Hickory #1 (Quality Comics, October 1949) is a Golden Age hillbilly humor comic built around its title character, a good-natured backwoods rube named Hickory, and his father, Paw. The debut issue serves up rural gag comedy in heavy hillbilly dialect — barn-painting mix-ups, misunderstood mountain slang, and country-bumpkin scrapes — alongside a supporting cast including Amy Cornell (also styled Annie Oakley Cornell), the first appearance of Lank Laramie, the horse Shotgun, and Mr. Topps. The stories were penciled and inked by Harry Sahle, who signed his art.

Published by Everett M. "Busy" Arnold's Quality Comics under the copyright of Comic Favorites, Inc., Hickory rode the postwar popularity of hillbilly comedy — a strain of American humor then flourishing across comics, radio, and film (from Li'l Abner to Ma and Pa Kettle). Quality spun the character out into his own bi-monthly title after humor features had proven their newsstand value, and the book ran a short six issues before folding in 1950. When DC Comics acquired Quality in 1956, the Hickory property passed into DC's library.

Today the comic is a modest but telling artifact of a once-dominant humor subgenre that has largely vanished from mainstream comics, and of Quality Comics' late-1940s diversification beyond superheroes. It also preserves signed work by Harry Sahle, a prolific Golden Age cartoonist. As a likely public-domain title, Hickory #1 offers researchers an accessible look at the rural-comedy conventions — and the dated regional caricature — of mid-century American funnybooks.