Books: Hicksville

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Hicksville
By Dylan Horrocks
1999





Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/

So. This is a comic book "about" comic books. What different kinds of comic books mean to different kinds of people - and how that all (sometimes? every time?) gets swallowed up by big business: editors and publishers etc. (oh no!) The narrative tying this altogether: There's Leonard Batts who's trying to reach a place called 'Hicksville' and get to the truth of the story behind Dick Burger (great name) and Grace and her garden or - "the one landmark she still felt behind her" or something - and Sam who wants to explore the BIG questions ("Life! Death! Truth! Epistemology!" - yawn) - but all their ideas and experiences and relationships are fed back to the reader in a comic inside a comic and then another comic and then another one - all drawn in (slightly) different styles... because - erm - life is comic books or comic books are life - or something? To tell you the truth: it's all a little bit pretentious. Basically - if I was going to be mean I'd say that this a comic book for people who hate comic books (gripe: if you're going to present something that has captured the hearts of millions of people (Captain Tomorrow - the world's most successful comic book) - then - shouldn't it look and sound like something that at least someone would like? [1]). Just because something's popular that doesn't mean it's not good and vice versa. No? Oh well. Then again: I like The Ultimates (and maybe that makes me a bad person?). And the artwork is rubbish too - that scratchy look that makes it seem like they can't really be bothered. If you like slow moving, reflective books that ponders weighty subjects like mass commercialisation and how artists struggle within that (although that makes it sound like something good) - then perhaps you will enjoy this book more than me. Someone has to.

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[1] See: The Bulletproof Coffin for a way of making this type of work way way way better.

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Further reading: It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken, Clumsy, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, The Bulletproof Coffin, The Ultimates.

All comments welcome.