The phrase “fan fiction” often gets thrown around as an insult, but it shouldn’t be. There’s nothing wrong with fan fiction. Everyone who writes fiction starts out as a fan of someone else’s, someone they naturally want to name-drop and pay homage to. Seth is a fan of Canadian comics, possibly the most public and prolific fan ever. If anyone has earned the right to Mary Sue himself into the history of cartooning, it’s him.

The G.N.B.C.C. is Seth’s tour through the history of our country’s cartoonists, as it was and as he wishes it had been. Think if it as Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg (or, if you prefer, J.D. Ryznar’s Yacht Rock) for comics: an unreliable narrator’s nostalgic tour through his own retro-entertainment fantasies. This is a place where real comic creators like Adrian Dingle and Doug Wright rub shoulders with made-up, impossibly awesome folk heroes of comics. A disgruntled British soldier who draws naughty romans à clef about General Wolfe. The Group of Seven drawing comics that were never published. Vigilant librarians who stand guard over an igloo-shaped archive of original art, buried deep in the Far North.

Behind all of this stands the Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, a fraternal order that Seth insinuates, Forrest Gump-style, into major milestones of the real Canada’s history. Their group portrait is the spitting image of Robert Harris’s 1884 painting of the Fathers of Confederation. They had their own booth at Expo 67. They have a mansion-like clubhouse that looks like the reading room of Hogwarts, but is built from the same stone as Queen’s Park.

Seth’s world is a fun place, too corny to be real, but also too corny to be false. Compared with Wimbledon Green (which this book resembles both in packaging and design), it’ll seem really, really self-indulgent. I feel differently. Seth is an accomplished autobiographer, and this story feels “real” because underneath everything it’s his story, the story of his love of old comics and how he came to be their champion. He co-founded the Doug Wright Awards and co-edited a collection of his work, and behold: Doug Wright is in this book. He designed The Complete Peanuts, and lo: Snoopy gets a cameo in this book. His old pal Chester Brown gets more than a few shout-outs too.

If you liked My Winnipeg — and I did — then you’ll like this. Come to think of it, it’d be fantastic if Guy Maddin made this into a movie. Seth could do the art design. Chester Brown could be the star …

How’s that for fan fiction?