The G.N.B. Double C: - Hardcover

The G.N.B. Double C: The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists

Although published after Seth’s wondrously satirical look at the ossified nostalgia of the world of comics’ collectors in Wimbledon Green, this similarly styled work was mostly created earlier. It’s an initially chirpy but eventually downbeat narrative by a member of the Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, an august if imaginary guild and tradesmen’s club that has fallen on the same hard times as most other fraternal organizations. Seth uses this superbly drawn narrative tour of one of the G.N.B. Double C’s meeting halls as an excuse for some grand mythmaking and wish fulfillment. In this alternate universe, Canadian cartoonists were once the toast of the land, billboards advertising their work, and posh meeting halls in city after city offering plush armchairs and work cubicles for their diligent and productive members. The book’s haunting nostalgia for something that never existed—a curiously effective way of damning the present reality—includes lengthy and engrossing exegesis of many imaginary Canadian cartoons. By the time Seth threatens to pull the rug out from under you, he has you convinced that such a golden era of popular success and imagination could have existed; more important, he convinces you that it should have.