Hicksville

Hicksville tells real stories from the comic book industry in the guise of fictional tales. it's very meta but it doesn't feel overly intelectual, it's actually quite heartfelt and imaginative. it's readable even if you don't know half of what the author is referring too (and to be honest i think i got much less than half of the references in the book). the drawings are simple but work perfectly for the story. there are several layers in the book that create a ghostly feeling, as if the history of comics and the stories in the book were impossible to capture in those pages. ( )

Dick Burger has made millions and is one of the most powerful people in the comics industry. He's often compared to comic legends like Jack Kirby for revitalizing the industry and Stan Lee stands in awe of him. Leonard Batts, a comics biographer, begins the process of creating the definitive book on Burger. But as Batts begins his research he finds Burger has a dark secret back in his home town of Hicksville--a small remote town in New Zealand where comics legends come and the library has books found no where else in the world. Will Batts survive discovering this secret or will it drive him to the edge of destruction?

Hicksville starts off a bit slow as it takes a little bit to figure out the pacing and the interweaving of the short comics, but once you get into the story and action really pick up. This book is Dylan's love letter to the comics world, his way of perhaps saying that the best comics in the world...are those ones that aren't published. And that sometimes the biggest and most talked about folks in the industry...aren't the greatest. Sometimes it's the small quiet ones that change the world. In many ways the story line reminds me of some of the subtleness of Twain's short story "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" as Twain makes some of the same comparisons to that the greatest in a given area might be the ones that you've never heard of before.

The artwork takes a bit of getting used to, as it's not as well drawn as say Blankets or Fun Home Family Tragicomic...but it does have it's own style and grace to it, especially as he blends together the stories with the short comics--each having it's own style to set it apart. And sometimes the drawings and figures are so big that the frames themselves can't contain them and the characters take on a life of their own carrying the story with them.

If you're a fan of graphic novels or the comics industry...or even if you aren't--pick up this book and give it a read. Then read it a second or third time just to see what you missed. ( )

A graphic novel, although the author prefers the less pretentious label, "A Comic Book," which is appropriate since this is a tribute to the under-appreciated genius of a previous generation of cartoonists -- Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood and others. A fun adventure of stories within comics within lost & found panels within dreams within stories -- a meta-fictional, Magical Realist mishmash. The young people of the mythical cartoonist village Hicksville, New Zealand are lost and disillusioned, but two different figures watch over them from two different libraries -- the benign, loving, unflappable and grandmotherly Mrs. Hicks and the mysterious hermit in the lighthouse.

From the forward: the book 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.

Dylan Horrocks's metacomic about a small town in New Zealand that houses the world's highest density of graphic novel enthusiasts jumped to the top of my TBR pile when some other library user recalled it from me. All I can say is this: thank you, anonymous recaller-of-books. This complicated and multilayered story about authorship, betrayal, and identity turned out to be one of the great delights of my month. [...]

Full review at http://sycoraxpine.blogspot.com/2007/06/may-in-books.html ( )

http://www.deathcookie.com/node/405 ( )