The First Ben Wicks Treasury

Nicholas Pashley was a bookseller and a freelance writer and editor in Toronto.

The First Ben Wicks Treasury collects, for the first time in one place, the cartoons of Cockney-turned-Torontonian Ben Wicks. Wicks, who appears daily in the Toronto Star draws topical cartoons that turn a comic eye on modern life with its attendant horrors — taxes, the government, the economy, Michael Jackson, and all the rest of it. Many of these cartoons look at contemporary Canada through the eyes of regular characters Bill and Mavis Travis. Bill is the cranky, Trudeau-hating curmudgeon of the Sunshine Home, Mavis his patient wife with a gift for the one-liner. These and other characters comment on Canadian dullness, the CBC, awards shows, Royal visits, Papal visits, Brian and Mila, elections, news anchorpersons, and the gamut of contemporary social mores, all drawn in Wicks’s primitive style. (In his introduction, Wicks recalls having spent two weeks taking night classes at an art school to prepare for his cartooning career, and admits to encountering problems drawing hands and feet.)

The question that remains is that of humour. Is Ben Wicks funny? His success indicates that a good many people would answer in the affirmative, although there are plenty of others who have seldom if ever cracked a smile at a Wicks joke. Laughter, as always, lies in the humerus of the beholder. If Ben Wicks is your sort of thing, then The First Ben Wicks Treasury is just the sort of thing you’ll like.