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.

Seth is the cartoonist behind the comic-book series Palookaville, which started in the stone age as a pamphlet and is now a semi-annual hardcover. His comics have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Best American Comics, and McSweeney’s Quarterly. His illustrations have appeared in numerous publications including the cover of the New Yorker, The Walrus, and Canadian Notes & Queries. He is the subject of a recent documentary from the National Film Board of Canada, Seth’s Dominion. Seth lives in Guelph, Ontario, with his wife Tania and their two cats in an old house he has named “Inkwell’s End.”

Seth's profile page

Luc Chamberland's profile page

It's Seth's world, and we're just looking at it . . . [ Seth's Dominion ] references the artist's idiosyncratic inner world, as well as a model city he spent a decade constructing." - Brad Wheeler, Globe and Mail

" Particularly striking is the breadth of his creations - as well as the comics, models and puppets there's footage of his wife's barbershop which he designed, and the book has photos of carnival floats with his characters. Seth [is] genuinely committed to his art." - The Quietus

"It's just delightful." - Metro News
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