THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2024! Fraser Geesin and Laurie Rowan’s Pricks, in all its multi-named and numbered incarnations, has become one of my favourite Thought Bubble print fixtures, albeit a delightfully dark one. Its caustic takedown of patriarchal intent is gleefully satisfying simply because we have all met characters like the reprobates Geesin and Rowan have populated the pages of Pricks with. The boorish anti-progressives so wrapped up in their own bloated sense of entitlement that they see anything and anybody outside of their immediate frame of reference as an existential threat.
“Porn, fags and beer are about the only things that are not woke anymore” is a glorious line from one of the many grotesques to appear in Pricks #4 (for international readers “fags” means cigarettes in this context in the UK…). It perhaps better encapsulates the attitude of the characters and the tone of the series than any attempt to summarise the sheer, unadulterated weirdness that has been going on here over the last three issues.
The gist of it is that our two awful protagonists Roger and Darren continue to experience vastly contrasting fortunes. Darren is still trapped in the squalor of his pay-as-you-go housing though his codglove attire (like a codpiece but… well… a rubber glove down there instead) has become a social media sensation and spawned dozens of copycats wearing nothing else to cover their modesty. Meanwhile Roger is still a member of the all-male bastion of the Worthing Successful Businessmen’s Men’s Club for Men but is feeling threatened by his son Roger Jr. who has made his fortune through wind farms (no “woke” ecological nonsense here of course – Junior sells the wind he generates to “sailing clubs, indoor skydiving centres and Chicago”).
Also thrown prominently into the mix this time round is Mr. Guildbourne, a kind of Willy Wonka of abbatoirs, who is happy to tour kids round his factory, or in his words his “wonderful world of meatmagination”, populated with his diminutive employees the Umpy Lumpies. It’s morbid humour that is almost hypnotically uncomfortable; a sort of festering wit that makes you feel slightly ashamed that you nonetheless revel in the absolute grossness of these characters and their world. Visually this is backed up by art that captures the rancid personalities of all concerned; like walking human boils waiting to be lanced.
This is the fourth year that a Pricks instalment has debuted at Thought Bubble and if you haven’t experienced it yet I cannot recommend picking up all four issues more highly. Some of the very best and the most cutting satire I have ever reviewed here at BF and aimed at the most deserving of targets.
Fraser Geesin & Laurie Rowan • Self-published, £5.00
Review by Andy Oliver
Mindless Ones/Fraser Geesin will be at Table B3-4 in the DSTLRY Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2024 runs from November 11th-17th with the convention weekend taking place on the 16th-17th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2024 coverage so far in one place here.
Art by Rocío Arreola Mendoza
