Comic MR

Dylan Horrocks of New Zealand is the creator of Hicksville, a graphic novel, although he uses the less pretentious subtitle, A Comic Book. This is not false modesty, as the work pays tribute to the under-appreciated genius of a previous generation of cartoonists - Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood, and others. It's a fun, restless, thoughtful adventure of stories within comics within lost & found panels within dreams within stories - a meta-fictional, Magical Realist mishmash.

Characters in the mythical cartoonist village of Hicksville are past the first sweet bloom of youth, forced to admit they are adults now, lost and disillusioned, but watched over by two protectors each of whom keep a library, that institution so dear to the hearts of readers/writers everywhere. One spiritual guide is the benign, loving, unflappable and grandmotherly Mrs. Hicks, and the other is a hermit in a lighthouse.

From the forward: Seth expresses regret at the "wasted potential of a medium." Hicksville's two libraries reflect "the truth of what comics actually have been. An industry that, for the most part, robbed artists of the chance of doing their real work. An industry that forced great cartoonists to waste their talents hacking out insipid stories for a half interested audience."

Despite this sad message, the book itself is a delight.