Atlas (Drawn and Quarterly)

"Atlas" is the name of a comic book series by cartoonist Dylan Horrocks. It is published by Drawn & Quarterly.

Plot summary

For nearly 70 years, Emil Kopen has been Cornucopia’s most popular cartoonist—the closest thing this tiny Central European monarchy has to a poet laureate. As cartographer, soldier, cartoonist and politician, Kopen has had an impact on the 20th century history of his nation few can rival. But now the elderly Kopen has gone blind. He is forced to retire, living in isolation, until Leonard Batts arrives. Batt is a biographer from Hicksville who wants to record Kopen’s life story.

"Atlas" is that story. From Kopen’s peasant childhood in the mountains of Cornucopia, to the cartooning sweat shops of New York in the late 1930s; from the horrors of Nazi occupation, to the hope and disillusionment of postwar Europe. "Atlas" is also the story of Kopen’s journey to Hicksville and of his struggle to come to terms with his own past and his country’s future, as centuries of isolation from the rest of the world give way to economic globalisation and market-driven disorder.

Kopen still has one final part to play in determining the political and cultural destiny of Cornucopia. However, the country’s feared secret police will stop at nothing to prevent him.

"Atlas" is a long, sprawling saga of comics, cartography and magic, revisiting two landscapes introduced: the eponymous comics-obsessed town Hicksville and the mysterious Cornucopia. Along the way, it explores the nature of comics, the politics of the new millennium, the frailty of love, and the secret to mapping the sky.

External links

* [http://www.hicksville.co.nz/ Dylan Horrocks' website]