Tlönista

I’ve been sitting on this one a while, as you can tell. Broken up into parts for your convenience.

1 “Angoulême is old, old, old”
2 General overview of demographics, genres, comix culture and industry in France
3 A very short glossary
4 Playing the bass
5 Gatecrashing
6 Notes on the panels
7 Schtroumpfs noirs
8 Party in the alt comix tent
9 Readers on the lawn of the Hôtel de Ville
10 “Je tombe amoureuse”

Continue reading ‘Angoulême’

ENH ENH ENH

When I titled that Alan Moore post “Comics Will Break Your Heart”, I had entirely forgotten that it was the epigram of Dylan Horrocks’s comic book Hicksville. It must have crawled into my unconscious years back.

I first read Hicksville in the summer of 2006, about a year after getting into comics. Ben had it on his bookshelf because it was Chris Butcher’s favourite comic, so I eagerly figured it must be full of awesome.

I didn’t get it.

The story was nice, but I could only manage a superficial kind of appreciation and I knew it. Capital-C Comics was still this entirely alien medium – imagine being new to film in general, or music in general – and I was intimidated. It’s not a n00b comic.

Weekend before last I saw it on the top shelf in the Alternative Comics section of Gosh, almost out of my reach and wedged in too tightly to just tip out. But maybe if I could get a few more inches by just stepping on that ledge of the bottom shelf there –

bam! Piles of bagged and boarded back issues fly out on the floor like a catch of rainbowy fish as the shelf collapses. I want to melt into a puddle as a store clerk piles the comics to one side and puts the shelf right. “What book were you after?” he asks, and reaches it down for me.

I couldn’t very well not buy it after that, eh?

So I read it through again, and this time…I got it. Guys, Hicksville is wonderful.

The comic it reminds me most of is Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder: Talisman, which as Sleep is for the Weak’s NotHayama will tell you anytime, is what indie comics should be like.* I find it hard to explain exactly what McNeil did with Talisman that made it so powerful, but Horrocks does the same thing in Hicksville – a map that in the drawing creates the territory.

(Speaking of maps, I’m also very curious about what Ben thinks about the recurring cartography metaphor…)

Delightful jabs at Todd MacFarlane, Rob Liefeld, and the general awfulness of the comics industry, not just in the ’90’s but pretty much as long as it’s been around. But it’s anything but a snarkfest; it’s about what we do for the love of comics. Horrocks creates this utopic little town that’s populated by people who really, really get it, where this obscure maligned misunderstood medium is the air they breathe, and it’s the most heartwarming thing ever.

If you’re not accustomed to reading comics they can be a little hard to follow at first. My initiation was probably Flight.** It took a bit of effort to parse. But the feeling was simply magic, there’s no other way to describe it. (I’d better stop now before this becomes some soppy love letter…) Hicksville comes closest to re-awakening that sense, and let’s leave it at that.

__________
* As opposed to (as Dirk Deppey said), Joe Worrymope’s Real Life Is Stinky and I Can’t Get Laid for Shit.

** I can hear Lianne Sentar and NotHayama snickering at my cliché indie snobbery already. “She started with Flight! She reads seinen like PlanetES and Dragon Head!”