MixedThe Comics JournalHow to approach a book with so much flop sweat swirling around it? I must first make it clear that I treat this book coarsely because I take it seriously. It is not the work of a beginner, but of a particular kind of cartooning master. Seth\'s skill and talent is not up for debate any longer ... Clyde Fans states that it is not about nostalgia, not about sentiment. This is a book about nothing less thanreality itself ... Clyde Fans is an expression of Seth\'s mind ... As seen with Simon\'s response to his mothers knickknacks or Abe\'s attitude to his employee\'s, Clyde Fans agrees with, perhaps unawarely, Simon\'s narrowness. The book, and Seth\'s art, is closed off from the world, but not gleefully and proudly. Rather, it is on the defense. And the chosen form of this defense operates with the books theme as its primary cudgel: mental isolation, imbedding within its pages bafflement towards any possible attack. I look forward to the next book. There, I hope to see Seth\'s conviction and skill crystalized into the \'beyond reality\' metaphysical fantasy epic he sketches out here.
Julie Doucet
RaveBOMBThrough her instantly authoritative characters, Doucet seeks less to tell a story than to contradict or augment her own mental positions. Perhaps comics are not so much a narrative form but a thinking one. Sex and the nonidealized life of the body is a thought throughout Plotte (menstruation, shitting, nose picking are often on view), but it’s an aspect of Doucet’s mind, not the feature itself ... Dirty Plotte documents Doucet’s genius on two fronts: the early issues are revolutionary, flowing from the diverse web of thought that she transcribed into her panels. Later, we have one of the best modern takes on the wing of comics laid down at the medium’s inception by the likes of Bud Fisher and George Herriman: caricatured storytelling, updated with a charge of contemporary life.
