An Interview with Seth

“Art is something you use to define yourself.”

Things considered “boring” that Seth finds really quite interesting:
Annuals of the Rose Society of Ontario
Two old men who sell electric fans
Anything, if you look at it the right way

Twenty years ago, everyone was preparing for the end of the world by upgrading their computer software and wearing loose polyester pants that could literally be “torn off” in the event of some pantsless emergency. But Gregory Gallant, the artist known as Seth, was just beginning work on the graphic novel that would eventually become Clyde Fans—an ambitious melancholy, fictional history of a real, family-owned electric fan business. Set mostly in the 1950s, it is narrated by two brothers, the inheritors of the business, who struggle in different ways to make sense of the decline of a specific era of capitalism and, as a result, themselves.

If you know Seth’s work, it feels nothing other than extremely appropriate that, at a time when everyone was worrying about the future, he was looking towards the past. All of his comics and graphic novels are threaded thickly with nostalgia, from his cartoony 1950s drawing style, to his post-war settings and modernity-resistant characters. 

But you won’t find anything sentimental or folksy about Seth’s work. He’s wary of romanticizing earlier eras, in a way that often leaves you pondering the strangeness of reality. Clyde Fans is no different. It is their very inability to adapt to change that kills the two brothers’ business—and sets at least one of them off on a mystical inward journey of self-discovery. 

In some ways the book is the pinnacle of his thirty-plus year career so far, and contains all the hallmark “Seth” features we’ve come to know and love. Does it interrogate nostalgia? Check. Does it contain lots of Canadian memorabilia? Check. Does it describe the interior life of its characters more than a plot? Check. Does it delight in the mundanity of everyday existence rather than fantastical events? Check. Does it push the limits of what we expect from comics and stories in general? Check. 

After twenty years of working on Clyde Fans on-and-off, however, Seth is embracing change. When talking to him over the phone last week, Seth admitted to me that Clyde Fans marks the end of a phase in his career—and he didn’t sound sad about it. What it means to create comics post-Clyde, he’s not quite sure. But he drops a few hints in our conversation below. 

—Shannon Tien

I. Canadian Ephemera

THE BELIEVER: So what is it like to work on a book for twenty years?

SETH:...