Wimbledon Green, Part 3

OK, these may be my final thoughts on Seth’s wonderful Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Book Collector in the World.

I wonder if the author considered titling it, The Mystery of Wimbledon Green. It has an abundance of clues, blind alleys, tempting hints and unresolved questions about the main character. Who is he really? Where did he come from? Why did he disappear?

One character early on even contends Green’s handlebar moustache is fake.

In a later chapter narrated by Roofings Hatch, Green’s valet and personal assistant — “though never his confidante” — Hatch relates how every afternoon Green labored over a manuscript. “Just what he was writing was never clear to me and as soon as he stopped writing, it went back in the safe,” Hatch recalls, a la one of the interviewees in Citizen Kane. “The manuscript was enormous and always growing larger. Perhaps it was an autobiography.”

He also mentions how Green often could be observed staring “pensively out the window. He seemed to be watching for something. Afraid.”

We’re never told what was in the manuscript, or what Green feared … though we can guess, from information elsewhere in the book.

But the most touching mystery, I think, comes from Hatch (and the author), as the valet tells how Green would spend an hour each day “answering letters, sorting new acquisitions and writing cheques ….” In that panel, Seth has drawn our hero reading a letter, and a single tear runs down cheek and onto that big white moustache.

Why is he crying? Who sent the letter? What does it say?

As with so many things in real life, we never find out.

Read my earlier posts on Wimbledon Green here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

Wimbledon Green, Part 2

In Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Book Collector in the World, Seth drops in selections from the Golden Age library of said “greatest comic book collector.” Here are a few of those wacky titles, with author’s descriptions:

• Mighty Orbit #9 — “Sputnik inspired. Popular robot comic.”
• Alimony Comics #3 — “I’m taking every cent,” declares the woman on its cover.
• Patty Pigtails #1 — “Irritating girls’ comic.”
• The Wubbs, no # — (Inspired by The Gumps maybe?)
• Gee #48 — Featuring “the death of Capt. Well-Being.”
• Keen Funnies #12 — “One of those perfect Saturday afternoon comics.”

And at the end of Wimbledon Green, the protagonist bids us, “Good night, dear friends.” Melancholy, perplexing at times and quite charming. The book itself, like the made-up Keen Funnies, is nearly perfect.

See Part 1 of my rave on Wimbledon Green here.

Wilmbledon Green, Part 1

In his introduction to Wimbledon Green: The Greatest Comic Book Collector in the World, Seth trashes his own work:

“The drawing is poor, the lettering shoddy, the page compositions and storytelling perfunctory,” he writes by way of apology to his loyal readers. “The whole thing was drawn in the spirit of ‘good enough.’ …Even I find some of the characters ugly.”

Is he kidding? Wimbledon Green is wonderful stuff. A great, heartfelt story combined with charming art.

A series of stories, actually. Billed as “from the sketchbook” of Canadian cartoonist Seth (aka Gregory Gallant), the series are told from various perspectives — not of all of which are trustworthy — of comic book dealers, longtime collectors, a valet and one private detective about the life of Wimbledon Green, an eccentric “force of nature” with a mysterious past (and future) who could deduce the publication year of a comic book merely by examining the staples or smelling the ink.

Seth also lovingly creates artists and characters from this fictional world’s Golden Age of comic books — Lester Moore and Hal Drake, the Green Ghost, hobos Fine and Dandy, Mr. Meteor and Sally Saturn, among others — and some are discussed in depth. He does this so fully, I wouldn’t mind tracking down a copy of Fine and Dandy myself, after reading Wimbledon’s “short talk” about them.

We should all be able to turn out such “shoddy” work as Seth’s Wimbledon Green. I strongly recommend this book.

More on Wimbledon Green next time.