Artist August: Faith Erin Hicks [Art Feature]

Oddly enough, the first thing that made me aware of graphic novelist Faith Erin Hicks was a Wolverine comic.

It’s not because she’s a frequent contributor to superhero comics, but somehow several years ago I had come across a link to this Wolverine short Marvel solicited her to create, which depicted the ol’ Canucklehead going grocery shopping after the kids at the X-Mansion ate all of his precious Canadian eggs. I was instantly in love with her work.

From there, I started following her work, and on books like “Friends with Boys“, “Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong” and the Eisner winning “The Adventure of Superhero Girl”, Hicks made me realize what an absolutely phenomenal cartoonist she really is. Her art is some of the most expressive, enticing work around, and she has an incredible gift of always making me feel what her characters do through turns of the mouth here and widening of the eyes there. She’s a gifted storyteller, acting as a brilliant guide through each comic tale she tells, and someone who can properly convey both the energy of a robot-on-robot demolition derby and the weight one teen feels because of his parents fractured relationship. There’s a real emotional truth she nails with her art, and quite often most of all, the emotion she’s hitting us with is a by-product of fun we’re having reading her work.

Hicks is a tremendously busy cartoonist, with both a two book collaboration with Rainbow Rowell approaching and, more excitingly (for me, at least), a trilogy of books in a series called “The Nameless City” by herself that has been likened to “Bone”. You know, only one of the greatest comics ever. Hicks is – in my opinion – one of today’s greatest cartoonists, and one of the best things about that is this: the best is yet to come.

Check out some of her art below to get a look at what makes her so fantastic, but if you really want a sense of that, pick up one of her books. You won’t be sorry.