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Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen book cover
Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen
2014
First Published
3.74
Average Rating
228
Number of Pages
Acclaimed cartoonist Dylan Horrocks returns with a long-awaited new graphic novel, the first since his perennial classic, 1998 s Hicksville. Cartoonist Sam Zabel hasn t drawn a comic in years. Stuck in a nightmare of creative block and despair, Sam spends his days writing superhero stories for a large American comics publisher and staring at a blank piece of paper, unable to draw a single line. Then one day he finds a mysterious old comic book set on Mars and is suddenly thrown headlong into a wild, fantastic journey through centuries of comics, stories, and imaginary worlds. Accompanied by a young webcomic creator named Alice and an enigmatic schoolgirl with rocket boots and a bag full of comics, Sam goes in search of the Magic Pen, encountering sex-crazed aliens, medieval monks, pirates, pixies and of course cartoonists. Funny, erotic, and thoughtful, Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen explores the pleasures, dangers, and moral consequences of fantasy."
Avg Rating
3.74
Number of Ratings
908
5 STARS
23%
4 STARS
40%
3 STARS
27%
2 STARS
8%
1 STARS
2%
goodreads

Author

Dylan Horrocks
Dylan Horrocks
Author · 9 books

Horrocks has been involved in the New Zealand comic scene since the mid 1980s, when he co-founded Razor with Cornelius Stone and had his work published in the University of Auckland student magazine Craccum. Later in the decade he began to get international recognition, having work published by Australia's Fox Comics and the American Fantagraphics Books. He then moved to the United Kingdom where he self-published several mini-comics and co-founded Le Roquet, a comics annual. Upon returning to New Zealand in the mid 1990s, Horrocks had a half-page strip called 'Milo's Week' in the current affairs magazine New Zealand Listener from 1995 to 1997. He also produced Pickle, published by Black Eye Comics, in which the 'Hicksville' story originally appeared. Hicksville was published in book form in 1998, achieving considerable critical success. French, Spanish and Italian editions have since been published. In the last decade Horrocks has written and drawn a wide range of projects including scripts for Vertigo's Hunter: The Age of Magic and the Batgirl series, and Atlas, published by Drawn and Quarterly. Horrocks' work has been displayed at the Auckland Art Gallery and Wellington's City Gallery. In 2002 Hicksville won an Eisner Award for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition, and the same year Atlas was nominated for the Harvey Award for Best Single Issue or Story in 2002. In 2006 he was appointed University of Auckland/Creative New Zealand Literary Fellow.[1] In an interview with Comics Bulletin, Horrocks claimed that his first words were 'Donald Duck'.

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