Thoughts on The Collected Doug Wright

The Collected Doug Wright, Vol 1 by Seth & Brad Mackay, Drawn & Quarterly, 2009

I was looking over some old posts and was shocked that it has been nearly four years since I wrote about Doug Wright and his cartoons in Model Railroader magazine. The pandemic has definitely screwed up my perception of time.

I thought, fine, I wonder if I can find a copy of The Collected Doug Wright: Canada's Master Cartoonist. I tried back in the fall of 2020 when I wrote the post, but found that new copies were long sold out from the usual sources, and used ones had prices that were too rich for my blood. It was published in 2009, so I guess by 2020 it shouldn't be surprising that it was hard to find.

As it turns out though I'm having good luck this summer finding long sought after books at reasonable prices. Some I've discussed here, others are waiting in the wings. It turned out there were two new copies at Amazon for $39.95CDN with free shipping. The one they shipped had the cover banner torn off and some dents in the cover, but inside it was just fine. 

Apparently, this is the first volume of a planned two volume series. It covers Wright's cartoons and illustration work, in particular The Nipper, from 1949 up until the end of 1962. To the end of '62 you say? Wright's first MR cartoon appeared in the Dec '62 issue and was a reprint of one that appeared earlier in the Montreal Star. I'll cut to the chase, no it isn't in the book. On page 75, Seth has this to say by way of explanation,

"Wright did a great deal of work for the Montreal Standard, the Weekend magazine, and the Montreal Star throughout the 1950s and 60s. Alas, most of that work is very hard to find today - hidden away wherever great piles of yesterday's newsprint goes to hide. Even Wright's personal files only provide a scattershot collection of tearsheets - many of them torn or stained with aging glue."

So, I shouldn't be surprised the original cartoon wasn't in the book. Maybe those MR scans are the only remaining images of his model railroading oriented cartoons: there were 6 published in MR between Dec '62 and Oct '69.

And, no, there weren't any other model railroading cartoon surprises in the book - no mention of model railroading at all even though MR had noted Wright's interest in the Dec '62 story. Although there is a hilarious cartoon involving a PCC streetcar and the Nipper and his girl friend on page 94. 

But, on page 30 Mackay notes that Wright had a love for any sort of moving vehicle, especially cars, and had a passion for drawing them anytime he could. The book's pages provide ample evidence of his mastery. Mackay notes that at one time Wright did a car culture cartoon strip called The Wheels. This makes me wonder if any Wright cartoons appeared in CARtoons magazine, a car culture comics magazine that began publishing in 1959? If he sold cartoons to MR, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch that someone who was crazy about cars, and who could draw cars and cartoons like he did, would try to sell some to CARtoons. 

It's also mentioned Wright sold prints of his drawings of steam engines via mail order, which corroborates the statement in the Oct '64 MR about Wright selling steam engine prints.

Model railroading aside, the book is excellent and quite a bargain. I remember Nipper cartoons from the late '60s and '70s when the strip was called Doug Wright's Family. Frankly, back then it made little impression on me, possibly because it seemed to be oriented to adults and not children. The cartoons in this book are before my time, but reading them now, decades after they were published, well, I can't put them down. They are great. My favourites? The one from 9 August 1958 on page 185, and the one on page 194 from 13 June 1959. 

The book says it's the first of a two volume set. I've seen no sign of a second volume covering the last half of Wright's career. Given the first volume was published in 2009, and since it's 2024, maybe there'll never be one. That would be unfortunate.

The Haunts of George Sprott

I finally got around to buying a copy of Seth's book, George Sprott 1894-1975. I don't know why I put it off for so long given how much I enjoyed Clyde Fans. And I can't believe it's been four years since I bought Clyde Fans - the pandemic temporal distortion field at work no doubt.

Seth has an uncanny ability to capture a feeling of how Ontario and many of its citizens were in the second half of the 20th century even though his graphic novels are full of send ups, caricatures, and wild extrapolations. But, maybe they are the reason his work hits the mark.

I'm hopelessly biased and seem to subconsciously look for connections to model buildings - and E. L. Moore if I hear the gong :-) - in anything I'm reading. It turns out there is a strong connection in George Sprott.

George Sprott and the Melody Grill - you'll need to buy the book to read the story

To tell Sprott's story the book has a few two-page spreads like the one shown above where a model of a building is presented on one page, and a cartoon story about it and its relation to Sprott is presented on the other. I've discussed before Seth's sideline of creating a city of model buildings - called 'Dominion' -  like the Melody Grill shown above, but I think this is the first time I've seen those models directly woven into a graphic story. For me this adds an interesting dimension to the book, and I recommend that anyone interested in making model buildings read it if you think your models should be more than generic props. While you're at it, consider comparing Seth's approach to storytelling with Paul Michael Smith's in his book, Elgin Park, which also makes use of model buildings.

Well, whether you buy it for the excellent graphic novella, or the interesting approach to integrating model buildings and storytelling, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

The many faceted coincidences between Wimbledon Green, Lester Moore, and E. L. Moore

Recently I’ve been rereading some graphic novels by Seth. I feel an affinity with his style of illustration and his stories, so whenever I need some sort of pick-me-up I crack them open. 

Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Book Collector in the World has had my attention for the last week or so. In the introductory note Seth says he doesn’t think this is one of his best works, but drawing and writing it was a compulsion. It’s a compulsion for me too. When I’m looking for some light escapism I feel compelled to read it. There’s something wild and manic about it, what with its eccentric cast of characters, autogyros, speeding trains, wild Ontario locations, chases, heists, discoveries, shady deals, and on and on. It’s a series of interconnected stories, cameos, comic reviews, monologues, and interviews all linked together to tell the story of Wimbledon Green.

There’s one story in particular I always come back to, Fine and Dandy: A Short Talk by Wimbledon Green. Why? From the first time I read it, it seemed to have strong parallels, at least in my mind, to E. L. Moore’s life and work. I’ve always marvelled at the coincidence. Now, don’t get me wrong as you read further, what appears in the story is all fiction, and all coincidence.

In the talk Green tells the story of cartoonist Lester Moore and a comic book he created called Fine and Dandy that ran for 36 issues between 1946 and 1951. So literally right from square one - most of the comic is a grid of squares! - we have Lester Moore, aka L. Moore, aka LM, which immediately strikes the E. L. Moore gong in my brain. If I was a conspiracy theorist I’d think this was the beginning of a coded message :-) 

Ok, so name similarity aside, what else? Well, Green then tells us LM entered cartooning rather late in life. LM was in his 30s, which isn’t that old, but apparently was for starting as a publishing cartoonist. ELM entered his field late too. He was in his late 50s when he published his first item, a photo in Model Railroader. Green notes prior to cartooning LM held a variety of jobs and he “tramped about in the 30’s”. ELM held a variety of jobs in his early life and was a self-described “vagabond” in the 30’s. Green notes LM may have used some of his hoboing experiences in his comic; ELM appears to have.

Fine and Dandy chronicles the comic adventures of two hobos, Fine and Dandy, as they tramp the backroads and rural areas of Depression era America. There’s a recurring cast of characters. Green mentions just three: Li’l Tiny, a child hobo (reminds me of ELM’s Baby Spumoni); Boxcar Pearl, a woman hobo (reminds me of ELM’s Ma Spumoni); and Gran’pa Stretch, the world’s oldest hobo (reminds me of ELM’s Grandpa Bunn). ELM had his cast of characters too - examples I’ve noted in ()s in the previous sentence - with many recurring. Fine and Dandy often found themselves in jail for ‘liberating’ chickens; ELM hints that he too may have spent sometime in lockup for something similarly trivial. 

And LM and ELM both feature trains in their work.

Green ends his talk by saying, “”Fine + Dandy” fit easily into the elite group of comic characters who live off the page. Moore breathed something of himself into them —so that they had a felling of inner depths. Even now, some 50 years later, I can still feel their presence in the world.” With some minor rewording, the same could be said of ELM and his legacy.

No doubt the similarities I see are simply due to Seth creating an excellent simulation of a genre of cartoon storytelling that was popular in the first half of 20th century America. Fontaine Fox’s Toonerville Trolley is a good example of the type. It was popular because even though fictional, readers could identify with it, and many perhaps even lived some of it. No doubt ELM was soaked in it and admired it, both the times and the genre, so he too was a stylist in the genre even though the medium was different. My rational mind knows why the coincidences between LM and ELM are there, there’s another part of my mind that enjoys the fantasy of revelling in “what if there was a link” whenever it hears the gong :-)

Carstens' '52

Aunt Teek's from RMC May 1952

1952 was a big year for Railroad Model Craftsman magazine. The May issue was volume 20, number 12, the end of the magazine's first 20 years. Well, ok, the magazine started life as The Model Craftsman and covered a wide range of model building subjects, not just model trains, but 20 years in business is an accomplishment, especially when those 20 years spanned a great depression and world war. 

The RMC team took the May '52 anniversary as the opportunity to begin introducing a series of changes to up its model railroading game. Among other features, '52 saw the introduction of Frank Ellison as a regular contributor with a big series on the fundamentals of model railroading, inclusion of a monthly blueprint supplement, Lloyd Giebner started his long run as RMC's de facto structures writer, and Harold H. Carstens, aka Hal Carstens, first appeared in the May issue's masthead as Associate Editor.

Mr. Carstens, who years later would buy the magazine and become its publisher, had written articles for RMC prior to joining the staff, so he wasn't an unknown quantity to readers. Of all the pieces he published in '52, two of his structure articles made me sit up and take notice: Aunt Teek's Furniture Factory, in that May '52 issue, and The Home of Shake's Beer in June '52. It wasn't so much the projects that caught my interest, but how they were written up: both included background stories in which I heard echoes - echoes from the future :-) - of E. L. Moore.

Here's the preamble to Aunt Teek's Furniture Factory:

Ephaim and Ezekial Teek didn't have an easy time of it when they first set up their wood working shop in the hinterlands of Paramsippus. Indeed, if it hadn't been for the kind words of their plumpish aunt, Obediah Teek, they may well have given up and gone westward. As it was, Aunt Teek was hard on her furniture and required new chairs so often that the two nephews were kept almost constantly busy. While this kind of business was fine for experience, it was hard on profits.

Nevertheless, their business grew as news spread that even Aunt Teek couldn't collapse their new rugged Teak Wood furniture and soon they had to look for larger quarters. They found them in the hastily vacated stone building of Colonel Bourbon Carstairs (no relation to the author although they might possible be from the Scotch side of his family). After the government revenue agents took the Colonel away the boys moved in. The Hudson River Traction Co. laid in a freight siding and the fame of their wares spread far and wide. In fact, their products became so well known that an extra win had to be added. It is this factory that we see in the photographs and which will be described in this article.

And if that weren't enough, The Home of Shake's Beer, a brewery project of course, includes an extra dose of bad puns and cornball wordplay:

There were tears of rejoicing as Colonel Bourbon Carstairs greeted his old buddy, Bacchus Shakes, whom he hadn't seen since they once sold Indian Kickapoo Joy Juice years before in the West. Old Bacchus had sent for the Colonel in hopes that the Colonel could do something to pep up business for Bacchus' Mineral Spring Water Co. Things were in a sad state indeed. Old Bacchus had done his best, floated bonds, watered stock; anything to try and boost sales and increase revenue but, alas, it seemed as if nobody cared to drink water anymore!

But the Colonel had an idea. The water here in Boiling Springs was excellent but why waste it just to drink. Make beer out of it and they'd both clean up! Quickly they formed plans for the new company. A partnership was formed called the "Great Pard Brewing Co." and their product was to be named in honor of old Bacchus, "Shake's Beer".

There's more, including a story about Bud the brewmaster having a barrel of beer fall on him that didn't cause injury because it was full of light beer, but you probably get the idea.

Including these sorts of tall tales in what today would be a serious and pragmatic article wasn't unknown back then, but given the extensive and good natured correspondence between E. L. Moore and Hal Carstens in the years to come it made me wonder if E. L. Moore imitated Carstens' style to get noticed, or maybe adopted that style because he liked it. Or maybe there was nothing premeditated because he and Carstens' were simpatico, and their writing styles were just examples of that - Carstens maybe just recognized a kindred spirit when he came across E. L. Moore. Of course, maybe this is all just a coincidence, and I'm reading things into commonalities of the past that just aren't there. Nevertheless, it's interesting.

Left: Shake's Beer RMC June '52; Right: GNBCC HQ by Seth

One last thing. It seemed like the techniques Carstens used to build his O-scale Shake's Beer produced a model that looked rather similar to the models Seth builds for his city of Dominion. While reading though RMCs from 1952 I was also reading Seth's The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, and his model of the Brotherhood's club HQ seemed similar, in style and technique, to Shake's Beer. Both are built from heavy cardboard; both are decorated with inked on wall blocks; both have doors and windows drawn on card or paper and pasted to the structure; both are more caricature than 'fine-scale' . They aren't identical of course, but Seth's Dominion buildings do have the vibe of how models of this sort were built in the '40s and '50s, as well representing buildings of that era and earlier. I'm not saying Seth knowingly used methods of the Carstens' era, only that the similarities are nevertheless interesting - although there are probably a limited number of ways to build structures from cardboard.

A review of the Bodys Isek Kingelez MOMA exhibition catalogue

The Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition from 26 May 2018 to 1 January 2019 of a large collection of Bodys Isek Kingelez’s miniature buildings and layouts. Apparently it was the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Kingelez’s work to date. I recently read about his work, as well as the MOMA exhibition, and had to get a copy of the exhibition’s catalogue. It’s an excellent book: hardcover; full colour; 144 pages, 77 of which are high quality photos of his models and layouts; 5 essays on his work; comprehensive references; and some writings by Kingelez himself top it off. I’m quite impressed by the book’s design and organization, and I’m thinking some variation on it would be good to use for the E. L. Moore book.

I found the book’s most striking aspects are the collection of model photos, and the lead essay by the exhibition’s curator, Sarah Suzuki, the MOMA’s curator of drawings and prints. Suzuki’s essay gives an excellent overview of Kingelez’s life and work, although one statement gave me a little concern:

Kingelez’s practice, though unquestionably appealing to curators, critics, and art historians, has presented them a maddening challenge. In collapsing the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and design, it eludes the categorization and classification on which institutional collections rely, and in its lack of known art historical precedents it evades the genealogy that we love to document and trace.

When I first saw Kingelez’s miniature buildings they immediately struck me as being well within the long folk art tradition of miniature building construction. I’m not saying any of the analysis in the catalogue is wrong, only that the practice of folk art miniature buildings is another lens through which Kingelez’s work can be viewed. It helps resolve the categorization issue Suzuki raises, and places Kingelez’s work in what I think is a global art.

Long time readers of the blog will know that I think E. L. Moore is a figure in that tradition, and that my thoughts on this coalesced when I read a 2014 New York Times article on the American folk art buildings collection of Steven Burke and Randy Campbell. Burke and Campbell have also documented their collection in their own catalogue, which when viewed in parallel with Kingelez’s makes for an interesting bit of comparative reading. 

Ok, so why do I think Kingelez’s work can be viewed as part of the folk art miniature buildings tradition? First, let’s look at some of the characteristics of work in this field and their creators.

1. The models are made from fairly simple materials and tools that are readily found around the home. Cardboard, wood, paper, foam board, and paint are mainstays. Cast-offs, junk, and recycled materials are also often incorporated. Chosen materials usually evolve with the artist, but don’t stray too far from their roots. Simple tools are used. Modern craft and hobby lingo would call this a basic form of scratchbuilding.

2. This is often a lifetime activity, or one that has been part of the artist’s life for decades and only ends when the artist dies. It’s not unusual for the artist to start as a child, but coming to the art when older isn’t unheard of - for a few it’s started in middle age. It’s generally not something an artist picks up for a commission or two and then moves on to something else as if it were just another assignment in the corporate world.

3. It’s a compulsion. A compulsion to create something that expresses something important to them, and that something has buildings as its core means of expression. This doesn’t mean the works ignore the market and the artists live in poverty, only that the work isn’t created solely based on market demands. Commissions, sales of works, articles and stories, even at times commodification, and so on, aren’t unusual. The artists haven’t taken vows of poverty or exclusion from the world, it’s just that the work, to a large degree, is self-propelled. 

4. I don’t like the term ‘folk art miniature buildings’ as it carries all sorts of unconscious associations about the works and their creators. It’s easy to find pieces that have been cunningly created to cash in on subconscious assumptions about folk art buildings; these are imposter works. For example, one stereotypical aspect is that of crude construction. Just because the materials are unassuming, cast-offs, or junk, doesn’t mean they’ll be used without skill in a clumsy and unthoughtful manner. Manufacturers of knock-offs will often focus on what they think is folksy crudity to signal to uninformed buyers that they’re getting real folk art.

5. The artists in this field tend not to be professionally trained in the arts. This doesn’t exclude those with arts training, it just means that it’s an activity that’s usually undertaken by non-professionals, which may have lead to the categorization problem Suzuki alludes to. 

I’ve written about a few people I consider to be in the tradition, but Burke and Campbell note in their book that many works from past ages are anonymous, so historical documentation is often almost impossible to find. They also speculate that the art in America more-or-less died out after World War II, thereby ending a long run that possibly started sometime after the Civil War. I think in the post-WWII era it was subsumed into other arts, crafts, and hobbies, although many of its characteristics did die away in the process. It’s indeed a rare thing to see today, and I think the internet will speed the demise of whatever is left.

Here’s a list of a few artists I’ve written about that I think can be argued to be in the field, or did some work in it.

1. Laurence T. Gieringer. His work and origin story is a classic.

2. E. L. Moore. Most of my writing at this blog has been about his work. He’s also a good example of a person who had he lived his entire life in the pre-WWII era, might have been thought of as a true folk art building artist, but it turns out he’s one who’s work has all the characteristics of folk art, but was subsumed into post WWII model railroading, which I think he did so he could earn some money in the industry’s publications.

3. Roye England. He’s Pendon’s founder. I haven’t written about him here, but his story and work in the creation of the Pendon Museum is squarely in the wheelhouse.

4. Michael Paul Smith. He had arts training and worked in some arts related jobs, but his personal work is purely in the field. I highly recommend the 2015 book, Elgin Park: Visual Memories of Midcentury America at 1/24th scale, about about his projects that was written with Gail K. Ellison.

5. Mark Hogancamp. I’d say his work and personal history skirts the field, but I’d feel remiss about not mentioning him. One thing I’d recommend is watching Jeff Malmberg’s 2010 documentary about him, Marwencol, and then watching the 2018 Robert Zemeckis film, Welcome to Marwen, based on Hogancamp’s experiences and world. Pay special attention to how Zemeckis and team have reimagined Hogancamp’s miniature city for purposes of the movie against Hogancamp’s orginal. 

6. Seth. The famous cartoonist is clearly a mainstream artist; however, his personal long-term project of making buildings for his imaginary city of Dominion is definitely in the field. Surprisingly, when I saw Kingelez’s vibrantly coloured buildings I immediately thought of how they contrasted with Seth’s rather grey and monochromatic ones. Although, both Seth and Kingelez only use real buildings as starting points, if at all, and don’t concentrate on creating replicas.

7. Kim Adams. I much admire his work, but it’s another that skirts the field. When it comes to exuberance, his work is certainly up there with Kingelez’s, but Adams’ work is based on kitbashing as opposed to scratchbuilding, which I think is modern craft lingo for what happens in folk art miniature buildings. This opens up questions about how far a folk artist can go with using found objects and still be called a scratchbuilder instead of a kitbasher. Kingelez wasn’t a kitbasher.

8. George Iliffe Stokes. Although ostensively in the model railway field, his miniature buildings transcend it and document a serious love of English architecture. 

No doubt there’re more. This is all a work-in-progress and I’ll write about those I find.

From Suzuki’s essay and the model photos Kingelez’s work checks the field’s major boxes, but like all the field’s practitioners he brings things to the table that are uniquely his own. Kingelez, unlike most, didn’t make replicas of existing buildings, even though as Suzuki points out, a few of Kinshasa’s buildings may have influenced his early work. And as his work developed, it grew in expressiveness and complexity. His work was about ideas and designs that were uniquely his own. Often artists in the field stick with replicating, to various degrees, things that are meaningful to them that already exist in the world. That wasn’t Kingelez’s style. The thing to remember is that doesn’t exclude him from the field.

Before wrapping up, I should note there does seem to be a little railwaying in Kingelez’s work. Take a look again at the book’s cover. I spread it open for a reason: front and centre is a railway station with tracks entering on the right and leaving out the back on the left, that then rise up to meet some elevated track. The cover photo is one of a section of an approximately 19’ x 8’ layout called Ville Fantome, presented in plate 28 on page 116, which shows the elevated track, once down range from the station, making a hard 90-degree turn, and then dropping down to ground level to run parallel to what looks like a canal. It appears the layout is built from side-by-side placed modules, although personal inspection would be needed to confirm this. Scale? Hard to tell if there is one, but I’d hazard to guess if there was any explicit scaling it wouldn’t be larger than Z. Ville Fantome is a layout, a non-functioning one by the standards of the model railway hobby, but a layout nevertheless.

Coverage

As for the textless covers, we've been told repeatedly by experts in the field that these amount to marketing hara kiri. They are likely correct. But we persist because we consider the covers works of art.

Emily Donaldson, CNQ Editor, from issue #1 of The Bibliophile. 

When CNQ, Canadian Notes & Queries, shows up in the mail I try to stop whatever I'm doing and jump right in. The covers are always by Seth, and they seem to have a pull that makes me want to see what's new inside. Yeap, and as their editor mentions, the covers are usually textless, or have just a few words about the issue's theme. Years ago I wrote about Model Railroader's textless cover years from the early '60s to the mid '70s. I thought they expressed confidence, and showed what model railroading was really all about. And if your name's Model Railroader, what more does one need to know about what's inside? Apparently today's 'experts' don't see it that way. CNQ goes one further than the old MR with cover art that wraps around to the back, where you might find a few explanatory words, nicely integrated into the image, if that's what you're after. 

The model railroad cartoons of Doug Wright

Snipped from July '64 MR Doug Wright cartoon - his drawing style is unmistakeable.

I wasn’t kidding when I noted that one thing leads to another on this journey through the pages of old model railroading magazines. Looking for Gil Mellé cartoons lead to finding Bill Baron cartoons, which has lead to finding Doug Wright cartoons. And it happened quite by accident. I was chatting with Vince on the phone while scrolling absentmindedly through some pages in the Model Railroader archive, and bingo, a cartoon with Doug Wright’s signature, and just as importantly, his signature style.

Why it was so surprising to me is that Wright is one of Canada's most famous cartoonists, and inspiration for many significant Canadian cartoonists. There’s even a cartooning award, The Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning, established in his honour. I remember reading his strip, Doug Wright’s Family, in the Toronto Star back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but I didn’t know he had this connection to model railroading.

Here’re the cartoons I’ve found so far. As always, I’ll keep the list fresh if new items are found. If you see anything wrong or missing, please contact me and I’ll make appropriate updates.

MR = Model Railroader

1962

Dec: 1 single panel cartoon (MR) [reprinted from the Montreal Star]

1963

Feb: 1 single panel cartoon (MR) [reprinted from the Montreal Star]

Dec: 1 single panel cartoon (MR)

1964

Feb: 1 single panel cartoon (MR)

Jul: 1 single panel cartoon (MR)

1969

Oct: 1 single panel cartoon (MR)

Model Railroader also ran a little note about Doug Wright in the Bull Session column of their Dec ’62 issue. In it our pseudonymed columnist, Ray L. Rhodes, mentions that the cartoon they were running that month first appeared in an August ’62 issue of the Montreal Star to coincide with the Montreal NMRA convention, and to celebrate Montreal resident Dr. Roy Dohn’s layout, which was featured in How we rebuilt the Victoria Northern in the Aug ’62 issue of MR. At the end of the note they quote Wright as saying he found Bill Livingston’s article, My railroad just growed in the Sept ’62 MR, inspirational, and he planned to build a 5’ x 1’ scenic module over the winter. 

Did Wright build that module, or any sort of model railroad? Is it well known that he had an interest in model railroading, and maybe it’s just me who’s the last to know? The Off The Train Wire column in the Oct ’64 MR notes that Wright was selling colored prints of CN 4-8-2 No. 6065, one of the “bullet-nosed Betties”, available for decorating the railroad room or den, so it looks like his interest in railroading things continued, but did it continue in model form as well? Seth has written a book about Doug Wright. I need to get a copy and see what it has to say. Stay tuned.

Dominion Tack and Nail

Left: Tacks from Dominion Tack & Nail; Right: Scan from the Clyde Fans box.

I was going through some of my father's old tools and came across that little box of carpet tacks from the Dominion Tack and Nail Company of Galt, Ontario. The box's font looked much like that used by Seth in his drawings of the fictional town of Dominion, Ontario. Not to mention the Dominion connection. Art imitating life.

Fan trip

Abe drives his old sales route in 1975 in Clyde Fans.

Last week I read Clyde Fans. It's good and I recommend it. Most graphic novels I've read - and I admit it's not many - aren't novels, but merely extra-long comic books. On the cover Seth calls Clyde Fans a picture novel, and I agree with his assessment. I'm not going to dive into a discussion of plot and themes and characters, just note a few random things that struck me as I read.

Clyde Fans is clearly in the Southern Ontario Gothic genre even though many scenes happen north of there. The story takes place in the second half of the 20th century, and is set amongst Ontario's buildings and places that were formed in the early 20th century up until around 1960. I have mixed feelings about that setting. Although I was a boy in the '60s - as was Seth - the home I grew up in wasn't of that era, and neither were my parents. Looking back, our home life and surroundings were more like an amalgam of the '40s and '50s, but with better technology and without the grim reality of war and economic depression. I found the objects and buildings of that era somewhat dreary, and as I got older I developed an attraction for the newer buildings that were appearing as Canada prospered: The Ontario Science Centre, The Motorola Building, The TD Centre, The Toronto Reference Library, The Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the history museum), and Scarborough City Hall to name just a few that come to mind. And there were all the great gaudy illuminated signage of commercial buildings and malls. 

Seth ruminates on Canada in IAGLIYDW

But, on the other hand, now that the dowdy world is almost gone I have a bit of nostalgia for some of it. So, it's mixed feelings all the way down.

Walking, walking, walking. There's a lot of walking in Clyde Fans. And there's driving. And there's some train travel, streetcar riding, and out-of-body astral travel (!). There's a lot of motion in the story, but it seemed to me walking had a favoured place. There's also a lot of walking in It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken. It seemed like the walking made the grey nature of the world worse. Motorized travel allows one to speed through it.

As well as walking, there's a lot of love for those pre-war buildings evidenced by the quantity, detail, inventiveness, and care taken in their drawings. They dominate the book. In Clyde Fans those buildings and towns and cities are a character in their own right. 

Well, that's it for random impressions. No doubt I'll be reading this book a few more times. I think there's much I've overlooked.

Seth & E. L. Moore: Connected by a Tradition?

I've written about Seth's book It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken, and the miniature buildings that make up his city, Dominion. When I heard about his recent book, Clyde Fans, it sounded quite interesting and I thought I'd give it a try.

Clyde Fans is a pleasure trip, and one thing I've started to think about as I turn the pages are the similarities between Seth's work and E. L. Moore's. Maybe it's all in my mind, and is just another example of A-Man-With-A-Hammer-Thinks-Everything-Needs-Pounding syndrome, but let me play with the idea for a minute.

Both focus on recreating life of an era earlier than the one where their work is being produced. Loving and stylized depiction of the era's buildings is a focus. Both have built large collections of miniatures of those buildings, and both are story driven. However, Seth's primary medium is the graphic novel, and E. L. Moore's is HO miniatures. And, Seth's work is somewhat more clear-eyed and less nostalgic than E. L. Moore's.

There's no direct connection between Seth's and E. L. Moore's work, but in broader terms they both seem to fall into the larger miniature building folk art tradition. Although, Seth has broken much new ground, and has pushed the art well into a popular consumable 21st century form.

No doubt Clyde Fans has surprises in store. Stay tuned.

P.S.: If you've taken a look at Seth's miniature buildings here, you may want to compare the setup and collection with Peter Fritz's here, and the one at the Hollywood Heritage Museum here and here to get a sense of how Seth's collection situates with respect to a couple of other high-profile ones.

Dominion: "Jaunty Model Buildings"

Last summer I posted about the artist Seth and his miniature city, Dominion. Recently I saw a post at HiLoBrow about Dominion and a new article about it by Joshua Glenn that is up at ArchitectureBoston.

Although Dominion's miniature buildings are simply made from cardboard, they're highly evocative, and ring true to me about what Ontario looks like even though the models are highly stylized. Well, the models capture a certain period in Ontario that lives on today mainly in remnants. Seth's graphic novel, It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken, captures the sense of Dominion, or maybe Dominion captures the sense of the story - it's clear they're intertwined even though the novel preceded Dominion's first buildings by many years.

Plot-wise, the book chronicles Seth's attempts to track down a mid-20th century cartoonist named Kalo. While reading it I sometimes wondered if Kalo might have contributed a cartoon or two to any of the era's model railroading magazines. Although Kalo had cartoons published in Esquire and The New Yorker, he did have an early one in Modern Mechanix. Kalo's style is distinctive, so even though a cartoon might be unsigned, or unlisted in a table-of-contents, I think one of his might be identifiable on style alone. Well, if I ever see a model railroad one in his style, I'll let you know.

[Update 1 October 2020: Dumb me. Here I was thinking Kalo was a real person. No, Kalo is fictional as is the story - well, yes I knew the story was fictional, but for some reason I thought it incorporated real elements. Says something about the quality of Seth's writing as well as my gullibility.]

Seth's Dominion

Seth's Dominion, Luc Chamberland, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

You can find the full documentary here at the CBC (for some reason unknown to me, the embed code wouldn't work with blogger). From the film: I'm just trying to make the world the world I want to live in.