I’m A Stickman, I Live With One Dimension

If there was one comic that I could, hand on heart, say was an underappreciated work of genius deserving of a wider audience, it’d be Nick Abadzis’ Hugo Tate. See? That confused look on your face? That’s how underappreciated it is; you’ve never even heard of it.

(The above, of course, doesn’t apply to those of you who have heard of it; you were the ones who, instead of a confused look, read those two words and thought, Yes, that’s a great choice. Well done, you.)

Tate was one of the many strips that ran in Deadline, now two decades old (Jesus Christ!) and still not outgrown the title of “The magazine that gave the world Tank Girl.” Outshone at the time by Jamie Hewlett and Wired World’s Philip Bond – And, as an aside, why is there still no Wired World collection? Yes, it’d be dated, but that’d be half the fun (The other half would be reliving my teenage crush on Pippa, one of the strip’s two leads, but that’s another post) – Abadzis’ strip benefited from the freedom that came from the relative lack of attention, managing to grow and change as Abadzis did, coming into focus in such a way that felt organic and real, unlike so many other contemporaries.

At heart, I guess, Tate is a series about people and relationships. Its title character isn’t always the lead – there are episodes without Hugo altogether, dealing with his friends and relatives – and even when he is front and center, the stories aren’t always necessarily about him; they could be a retelling of a dream, or his discovering the diary of a forgotten relative, or whatever else Abadzis wanted to write about at that particular moment. The messiness and discontinuity was a blessing, though, despite what it sounds like, in part because of the cohesiveness of Abadzis’ intent if not always his voice, and because of his skill: Every episode felt genuine, and heartfelt. Every one felt like a handwritten letter from a friend, no matter what they were feeling at the time.

The series came to a head – and, I think, an end? – with the O, America storyline, where Hugo ran away from his problems and ended up losing himself (in multiple ways) in America. It’s the only storyline to have been collected, although it’s fallen out of print a long time ago, and well worth searching eBay and second hand stores for: Imagine a cross between Kerouac, Eddie Campbell’s Alec and British kitchen sink drama, and you’re pretty close to what it’s like. In the more-than-a-decade since it finished, I’ve often looked for something similar, something that’s as hopeful and realistic and honest, with no success. It’s like a friend you’ve lost touch with, and occasionally wonder where they are and what they’re doing at that very moment, struck by a sadness that seems silly to admit to.