random thoughts on the comic:

*First of all, this is the issue I discovered I was missing, and it was a pain to track down.  Sales of Palookaville must have declined because it wasn't in stock in any of the back issue bins of any comic store I visited.  Finally, I had to order it from Drawn & Quarterly themselves.  Fortunately, it was on sale, which helped to make up for the shipping cost.  It was nice getting it finally.  There's nothing like a hole in a collection to gnaw at a collector's soul!  Though the hunt is part of the fun of collecting!  Collecting things is definitely an odd pursuit!

*The cover continues a trend, which started with the previous issue, of the front cover and back cover combining to form a single image.  Earlier Palookaville covers often centered on a person, like a portrait; these "widescreen" covers aren't just landscapes in their orientation, they are literally landscapes, illustrations of settings from the narrative.  This difference in covers is symbolic in the growth in the series from autobiography to fiction.  Seth is no longer just interested in himself; he is interested more in the world around him, even if it's a fictional world that he's literally constructing (this is an artist who will sculpt a setting of a small town).

*Much of the issue has 8 or 9 panel layouts on a page (a couple have 12!), making it a satisfying read.  The price had jumped to $4.95 though.  Perhaps that's why I missed the issue when it first came out. In 2002, I was only buying a couple comics a month since I was trying to save money.  Given Palookaville's irregular publication schedule and low circulation though, it's possible I never even knew it was out.

*Simon mentions an Emily in this issue in a manner that suggests that she is his lost love.  This detail casts doubt on the gay interpretation of Simon.  Also, if Simon is a stand-in for Seth, then it's unlikely he's gay.  Instead, Simon just appears to be crippled by shyness and an introspective temperament (not that those are bad characteristics, but in Simon's case, in combination with other factors, they seem to have constrained his life to basically a single building).

*A tenth anniversary reprint of Palookaville #1 was released about the time 16 came out.  I've never seen it, but apparently it has a new cover.

*Each of the "Clyde Fans" parts were collected into thick comic books, but apparently at some point Drawn & Quarterly vetoed the rest of that collection in favor of collecting the series into trade paperback form.  Collecting a comic book series into thicker comic books does seem rather daft, but it's still done today.  DC's Vertigo imprint was doing it for a time recently, bringing back series into print that they didn't want to publish as trade paperbacks (possibly because they thought the interest in the comics was limited to a comic shop audience and the bookstore customers wouldn't be interested).

*Seth announces his marriage in this issue.  I wonder if the delay in "Clyde Fans" comes from the author being lonely perhaps at the beginning of the story's composition, then getting happy halfway through the long story but having little interest in continuing such a story devoted to heartbreak and loneliness.  It wouldn't be the first time an author lost control of a narrative.  That's one of the dangers of serializing a story before it's finished.  Seth's friend Chester Brown once even pulled the plug on a comic series called Underwater while some issues in.  It remains unfinished to this day.  Fortunately, for those of us who enjoy "Clyde Fans", Seth appears to be too stubborn to quit!  So we can complain that it's taking forever to finish the story, but at least he's still working on it.

Palookaville 15: Simon Has A Bit Of A Nervous Breakdown

In this issue, Simon gets so stressed out trying to sell fans that he decides he'd much rather just sit down among some trees instead, and thus ends part two of "Clyde Fans".  Here are some random thoughts on this comic:

*Upon rereading this comic, I realized that it was 16 and not 15 that I was missing from the collection.  As I wrote in a previous post, I seemed to miss a lot of number 15s in my comic collection, but apparently Palookaville was not one of those series.

*Seth seems to enjoy drawing buildings in a small town, so part two of "Clyde Fans" enabled him to combine two great loves of his, drawing small town buildings and the mid-20th Century.

*I've enjoyed rereading my comic book collection, but after ten years of doing it, I'm ready to wrap up this silly little project.  Only five more issues to go!

Palookaville 14: Simon Gets Propositioned!

Simon continues to fail miserably at being a salesman in this issue, but he picks up some tips when another salesman attempts to sell to him.  Here are some random thoughts on this comic:

*The scene with the other salesman ends the issue.  Like the elevator scene in The Great Gatsby, the gap between this issue and next is open to a homosexual interpretation, though not much evidence exists to support it.  If Simon was a closeted gay man in 1957 Canada, then it would explain much of his shyness, awkwardness, and general not fitting in with the homophobic society of the time.  I'm not sure that's what Seth was going for though, Simon could just be a shy, bookish heterosexual, who never marries.  Just like how Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street are just roommates.

*In the letters page, Seth complains about the technology fetish of the turn of the century and notes that the comic book pamphlet seems to be becoming a thing of the past.  In a few issues, he would jettison the pamphlet format himself in favor of Palookaville becoming a yearly graphic novel.  Seth's distaste for new technology probably will not let him see that the comic book pamphlet might have a future online, but, yes, in printed form, it is dying.  I was able to see that while rereading my collection.  Comics such as Power Man And Iron Fist got canceled in the 1980s because they were only selling a hundred thousand copies an issue or something.  Today, those would be the bestselling comics.  You can trace the rest of the trajectory yourself as the middle-aged men, such as myself, keeping the printed comic book pamphlet alive get older and start to die off.  Oh, well, when the printed comic book pamphlet does essentially die off as a commercial medium (the medium will still exist as the odd enthusiast or two will keep it alive aesthetically), then Seth will have one more aspect of 20th Century popular culture to be nostalgic for and mourn.  

Palookaville 13: Simon Goes Selling!

This issue starts the second part of "Clyde Fans", which is a flashback apparently to a time when Simon (the narrator's brother) tried his hand at going on the road to sell their fans.  It didn't go well, as any reader of the first part could probably guess.  I was cringing for Simon during this whole issue, and it's a tribute to Seth's storytelling that he could get me to care about a traveling salesman in small town Canada in 1957. Nothing much else to say about this issue though.  It was a pleasant, quick read.  Was that worth $3.75?  Apparently so because I kept buying the series, despite the price and long delays between issues.

Palookaville 12: Abraham Makes Dinner!

In this issue, Abraham, the retired businessman narrating the story, talks about the art of salesmanship.  He also makes dinner.  This is obviously not the world's most exciting comic, but it's strangely enjoyable.  Here are some more random thoughts about it:

*Abraham's brother collected novelty postcards.  In the comments about the collection, it's hard not to see Seth commenting on comic book collectors:  "It's somewhat odd that a man who was so well read , so knowledgeable, would waste his time on decades old paper sundries."

*This issue ends part one of "Clyde Fans".  I have no idea how many parts there actually are.  I'm not sure that Seth even knows.

*The letters page contains a letter by comic fandom historian Bill Schelly, author of The Golden Age Of Comic Fandom, as well as letters from cartoonists Steven Weissman, Ivan Brunetti, and Ariel Bordeaux.  On the page, Seth announces an art exhibition at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles.  Meltdown's a cool store.  I visited it this summer when I was in L.A.