Gregory “Seth” Gallant is a sublime cartoonist and Clyde Fans is his opus; a graphic novel twenty years in the making, clocking in at close to 500 pages. It captures the key moments in the lives of two middle-class brothers from a broken home, Simon and Abe Matchcard, who detest each other, and the gradual collapse of their deserter father’s once-booming oscillating fan business, established in the 1930s, but unable to compete with the invention of air conditioning.
The art is phenomenal; the thick lines intricate and expressive, the blue and grey colours accentuating the book’s melancholic tone. And the pacing is exquisite; there’s a cadence to Seth’s cartooning that compels readers to slow down and savour every page and panel.
Anyone who questions comics as literature needs to read it.
Simon McDonald 