I feel slightly weird giving this book such a low rating when the artwork was really lovely, and parts of the story (much of the ending/revelation of the Kalo plot) were really clever and cool, but literally every single thing the author/protagonist did or said made me hate him more and more.* I genuinely can't tell if the author was self-aware of his own foibles and mocking them in this book, because it seems impossible that a person could actually be like that. At one point, he makes a derisive reference to Holden Caulfield as whiny and self-absorbed (and contemplates the possibility that he is Holden-ish), and I laughed out loud because Holden Caulfield is, for a variety of reasons, about a thousand times more sympathetic and interesting than the author/protag.
Anyway, don't read this book, go read a comic by a woman and call your mom or something.

*Spoiler: there is a single exception, which is the note he left for Annie, which I thought was quite sweet. ( )

I was browsing Drawn & Quarterly's site during the holidays to see what they are planning on publishing and saw that a new issue of Palookaville is scheduled for mid-2023 (the first in 6 years). I've always enjoyed Seth's work so decided to go back in time and reread his work up to this point. And this is probably one of the good entry points for his work - his first longer work which brought him two Ignatz Awards in the inaugural year of the now well-known awards: Outstanding Graphic Novel or Collection and Outstanding Artist (he lost Outstanding Story to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's "From Hell", a category where the rest of the nominees were Dylan Horrocks's Hicksville, Daniel Clowes's Ghost World and Joe Chiappetta's A Death in the Family (in Silly Daddy)).

A Canadian cartoonist gets obsessed with an obscure cartoonist from the past and tries to find the man and to understand why such a talented man remained obscure. That is the premise of this graphic novel (Seth calls it a picture novella partially to highlight its connection to the past) and on the surface, that's pretty much what you get. Except that the text and the art are full of references to the actual history of the artistic form. If you are unfamiliar with most of it, this edition also contains a picture dictionary -- which may send you back rereading some parts when you realize what part of the story was actually true - while Seth (the narrator here and a namesake of the author), his circle and the cartoonist he gets obsessed with are mostly fictional, a lot of the other people and the rest of the art mentioned are not. And in addition to that, you get the Canadian landscapes, especially the ones showing small and big cities landscapes that are not that common in almost any type of books.

The picture novella is a love letter to the gag cartoonists of the 40s and 50s (think The New Yorker style cartoons). Seth's style is heavily influenced by their style and even if the tale is not biographical, it is based on the real author - the Seth of the novella may not be the real-life Seth but a lot of his actions may have been and the two of them view a lot of things the same way. The art is black and blue on cream pages - Seth rarely (if ever) uses color and this book is not an exception. And if you wonder just how realistic the story looks like - Seth even includes the "discovered" cartoons of his mystery cartoonist.

It was written at the time when the graphic memoirs were starting to get popular in the mainstream and Seth uses the format to its advantage (despite the story being fictional). Since the days this story was published, the format had become more and more mainstream and noone bats an eye anymore when a memoir comes out in graphic format but at the time this one was published, it was not as expected or accepted.

I've read this one before and I probably will read it again - there is always something else to notice, another line to pull on. It does not have the complexity of some other stories but it is still highly readable, especially if you like Seth's art style. ( )

I continue to really enjoy this novella - not so much for the story itself, but because of the setting and feel. I know the places the story takes place in very well - Toronto and rural Ontario in the late 80s (and remembering back to the 70s) - which makes it much easier to be right there with the characters. I can see the scenes not just as drawn but as they exist in my head. And, even as I sometimes get a little irked with Seth for being too bound in the past, in reading this I feel a sense of melancholia in experiencing a place and time that, for me now, doesn't really exist anymore. ( )

La página 19 justifica su lectura ( )

From Palookaville, this story chronicles the search for more information about a little known cartoonist of the 40s and 50s. It's full of introspection, melancholy, love, and dedication. A casual encounter with a single comic strip becomes a mission to learn more. It's a beautifully slow-paced book where each panel brings depth. I'm not sure how he does it, but landscape and architecture become characters that frame and move the story along. ( )