Dylan Horrocks: better to be pirated than to be forgotten

Somebody uploaded a torrent of Pickle #1-10 onto Demonoid and then Dylan Horrocks, its creator showed up to voice his approval:

A quick note of thanks to the uploader from me, Dylan Horrocks. These comics are long out of print now, and quite hard to find, and I’m thrilled to have them made more available to people – and appreciate all the trouble someone went to in scanning and packaging them.

And just to clarify: Hicksville was serialised in issues 2-10, although I made a few changes to the early chapters when it was later collected in book form. Also, the final chapter of Hicksville was going to be in issue 11, which was never published due to Black Eye shutting down (and for which I apologise!).

Issues 1-6 of Pickle also include other material that has never been collected.

If anyone wants to see what I’m up to these days, my website (where I’m serialising a new story, ‘The Magic Pen’) is here: http://hicksvillecomics.com

Thanks again – and don’t forget to seed! ;)

Leaving questions of morality aside, for the vast majority of cartoonists and writers, obscurity is a much greater danger than piracy. Dylan Horrocks obviously understands this. Having somebody who is prepared to go to the trouble to hunt down out of print comics, scan and upload them is a compliment more than it is an infringement. It means somebody cares about you work. (To be fair, I can also imagine getting pissed off if it happens to you…)

Dylan Horrocks’ Hicksville, originally serialised in Pickle was reprinted this year in a new edition. If you don’t have it yet, it’s well worth getting, a comic about comics and its history and why they are important.