An extravagantly designed portrait--in comics, photos, and a DVD
documentary--of the world-building artist
When you live in an ornamented world where your home is a museum of
1940s design, you don't leave the house without a hat and tie, and your
wife owns a barber shop--which you designed--it's hard to imagine
letting a documentary about you go to press without constructing an
exquisite package for it. In Seth's Dominion, the National Film Board
documentary by filmmaker Luc Chamberland about the acclaimed Canadian
cartoonist, Seth has done just that.
Presented here as an innovative double-spined hardcover that opens in
two directions, one side opens with a photo essay narrating Seth's life
while the other offers a generous sampling of Seth's art: comics and
sketchbook pages, but also puppetry and New Yorker illustrations. Seth
also speaks to the experience of making the documentary through a comics
diary, constructed from rubber stamp images.
Between these two halves lies Seth's Dominion, a masterly portrait
that mixes insightful biography with vivid animation in an artful fusion
of filmmaking techniques that perfectly captures Seth's manifold
creative universe. From his melancholy reflections on childhood to his
descriptions of his creative habits, Seth narrates his own life story
enchantingly. With special features including two short animations and a
taping of Seth speaking at the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore, Seth's
Dominion is a triumph.
