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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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Hicksville
Hicksville is a book that gets much praise from comics
readers. On many levels it is rightfully deserved: it is a layered
work with an excellent structure of stories within stories, the
drawing is dynamic, and the story is engrossing (every time I've
read it (three now), I've gone straight through without stopping for
more than a coffee refill). On the other hand, it is very much a
comic about comics and comic artists. The story is linked so much
with comics, comics history, and the comics scene that I'm not sure
someone who isn't more personally involved in such will grasp the
context of much of the story. While I--and most of those reading
this, I'm sure--am interested in comics and know something about both
the art and business of the medium, those not already interested in
such may find themselves lost at sea in some of the storylines in the
book. Horrocks, perhaps recognizing this issue, has provided a
glossary in the back of the book that provides brief explanations of
relevant people in the comics history (as well as some information on
New Zealand and its history). Hicksville is a story on many levels, held together mostly
through the character of Leonard Batts, a comics journalist who
travels to Hicksville, in the far reaches of New Zealand, to research
for the biography of one Dick Burger (I think the name will clue you
in that he's not going to be the hero of the tale) who grew up there.
Hicksville is a tiny place where almost everyone seems to read and
respect comics. The library houses international comic books of
various types and has a press in the back. It is a fantastical comic
artist wish fulfillment that speaks to the desire of an artist to be
free of the business and commerical side of art. When Batts discovers
a treasure trove of rare and expensive comics in the Hicksville
lending library, Mrs. Hicks, the proprietor, notes that in Hicksville
they don't pay attention to how much comics are worth. Later in the
story, Sam Zabel, a young cartoonist from Hicksville, meets Lou
Goldman, a (fictional) famous comic artist. Goldman tells Zabel that
he thought Hicksville was a metaphor. As a place where art is freed
from commerce, Hicksville can serve as a metaphor for the artist
freed of commercial constraint and popular prejudice (in the case of
comics at least). Here is a place where Picasso would actually make
comics in honor of George Herriman (creator of Krazy Kat,
which the historical Picasso really did read and love), where the
local cafe is called "The Rarebit Fiend" (after a Winsor McCay comic
strip), and where once a year everyone dresses up as a comics
character for the Hogan's Alley party (Hogan's Alley being the place
where the Yellow Kid lived). Here is the place where the great comic
artists of the past created the works they wanted to create, rather
than working their whole lives on corporate owned properties. As Leonard asks questions, we learn more about the stories of
other denizens of Hicksville, including Sam Zabel, a mini-comics
creator who provides a few of the comics within the comic, and Grace
Pekapeka, a botanist who moves through the story as the one perhaps
least involved with comics. We also learn why everyone in Hicksville
seems to hate Dick Burger, a classic research mystery that is not the
book's strongest story. It serves to provide the narrative momentum
which connects the other elements of the book together. Through this
mystery, Horrocks weaves together Zabel's struggle between his art
and his need to make money, Grace's return to Hicksville to deal with
the two men she left behind, Batts education on the comics business,
the secrets of Hicksville itself, and a treatise on comics and maps. One of the most interesting parts of the book is the multiple
comics-within-the-comic read by different characters: Sam Zabel's
autobiographical mini-comics; Dick Burger's superhero comics (and
their classic precursors); and the mysterious pages of a comic about
Captain Cook, a Maori native, and a cartographer in New Zealand.
Narratively, Horrocks does an excellent job of weaving these stories
into the larger tale. Some are parsed out a panel or two at a time
(the Captain Cook story), others are only partially glimpsed
(Burger's superheroes), and some are included in their entirety
(Zabel's mini's). The embedded comics are formally differentiated by
the use of either a comic book page frame or the use of a white
margin in contrast to the book's black margins for the top level
story (that is, the story of Batts and Hicksville). Horrocks originally serialized Hicksville over the course
of a few years. His art matured during this time, growing from a
simple unvarying line to more dynamic brush work. The weight of the
line and the use of spot blacks adds strength and weight to the
drawings in the latter part of the book. Many of the earlier pages
have a simple cartoony style to them that gives the story a levity
that evaporates later in the book when the drawings become more dense
and dark. I must make special mention of the landscape backgrounds
which are simple yet wonderfully evocative, particularly the vast
skies and large clouds looming over the distant hills of the New
Zealand countryside. These clouds also serve to visually tie together
the top level story in Hicksville with the story of Captain
Cook. The art style changes very little from the main comic to the
comics within the comic. Zabel's stories (which, among others, make a
nearly 50 page sequence in the middle of the book) are pretty much
identical to the rest of the story. While this originally bothered
me, only with further rereadings did I began to identify the
character of Zabel more and more with Horrocks. In this context (of
which more later) the similarity of art does not concern me as much
as it had. On the other hand, some of the other interior comics are
not differentiated enough. The Dick Burger stories have a different
style but it is amateurish in appearance and not believable as the
mega-popular superhero style it represents. While Horrocks does
contrast the story style of Burger's superheroes with that of his
precursors, the art does not offer that same contrast, in this case
the glossy all-surface quality that pervades such work. It is,
though, in one of these precursors that Horrocks offers one of the
best variations on his style. On one page, Zabel shows another
character the original version of one of Burger's superheroes. It
happens that this occurs within Zabel's mini-comic, so it's really a
comic within a comic within a comic. The superhero portion, drawn
with a thick line and feathered hatching, contrasts greatly with the
simple line style that surrounds it in Zabel's work. This contrast
forces the sequence out of place. It forces the reader to consider
this fragment against that of Burger's adaption in the surrounding
comic. This constrast, this jarring element, is where collage and the
embedded narrative gain their power. The separate yet joined nature
of collaged work or the sequentially adjacent yet stylistically
different nature of, for instance, a novel within a novel create a
powerful tension that leads to closer comparison between the elements
as one tries to fit them together. A recent comics example is the use
of the comic book within the comic of Sturm and Davis' Unstable
Molecules (Marvel, 2003). R Sikoryak's pastiche style greatly
contrasts with Davis' drawings, putting the internal comic stories on
a different plane than the "real" story, forcing the reader to work a
little harder to compare the embedded comic with the fictional story
around it. In a similar way, the Captain Cook comic within
Hicksville would, I think, benefit from this kind of contrast.
While the Zabel stories, autobiographical in nature, exist in the
same time and world as the story around it, the Captain Cook stories
not only represent historical content but also exist (within the
fictional world, that is) as drawings from the past. The visual
sameness of them with the main story takes away from their unique
nature in the book. The layouts in the book are mostly traditional, 6 or 9 panel
grids, varying sizes as necessary. Horrocks makes great use of the
half or two-thirds page panel to showcase the landscapes. In chapter
eight, for one long scene he switches to a steady 4 panel page. The
scene is the Hogan's Alley costume party on the beach at Hicksville.
The larger less frequent panels change the whole pacing of the story,
slow it down. It convincingly represents being at a party where
individual moments stand out from the hum of the background. This
scene is also a rising moment to the climactic discovery of a few of
the ongoing mysteries in the book. Two of the more interesting sequences involve discussions of maps.
One character (who turns out to be "Dylan Horrocks") talks to a comic
artist from the imaginary country of Cornucopia. The Cornucopian
artist consideres himself a cartographer and describes comics as maps
plotting space and time. This exchange: "So it's still a comic even
with no pictures?" "Perhaps. It is still a map. Why not?" brings me
back to the Pictureless Comics I wrote about, brought on
originally by something Horrocks wrote. The embedded comic about
Captain Cook and New Zealand also deals with the idea of maps and the
shifting of space and time, though less explicitly in relation to
comics. We can link these two together to consider comics as a map of
spatial relations shifting in time. In many ways, comics
(particularly ongoing ones) are at first a stable map of relations,
but they undergo shifting of relations across time (originally a one-
off character, Popeye completely took over Thimble Theater).
On the other hand, some comics may stay much more stable, such as
Krazy Kat, where the relations between the three protagonists
remain clearly mapped. Similarly, in Hicksville itself we see
the shifting relations of characters, particularly around the
character of Grace. This concept could also be looked at formally
with the juxtaposed panels representing shifting moments in time,
mapping a story both chronologically and spatially. One thing about Hicksville, that had me a little confused and
which I've had changing opinions on with each reading, is the opening
prologue. In it, "Dylan Horrocks" gets mail from Hicksville,
including some of the comics about Captain Cook. Later (thanks to a
reading of Horrocks' Atlas #1 (Drawn & Quarterly, 2001))
we can identify "Horrocks" as the character who talks to the
Cornucopian cartoonist, with Grace as his translator. This clearly
inserts "Horrocks" into the story as not only an observer but a
participant in the story, creating a tension between the real and
fictional worlds. HIcksville was originally published in
Horrocks' comic Pickle. Within the story, Sam Zabel's mini-
comic is also called "Pickle". This leads me to identify Zabel as a
Horrocks stand-in, yet we also know Horrocks exists in the story
under his own name. Zabel's "Pickle" is an autobiographical comic,
while Horrock's PIckle is not (at least on the most obvious
level). In a way he has stood the autobiographical comic of the time
(notably Seth, Chester Brown, and Joe Matt) on its head, creating a
clearly fictional story with himself as a character that frames a
autobiographical story of a fictional character. Having now read the book three times, I still find myself trying
to unravel more of the secrets within. The push and pull between the
various narrative levels of the story lend themselves to rereadings
and continued pleasure from the book, as well as the connections
between the book and the world outside it. For instance, after such
an extended fiction on the business of comics and the relations
between art and commerce, Horrocks went on to work for DC Comics
writing Batgirl and Hunter: The Age of Magic. Horrocks' unfinished Atlas (#2 finally coming out in
February) appears to be a sequel of sorts to Hicksville. It
features both "Dylan Horrocks" and Leonard Batts as well as the
Cornucopian cartoonist. I look forward to Horrocks continuing
exploration of this world in other books and what will no doubt be
more rereadings of this book.
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