Wimbledon Green-Seth

Over the last few weeks, I read, Wimbledon Green, a graphic novel by the cartoonist named Seth, or Gregory Gallant.

The story is about a world famous comic book collector named Wimbledon Green. Wimbledon was a smart and determined collector and had completed many sought after series of comic books in mint condition. Of course because of all of this success, Wimbledon had many rivals in the business that would stop at nothing to see Wimbledon Green go down. The plot revolves around a comic book that was supposedly gone missing, but was found after many years. Wimbledon Green and all the comic book collectors must retrieve this comic book before one another does, stopping at no costs, even risking each others lives. The quest is broken up between little snip its of information about who Wimbledon Green really is. A very similar looking Don Green is accused of being an alibi for Wimbledon, but he proclaims else wise. Wimbledon claims to be an H. Arbor Grove, but H. himself does not agree. The book is trying to find the missing comic, but to also solve the mystery of Wimbledon Green.

Before the book starts, a note from the author is written about the artwork of the novel. It basically says that the book was originally a sketchbook exercise that he was doing for practice, which eventually sprouted into a book. In my opinion, the artwork is very done for this novel. Although maybe not his best artwork, the style of cartoon and animated drawing is what caught my attention in the first place. The novel is about a dysfunctional grown man comic book collector, I think the humorous style of artwork compliments very well. Although I do like the artwork, because it lacked detail, much of the artwork is very basic, leaving out depth of a characters feeling. You couldn’t really see much beyond happy or sad. So yes they are communicated, but not to the level you would expect in a novel.

My favourite part of the graphic novel would be pages 82-89, about half of the way through. In this part of the novel, Wimbledon Green is chasing after a man working for one of his enemies. This man holds a very rare comic book vital to many collections. Wimbledon is chasing him down, using a walky talky to communicate with is assistant. What you see is another one of his enemies using a frequency machine to listen to wait Wimbledon is saying. The enemy in a car drives away thinking he’s so smart, little did he know Wimbledon knew he was following him, and set up fake instructions. Wimbledon switched to a new frequency and gave the assistant real instructions. Then, without the second enemy, Wimbledon then chases down the enemy to retrieve the book. This is my favourite part of the novel because it shows although he looks like a bumbling fool; he is quite a smart man who can easily trick his foes. I guess this is why they hate him so much