7.8 /10 1 Votes
Creator Dylan Horrocks Issues 1-10 Language English Publisher Black Eye Productions | 3.9/5 Goodreads Published in Pickle Date of publication 1993 – Dec. 1996 Originally published 1998 Date 1998 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ISBN 9781770460027 (softcover) Similar Dylan Horrocks books, Other books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hicksville is a graphic novel by Dylan Horrocks originally published by Black Eye Comics in 1998.
Contents
Publication history
Much of Hicksville was serialized in Horrocks' 10-issue solo series Pickle, published by Black Eye from 1993–1996. The collected edition, which featured much redrawn art, was released by Black Eye in 1998, shortly before the company went out of business. Hicksville was republished by fellow Canadian publisher Drawn and Quarterly in 2001 and again in 2010. In 2010 the graphic novel was republished by New Zealand publisher Victoria University Press.
Hicksville has been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, and French (L'Association).
Plot
Canadian writer Leonard Batts arrives in the tiny New Zealand town of Hicksville to research the early life of Dick Burger, whose work has taken the comic book industry by storm. He finds that Hicksville is a town in which everyone from the postman to the farmer is an expert on comics, yet everyone seems to hate Burger. The novel explores the machinations of the comic book industry, and contains a fictionalized account of the history of mainstream American comics, with particular attention paid to the era of Image Comics. Most of the characters are comic creators, and many of their strips are reproduced in full as part of the story, most notably Sam Zabel's extensive account of moving to Los Angeles in order to work with Burger, which he documents in his self-published comic Pickle (the title of the Dylan Horrocks series in which the storyline was actually published).
Horrocks has said of Hicksville: "It's a story about comics—their history and poetry—and also about what we New Zealanders call 'tūrangawaewae'—having a place to stand in the world—a kind of spiritual home. Hicksville is my way of creating such a home for comics."
Subsequent work
Batts and a minor character, cartoonist Emil Kopen, both appear in Horrocks' later series Atlas.
Awards
Hicksville was nominated for Ignatz Awards for Best Graphic Novel & Best Art, and a Harvey Award for Best Reprint Collection. The French edition was nominated for two Prix d’Alph’Arts for Best Graphic Novel & the Prix de la critique ("Critic's Prize"). The foreign editions were nominated for an Attilio Micheluzzi Award for Best Graphic Novel, and the Best Foreign Comic at the Barcelona Comics Festival. It was named one of the top five books of 1998 by The Comics Journal.