Palookaville, Twenty-Two

74 WLT MARCH / APRIL 2016 as a biography, namely of the author’s father, Abdul-Razak. Shrewdly labeled a “graphic memoir” to split the difference, The Arab of the Future unflinchingly details the Sattoufs’ lives as a young family living in Libya, France (Riad’s mother’s birthplace), and then Syria (Riad’s father’s birthplace). In fact, Sattouf’s observations of each country—distinctly color-coded in the art with Libya tinted yellow, Paris bathed blue, and Syria tinted in pink—have a near-caustic edge to them. In needling his father’s pro-Arab views or chronicling the odd rituals of childhood in each country, Sattouf, a satirist for Charlie Hebdo magazine, may have been aiming for humor. But the overall effect of this first in a two-volume series is a feeling of ugliness; Sattouf’s art may be cartoonishly clean and expertly rendered, but the world he describes is a confusing, disturbing one. To some degree, the disorienting and disturbing nature of each locale is likely an intentional one. Wherever he lives, young Riad’s innocent sensibilities clash with the regional custom: the gunplay of his Libyan playmates, the scatology of his French kindergarten class, the naïve anti-Semitism of his Syrian cousins. But this glimpse into the odd world of children loses its amusing nature when the adults prove to be just as grotesque in nature, pushing their inadequacies on to the next generation of the indoctrined or dreamers. Sattouf’s work emerges from the wave of Franco-Belgian comics creators that include Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat), Lewis Trondheim (Dungeon), and Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis ). Unlike the others, however, Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future fails to translate into a coherent narrative for the American reader, it seems. Perhaps his second volume, covering 1984–85 and already available in French, will aid in making all the random pieces of the first more palatable. At present, though, this initial piece of Sattouf’s international past leaves one tensely dreading the future rather than rising to meet it. A. David Lewis Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences Seth. Palookaville, Twenty-Two. Montreal. Drawn & Quarterly. 2015. 120 pages. Abe Matchcard thinks of himself as a “nice, misunderstood, earnest fellow.” He believes this “despite all the evidence to the contrary.” There is plenty of evidence in “Clyde Fans Part 4,” the mainstoryinthenewesthardcoverPalookaville release by Ontario cartoonist Seth. Clyde Fans has been serialized in Palookaville for so long now, and Abe and his brother Simon have slowly been revealing their bitter family history for so long, that I forget some of the early details. Abe has lived his sad, salesman life for so long that he, too, has forgotten many important things. He ends up inviting to dinner an old flame whose heart he quite cruelly broke three decades earlier, forgetting the callous end he put to their relationship, having spent the ensuing years focused more on the false, rosy glow of his lying nostalgia for a past that never was. Nostalgia is Seth’s stock-in-trade. It is evident in every ink line he draws, an aching cover feature international comics for an unreachable yesterday so palpable that it creates a similar longing in the reader. Through this signature nostalgic style, he transports us to the fictional town of Dominion , Ontario, home of the Clyde Fans company . (Seth has even created a 3D model of the town for his own reference that is so detailed it not only has gone on the road as a museum exhibit but is the subject of a recent documentary film, Seth’s Dominion.) This depiction of a time and place that is no longer accessible, if it ever existed at all, paradoxically creates a verisimilitude in almost all of Seth’s work, and it finds its ideal expression in Clyde Fans. The charming architecture, clever signage, vintage clothing, and classic cars all tell us something about the world in which the Matchcard family was created, nurtured, and ultimately broken. Simon and Abe inhabit their home, their business, and their lives like genteel squatters , refusing to acknowledge the present and bitterly ruminating on old hurts and ancient defeats that they...

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