Josh Hicks
Josh Hicks is a cartoonist from Wales, UK. Born in 1991, he was raised in a small ex-coal-mining village and has since moved to a city that is twenty minutes away by train. He has been making comics since 2015, working with anthologies and independent publishers in the UK and self-publishing his own minicomics. His work includes Glorious Wrestling Alliance and Hotelitor. When not making comics, Josh is usually thinking about them. He also works in animation as an art director, animator and storyboard artist.
Interview
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
Comics-wise, I loved Spider-Man, Dragon Ball and Tintin as a child. Society wrongly shamed me out of reading comics in my early teenage years but I got back into it with stuff like The Invisibles, Scott Pilgrim and Ice Haven, and have only briefly looked back since.
What’s your favorite line from a book?
I somehow have no memory of any specific lines from books or comics. I’m trying to think of one now but all that’s coming to my mind’s eye are panels of Astro Boy hitting other robots in the head.
Who are your top three favorite authors or illustrators?
Taiyo Matsumoto is one of the greatest of all time. I’ve been re-reading a lot of Moebius lately. Wai Wai Pang’s Ripples remains one of the coolest British comics ever.
Why did you want to become an author or illustrator?
I’ve always loved stories and have always just defaulted to trying to make stuff to entertain myself. As a kid and a teenager it was little animations and short films (which I still do). When I first seriously tried making comics in my early twenties and properly discovered my medium it was sort of like a religious experience. A mild-to-moderate religious experience.
Do you have any advice for future authors or illustrators?
Find the creative thing you really like doing and try to reasonably structure your life to spend as much time doing that thing as is healthy and enjoyable. Work on small projects early on so that you actually get things finished. And sometimes too much advice can feel crippling, so there’s no shame in ignoring it all and just going in with reckless abandon.
