Over the last few issues, you may have noticed Loud Mouth Larry and Dismissive Dan or other comic characters which have been squeezed on to the opinion/editorial page. For those of you who frequent the tail-end of our humble publication, you’ll know that these comic strips are nothing new.
Brandon Hicks has religiously doodled a comic each week since he got here three years ago. This week, Hicks’ work has weaseled its way onto the centerspread. As his drawings grab more attention, we can’t help but wonder who is our friendly humorist?
Hicks was a journalism guy back at his Saint John high school. He was so involved that he scored a decent sized journalism scholarship, which is how he landed at STU.
“Journalism was the plan, but because of a bad grade I didn’t get into the program. Now I’m majoring in communications but I don’t really like it. Actually, I don’t even really like journalism anymore,” said Hicks.
“I don’t like stuff like news reporting because you can’t be creative. I just want to make people laugh, but not in a pretentious kind of way, you know?”
Hicks started volunteering with student publications as a means to stay creative among piles of boring homework. Having a weekly deadline seems to be doing the trick.
“I wouldn’t want to be some editorial cartoon guy, they all make the same jokes about the same political situations, it’s pretty boring. I like doing stuff that people don’t expect to see from a newspaper comic,” said Hicks.
The doodler would rather spend his time tinkering around with things like this week’s centerspread. It’s nothing too serious, but the classic characters do catch the eye for all of us who wait in grocery lines and go straight for the Archies.
“I grew up with Archie, there’s probably about 200 of the comic books stacked around my house. Plus, everyone knows Archie and it’s easy to play around with the characters,” said Hicks.
“My parody isn’t even so much about the original characters as it is about all the characters you seem to encounter at university. I just hope it makes sense and people like it.”
The longer than usual, hand-painted comic strip is oozing with at least a few hours of hard work, but Hicks says artwork has never been his main priority. He only picked up drawing in the last few years and likes to focus more on the writing side of things.
Hicks uses goofy sketches as a way to express his humour. They’re short and simple and let’s just face it, most of us head straight to the comic section before glazing over the news.
“Ideally I’d like to have my own humour column. I came close to having one, but there just wasn’t enough space to do everything I wanted,” said Hicks.
Instead of being discouraged, Hicks took publication matters into his own hands. He started his own mock newsletter called Modest News. The monthly double-sided sheet has a slew of jokes and doodles both done by Hicks who also shells out the cash for printing.
Modest News can be found at both universities or around coffee shops and other hangouts around the city.
“I like doing stuff like this and stuff like the Aquinian because they’re on a smaller scale and I can be more liberal with what I do, but someday I’d like to get into the big stuff. Something like South Park or The Simpsons.”
