The notorious Canadian comic Seth has released volume 20 of his Palookaville series and this time it comes in as a beautiful little hardcover. This book has comics that continue his acclaimed Clyde Fans story line, but it also includes images of his sketchbook and images and commentary on the amazing fictional 3-d cardboard town Seth created named Dominion City. It’s truly spectacular looking! Each building has so much detail with painted signs and little cardboard architectural details. Just quickly reading about it, it turns out Dominion City was originally going to be the setting for his new graphic novel. He started sketching buildings and writing up the history hoping to fully create a setting for his characters. But as he continued to work on it, he realized he was more interested in the city and its history than the characters that were supposed to occupy it. That’s when he began making these small cardboard versions of the buildings he had drawn up. These look like his comics come to life! He made 50 models and thought of it as a “basement project”(!) until some curators wanted to display it as an exhibition. You can see more in the new book here.

© Julia Rothman 2007