The Book I'm Reading: Clyde Fans by Seth

I don't know when I first read a comic book by Seth. I've got a paperback first edition copy of It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken which was published in September of 1996, so that could be it. Of course, I might have bought it later on, too. At any rate, somewhere along the line, I found him, loved him, and started to seek him out.

I enjoyed everything I found--and I found a lot of stuff...maybe even all of it for awhile. (Since the pandemic hit, I've been separated from comic books, and am just now getting back to it.)

I am particularly fond of Clyde Fans. 

I wasn't on board when it started in the pages of Seth's comic book, Palookaville, in issue 10, published in April, 1997. By the time he had published Clyde Fans Part One (January 1, 2000) I had caught on. That one only reprinted issues 10 through 12, though, and I never saw a Part Two. * Instead, four and a half years later (July 1, 2004) I found Clyde Fans: Book 1, a nice hardcover which reprinted issues 10 through 15. I think that must be when I really fell in love with the book...or when I finally started seeing Palookaville on the shelves at The Great Escape...or maybe I started ordering it?... because I didn't wait for Book 2, I started buying the issues. Unfortunately, Seth wasn't the most prolific fellow, so there was at minimum a year between issues, and sometimes more.

17: July 2004, $4.95 

18: October 2005, $4.95 

19: February 2008, $4.95

20: October 2010, $19.95 

21: October 2013, $21.95 

22: April 2015, $22.95

23: July 2017, $22.95

Issues 17 through 19 were pretty pricey for regular format comic books--albeit with nice, heavy covers and interior pages. And with issue 20 the book actually became a hardback book, and the price jumped way up there, as you can see. But I stuck with it...even though I was also waiting for Clyde Fans: Book 2, because I most certainly would have bought that.

But there never was a Book 2, either. Instead, the complete series was published in April 2019. I'm not sure what the price was then, since I didn't buy it, but Amazon currently shows it as $37.86 for a used hardback, $27.49 for a new paperback. (Or, if you're as sick of Amazon's shit as I am, you can get it new in paperback from Walmart for $28.37.) 

That's pretty much all I know about the publishing history. It's an interesting series of false starts, though, isn't it? 

But as I said earlier, I really like Clyde Fans. I think it is one of the best graphic novels ever published, and I've read one hell of a lot of them. Part of my love for it is Seth's drawing style. It's closer to Big Foot than realism, evoking the cartoon style of The New Yorker of a bygone era...maybe the 1940s? But the real draw is Seth's writing. For instance, the first part of the story follows old Abe Matchcard as he awakens and then putters around his house, attending to his morning rituals. As he putters, he talks about the history of his company, Clyde Fans, and spends a considerable amount of his time talking about his somewhat eccentric brother, Simon. It doesn't sound very exciting in summary, but I found it absolutely fascinating, a perfect example of the fractal nature of great writing: you see the whole in the specific. Though I have nothing in common with a retired fan salesman living in a small town in Canada, my heart still aches with Abe as he recounts his rise and fall, and I really want to get to know his quirky brother, Simon. That urge is satisfied in Part Two, as we get off the train with Simon and follow him in his attempts to sell fans to various shopkeepers in the city of Dominion. 

Speaking of Dominion...

Seth built his little city in cardboard. I've seen pictures of it, and it is quite impressive in terms of scope, scale, and detail. Drawn & Quarterly published a book about it--Seth's Dominion--which you can get for a mere $32.95 from D&Q. Its page count is small...a mere 80 pages...but it is filled with lovely photographs and illustrations, and it also includes a dvd of the 42 minute movie Seth's Dominion directed by Luc Chamberland. Seth spent ten years building his city.

A few days ago I started re-reading Clyde Fans...which, of course, is what prompted me to start writing about it. I started with the hardcover Seth Fans Book One, and when I was finished with it I went back to look at the indicia before proceeding to the next installment of the story. That's when I realized what you may have already caught some time ago: this book reprinted issues 10 through 15. My first issue of Palookaville was issue 17. I was missing an issue! If I told you how that felt to me, you would probably be appalled...so I won't tell you. I'll just say that I immediately went on eBay and started looking for issue 16. Fortunately, I not only found it, but found a most reasonable price as well--a mere $6.36, including shipping. So I will soon, for the very first time, read the COMPLETE Clyde Fans. 

I knew I should have purchased that one volume collection when it came out!

ANYway...this is a truly great comic book. If you haven't read or don't like comic books, I think this would be the one which could tip you over into embracing the much maligned literary form. I used to think that Alan Moore's work could do that, but I no longer think so. I love Alan, and have read most of his work...and will continue to do so...but the truth is that he is in some ways as bound by the genre mentality as the lesser practitioners of comic book work. Seth is not. He goes far beyond the constraints that seem to have hardened around almost everyone else. (Chester Brown is another exception, and his excellent work can also be found at Drawn & Quarterly.)

🕊📤

* When I checked, Wikipedia said that Clyde Fans Part Two was published in 2003, and reprinted issues #13–15. I found another reference to it on an Amazon site...can't remember which one, but not the USA version. But I was sure that I would have seen it if it had come out, so I found an email address for Drawn & Quarterly and wrote to them.

Hi. I am attempting to write a piece expressing my lov for & the publication history of Seth's Clyde Fans, and I wanted to see if I could fact check something. I have a copy of Clyde Fans Part One, which collected issues 10 through 12 of Palookaville, but I have never seen a copy of Clyde Fans Part Two (and have spent more than a little bit of time searching for it), and thought that it had been supplanted by Clyde Fans Book One. Online, however, I have found references to Clyde Fans Part Two being published in 2003. Can you verify that Part Two (collecting issues 13 through 15) was indeed published?

Thank you.

Brother K

I wrote on a Saturday evening. Monday morning at 9 o'clock I got this from faraway:

*** **** ********<***@drawnandquarterly.com>

Mon 6/21/2021 9:21 AM

To: info

Cc: You

Hi Brother,

Thanks for your interest. Clyde Fans Part Two was never released as a book. The rest of Clyde Fans was serialized in the book version of Palookaville (e.g. PV20) and the entire story was collected in the complete Clyde Fans.

I hope this helps!

Best,

***

In case you were wondering, THAT is so fuckin' customer service. And quite an anomaly in my dealings with publishers over the years, who have usually just ignored me...even when I was writing to help them or to request information about something I had ordered. But this is my second time writing to Drawn & Quarterly, and I had quick responses from them both times. (And btw, they also produce superb books, and you can buy anything with their name on it and be assured of a quality publication.)

ANYway, after that exchange I went back to the Wikipedia page and corrected several errors. Here are my edits...which as of this writing still stand:

The second of these is the caption that appeared underneath a picture of Clyde Fans Book One. Originally it had the dates as 1997 - 2017 and the page count as 488...both of which were references to the one volume complete Clyde Fans which was published in 2019. I thought it would have been more appropriate to leave that information intact, insert a picture of Clyde Fans and excise the ": Book One" from the caption, but I don't like fucking around with copyrighted images,  so I just adjusted the text.

No, no, thank YOU.