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Palookaville 25, published by Drawn and Quarterly, continues the compilation series of artist Seth’s exploration into meaning in our modern world. Cartoonist for New York Times Magazine and cover artist for The New Yorker are just the foot of a creative mountain Seth has built by developing collections of works by fellow cartoonists like Charles Schulz and writing extensively on them, along with film and photo essays. All his work, including Palookaville 25, centers on the everyday person and the fascinating depth we all carry with us.
The first of three projects compiled in Palookaville 25 is part five of Seth’s memoir, Nothing Lasts. Told in small panels capturing tiny moments, Seth recalls a teenaged affair he had with a neighbor before leaving town for school in Toronto. There are as many as 20 panels per page, each giving five or six words of dialogue at most and many giving closeups showing the wide range of emotion we waft through while speaking.
The panels drive the reader to consider carefully each twitch of the face or chosen icon such as a streetcar map or road sign, as the story shows Seth walking through his old neighborhood and the big city. His remembrances come with quick commentary, asides that meander and return, and deeper reflection of lifelong concerns, reminiscent of Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia.
Palookaville 25 continues with a stark departure from comics: a photo essay showing how an image from a panel came to life. Much like how Palookaville 24 included a puppet show, the photo essay describes the background and process that created a unique installation outside of the Art Gallery of Guelph. Instead of a statue of a cartoon character, which Seth describes as “terrible” at capturing two-dimensional figures like Popeye or Tintin, the director suggests something more environmental: “Maybe you could do some of that little furniture you’ve been making lately.”
The project looks back on Seth’s midcentury pop art in miniature, which is then blown back up to life size through cardboard mockups, ceramics, and finally an interactive bronze sculpture that remains to be experienced to this day.
The last part of Palookaville 25 is the 10-strip comic “Owen Moore,” originally published in The Walrus in 2015. It presents a biography of a seemingly inconsequential man, someone who never married, who worked diligently as a streetcar ticket-taker, and painted in his off time, a passion drawn from “the proper order of things” he experienced seeing the crispness of reality while lying sick in bed as a child.
“Moore” painted dozens of landscapes showing buildings around town in their mundane glory, paintings which he gave away or sold for a pittance. At the end of his life, journalists and art critics try to interview him about genius, but Owen is far too gone to understand their questions.
The paintings remain, sold for thousands and decorating offices and banks, but the man is only a ghost, literally in the case of the Walrus version. Palookaville 25 also includes Seth’s original version in his Dominion notebook, showing how the same story can be retold, even evolving, in a way that makes the characters seem even more alive.
