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Page 2
looks at issues of ritual, control, and surrender. The lighthearted tone
and unique structure of this three-part book make it an exciting read
time and time again.
"A veritable Walt Whitman in high-top tennis shoes." - Charles Pike, The Comics Journal The Sands, by Tom Hart, 200 pages, b/w, $14.95, Black Eye Books Dylan Horrocks traveled all the way from New Zealand to celebrate the publication of his long-awaited graphic novel, Hicksville (Black Eye Books, 1998). World-famous cartoonist Dick Burger has earned millions of dollars and has become the most powerful man in the comics industry in the few short years since the publication of his first Captain Tomorrow graphic novel. But behind his rapid rise to success, there lies a dark and terrible secret, as biographer Leonard Batts discovers when he visits Burger's hometown in remote New Zealand. For Hicksville is no ordinary small town. In Hicksville sheep farmers and fishermen argue the relative merits of early newspaper strips, while in the local bookshop and lending library, obscure Mongolian minicomics share the shelves with a complete run of Action Comics. But why does everyone there seem to hate Dick Burger? Hicksville collects the main storyline from the Ignatz Award nominee Pickle and includes about 40 pages of new or revised material. "In Hicksville [Dylan] manages to do a very difficult thing. He infuses cartooning with wonder and depth and mystery." - from the book's foreword, by Seth (Palookaville). Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks, 256 pages, b/w, $16.95, Black Eye Books Megan Kelso started work on her self-published comic, Girlhero, in the early '90s shortly after graduating from Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington. Inspired by the exploding do-it-yourself aesthetic that included the dorm-room-packing band Nirvana and the Riot Grrl "movement," Megan created comics because it seemed like the ideal medium to combine her love of drawing and fiction. After receiving a publishing grant from the Xeric Foundation, the first issue of those efforts hit comics shops everywhere. Girlhero received favorable reviews in the New York Times, Sassy, Ms., and Seventeen, as well as in the comics industry's critical magazine, the Comics Journal. Her first book, Queen of the Black Black (Highwater, 1998), is a collection of her Girlhero strips plus some new material. In the collection, Megan scrutinizes bicycle messengers, venereal diseases, infidelity, unwanted pregnancies, temporary work assignments, family reunions, and classroom daydreams in a subtle and unexpected manner. "Kelso negotiates a tension between the spoken and the unspoken-the
The copyright of the article Four Cartoonists Hit the Road - Page 2 in Comic Books is owned by Robert Smithers. Permission to republish Four Cartoonists Hit the Road - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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