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from saturday's books section

Peter Power/The Globe and Mail



According to the cartoonist Seth, the golden age of Canadian television lies between the Second World War and the 1980s, before airtime was centralized and homogenized with U.S. content. Regional programming loomed large and every Canadian town had an outsize local television personality whose fame extended just as far as the city limits, and for as long as they were on the air.

In the fictional town of Lakeside, the faded celebrity at CKCK ("Channel 10 on your dial") is George Sprott: raconteur, some-time editor of Junior Woodsman, gentleman explorer, self-styled Arctic expert and erstwhile ladies man who dies shortly after the 1,132th episode of his show "Northern Hi-Lights". "Cooking shows, kiddie shows, dance, curling, movie hosts, polka bands... you name it. Where else could a figure like George Sprott have thrived?" asks the narrator of George Sprott: 1894-1975.

The graphic novel builds on the material of Seth's fictional biography of Sprott, a local TV host past his prime, which was originally serialized in the New York Times Magazine's Funny Pages in 2006. Within the constraints of that assignment, each one-page instalment functioned as a self-contained story; now collected and expanded, the chapters of the character study add up to a sprawling, unsentimental exploration of memory.

How much of one's identity is made up of other people's perceptions and memories, however flawed? Many voices flesh out Sprott's life through a variety of local histories, testimonials and reminiscences (from friends, family, fans).The voluble host's own contemplative flashbacks are interspersed but he is mainly conjured in documentary-style conversations with other people and through tangents, like the illustrated CKCK viewer's guide for programming on Sprott's last day, October 9, 1975 (which offers a wink to the CBC: the national news anchor of the era is Nash Nolton).

The frequent shifts in point of view play with pacing. An interview with campy "Friday Fright Night" host Sir Grisly Gruesome distills their 12-year working relationship in a single page while the facing sequence uses the same economy of panels to linger on the small details of Sprott's final hour. Other chapters offer a glimpse into Sprott's mind through the elliptical images of his many dozing-off dreams – his first love, the mother he neglected, the daughter he never knew, the wife he betrayed. They hint at self-awareness and something approaching regret, if not remorse.









Hadrian Dingle, a young bellhop at the time, recalls how after Sprott's death he entered the man's suite of rooms at the Radio Hotel to take in the surroundings (and steal some of his papers). In his unsparing eyes, Sprott's precious mementos like a childhood stuffed bear and a heartfelt birthday card are no different than the discarded Flexi-Truss girdle and congealed cup of coffee nearby – all merely the detritus of a life lived and soon to be forgotten.

Another interview, with long-time "Northern Hi-Lights" viewer Violet Glow, includes a sequence of Sprott giving his signature farewell ("May the sun never melt your igloo"). Here, limited space inspires creative composition. Seth depicts the passage of time through the evolution of TV set model design from panel to panel and within each screen, Sprott mouthing the words while growing fatter, balder, older.

Though imaginary, Sprott's world is so fully realized that small-town settings occupy three-dimensions, sometimes literally. Photographs of Seth's painstakingly constructed cardboard maquettes of the narrative's important buildings are inserted, like pauses, throughout the story: the CKCK building, the Radio Hotel, the Melody Grill (once the stomping ground for the entertainers of the day) and Coronet Hall, home of Sprott's weekly lecture series. Later, the slow decay of this last architectural landmark as it passes from stately hall to strip palace, to inevitable dollar store then vacant lot, is accomplished in a succinct series of panels that are as emotionally affecting as the death of the title character.

As with all Seth's books, design elements are chosen with care, from the visual balance of Sprott's name and his rotund silhouette (recalling the cameo-prone Alfred Hitchcock) to the symmetry of the station's call letters. And not least the slim oversized album itself – matte battleship grey embossed with metallic stepped Art Deco lines and a made-up crest (because Sprott's grandiose "Institute of Polar Studies" would surely have its own heraldry).

The novella begins with an illustrated group portrait of CKCK's Stars of 1966 and ends with the station's elaborate broadcast sign-off, but most apt is its final image. The book's endpapers are of the one thing that outlives both bygone local personalities and future reality stars: the vertical colour bars of a TV test pattern signal.

In the Northern Ontario town where Toronto writer Nathalie Atkinson grew up, the local radio-TV station CFCL perched mythically on a hill overlooking the city, like the temple at Mount Olympus.

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