Dylan horrocks
Illustrator of the contents page and ‘Naked Grandmother’
Dylan is the author of the comic books Hicksville, Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen, and Incomplete Works. Hicksville is twelfth on Rolling Stone’s list the Fifty Best Non-Superhero Graphic Novels of all time. He has also written and drawn comics for Vertigo and DC Comics (Batgirl, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight). He does freelance illustrations for journals and books.
Dylan was born in 1966 and lives in Auckland. He is married to youth health researcher Dr Terry Fleming and they have two sons, Louis and Abe.
Dylan has been drawing cartoons and comics since he could hold a pencil. ‘My favourite things were reading a novel, watching a film, and drawing a comic.’ He filled notebooks with comics (war stories, mostly). He got cartoons into every possible school project. ‘That was the main thing. I was drawing comics all the time.’
The Horrocks family loved cartoons in all their forms. Dylan’s Dad, Roger, had thought about being a comic artist himself. He brought into the house British war comics, Asterix and Tintin, American underground comics, and the French comic magazine Pilote.
Fantasy novels were favourites in Dylan’s childhood – Lord of the Rings, The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper, the novels of Alan Garner. He also loved role-playing games – it’s where he practised world building and character portrayal. The Tintin stories by Herge have also been a big influence on Dylan’s drawing style and story worlds.