Back when Pickle was being put out on a regular basis, it was my favorite comic. I had a lot of “favorites”, I guess, but none of them would get me running to the comic store like if I knew there was another issue of Pickle there waiting for me. Hicksville collects his major running storyline from that comic and gives it something that it didn’t have before: a sense of coherency. It was always great, don’t get me wrong, but it came out too infrequently for me to really get everything that was happening. And to think that I almost didn’t get this collected edition on the reasoning that I already had all the comics… This is the story of the fictional town of Hicksville. A town where everybody knows comic history, where the old legends of the field are respected and revered, where all the things that weren’t allowed to be published because of politics or finances are lovingly preserved. Good luck finding anybody who has read this book and who loves comics who wouldn’t like to live in that town. Listen, in my mind, there are three books that everybody who likes comics has to read, no questions asked: Maus, Stuck Rubber Baby, and Hicksville. David Boring might make it, same with Jimmy Corrigan. Give me another couple of years of having them around before I say for sure. The Alan Moore and Frank Miller stuff is essential too, if you have any loyalty and/or love left for the superhero genre. But for the average Joe who still reads anything at all, the three books I mentioned are essential. By the way, he also apparently still has a bundle of mini comics left from back in the day. Go buy them.
