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 Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Book Collector in The World
By Seth
Drawn & Quarterly
Reviewed by Charlie James
Seth has birthed an absolute gem of a book upon us with his Wimbledon Green opus. Despite his puzzling disclaimers in the forward that this book is unworthy and clumsy, with bad drawing and perfunctory page design, this is a honey of a tale, told breezily and with great style. Many thanks to Drawn & Quarterly for their part in producing this lavish hardcover embossed package. I'm sure they would agree with me that Seth's protestations are those of an artist who is too close to his own bastard child. I say bastard because this book is truly a departure from Seth's typical autobiographical comic style, wherein we see Seth and friends like Chester Brown stroll around lamenting their doldrums.
In his introduction, Seth takes great pains to set himself well below fellow comic artist Chris Ware. We all know that Mr. Ware is incredibly prolific and a peerless craftsman with a real obsession with detail. I may be alone in my opinion, but to me the comic musings of Seth are far the more human and humane of the two artists. While Ware makes sure to drain every drop of human connectedness from his characters and narratives, leaving us with bleak landscapes of wintry aspect over hundreds of magnificently designed pages, Seth, in his more slender output, brings us kindly into his stories and makes us feel as though we could order a cup of coffee and hang out.
But Wimbledon Green is a horse of a different color, and it takes Seth far a field of his usual intentions. A self-proclaimed “story from the sketchbook” of the artist, Wimbledon Green is concerned with the obsessive nature of comic book collecting (and by extension, collecting in general). The story follows a passionate group of insider comic book collectors on a fictional chase after the crown jewels of vintage comic books. Seth handily utilizes a multi-perspective approach to spinning his yarn, giving each character his place in the spotlight as they try to unravel the identity and character of Wimbledon Green. This goes on in the context of an adventure story befitting Indiana Jones with dusty back room deals and untoward conspiracies aplenty. It's all a huge send-up of course, with fictitious comic titles and snippets of comic pages that never existed, providing metaphor and counterpoint to the action of the story.
Seth's drawing style is quick and simple, but very energetic. He gives a clue to his technique by mentioning that the art “poured so frantically out of my brush.” I have always admired a true brush wielding comic artist. The brush is so much more expressive than the pen (or Adobe Illustrator for that matter), and Seth is a master. Whatever Seth himself thinks of his modest little mongrel of a book, he has designed it in very high style with rounded-corner hardback binding and copper-metal ink embossing front and back. At 125 pages, it's easily his longest single volume work, but it's all the more fun for the length. I only wish Wimbledon Green was 225 pages long, as I hated to see it end.
The book is a bit elusive to find, but is available in Little Rock at Lorenzen Booksellers. |
