Mindless Ones

If you’re near Harrogate this weekend and fancy talking into our faces or buying our comics, come visit us at Thought Bubble comics convention, tables B30-31, 2000AD!

Big massive genius Gary Lactus will be there with the latest issue of Pricks, the comic that’s come closest to capturing the feel of this rotten moment we find ourselves in. As for how it gets this tactile sensation across to the reader, well, you’ll have find that one out for yourself.

Mister Attack and Tam Rolland are debuting Reliable Witness this weekend. Taking Glasgow’s mythology as its starting point, this is a modern horror story in the style of Delano’s Hellblazer – just remember, you heard about it here first!

Handsome Dan Cox will be flogging his Doom Patrol zine, collecting work previously seen on the Mindless Ones newsletter (subscribe today!). Every issue comes with an individually collaged cover, because of fucking course it does.

Hench legend Paul Jon Milne is back with Suture, sure to be one of the year’s most powerful comics.

Last but not least, fancy pants author The Beast Must Die will be sat beside us at his own table, B29, 2000AD Hall. The Beast will be selling copies of the first two volumes of Cindy and Biscuit, alongside Secret Oranges, a collection of his early works.

The Beast Must Die will also have copies of the first issue of John Riordan’s William Blake biography Los at his table, because sometimes brilliance needs company.

If you’re about today, Saturday 15th November, Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die will be hosting the SILENCE! to Astonish panel with Affable Al Kennedy at 1.45 in Panel Room 1 – Queen’s Suite.

As the blurb above says, this year’s show will feature the dream lineup of Al Ewing, John Allison, Kieron Gillen and Megan Huang as guests – 18+ only, in case someone does a swear.

In a startling turn of events, the Mindless Ones will be at Thought Bubble 2024 in Harrogate this weekend. We’ll be at tables B3-4 in DSTLRY Hall on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th November, trading comics for hard cash and pre-chewed vowels.

It wouldn’t be a Mindless meet-up without big massive genius Gary Lactus aka Fraser Geesin in the mix, so we’re all delighted to know that we’ll be able to look upon the face of bad backs this weekend. This time out Fraser will be debuting the latest issue of Pricks, his ongoing collaboration with Laurie Rowan.

Here’s a Mindless micro-review of the latest issue, just to get yr receptors tingling:

Ever feel everything closing in as you flop about in next door’s bins trying to find a new accessory? Ever wonder what’s happened to your brand, and how you were convinced to have it burned into your flesh in the first place? Ever find yourself not mad but laughing, actually? If so, congratulations, Pricks #4 is the comic for you! If not, amazing, Pricks #4 has experienced all those things so you don’t have to! 

The previous three issues of Fraser Geesin and Laurie Rowan’s Pricks established a tone and a set of characters, none of them particularly stable. Just when you think you’ve got a grip on what’s going on with Darren – hunched in a slum property, dressed in only a rubber glove for warmth – Pricks finds a new shape to squeeze him into. This is high, horrible absurdity that will appeal to fans of Michael Kupperman and Steve Aylett, made all the more potent by the way Geesin’s art grounds even the book’s wildest gags in the everyday.

Pricks looks and smells every bit as routinely abhorrent as the modern world. What a miracle, then, that it’s also the funniest comic of the year.

Alongside all four issues of Pricks, Fraser will be selling the following hand crafted wonders this weekend: his ace autobio comic The Cleaner; Ikea-themed anthology Komisk; prints depicting Ikea Products From Hell; his collaboration with big pimpin’ Andre Whickey, Tales From 500 Songs; the Pocket Chillers Speckle and Ash and Jeff (the latter with Dan Cox); and Journey To The Surface of the Earth issues #1-2.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Fraser will be stripping off his civilian identity and going full Gary Lactus at the SILENCE! to Astonish panel at 2pm on Saturday 16th November in Panel Room 2.

Goodie Lactus will be joined in this endeavour by his trusty co-hosts, The Beast Must Die and “Affable” Al Kennedy, and by special guests Chrissy Williams, Ram V, David Brothers and Stephanie Phillips. Expect odd questions, inexplicable challenges, and totally unexpected and double plus special guests in this, the ninth occurrence of comicdom’s most pointless and shambolic panel show.