Mindless Ones

As you might have gathered if you’ve been looking at the site over the past couple of days, 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 our handmade dreams for the purest product of the imagination we know of – your money.

Dan White won’t be with us at tables B3-4 this year. You see, the artist formerly known as The Beast Must Die is a real boy now. Oni press published Cindy and Biscuit last year, and since then he’s been a true fancy man, with his own fancy pants, and trousers too. If he takes a break from swigging Dom Pérignon at all this weekend, our good friend will be sitting… all the way over at table B2, DSTLRY Hall.

Despite the fact that he’s sitting one table away from us, and is therefore our mortal enemy, Dan is one of the best cartoonists around. Cindy and Biscuit: We Love Trouble showcases the range of skills Dan has built up over the years. As an action cartoonist, his compositions are genuinely propulsive. As a horror artist, his comics have reliably made me feel unexpectedly vulnerable in my own home. And as a storyteller, Dan can make you laugh just by the way he draws Biscuit’s cute dog face, or make you feel a world of unseen hurt with a couple of stray lines.

In addition to his Cindy and Biscuit wares, Dan will also be selling his new collection of Freaky Deakies, which showcases his lovingly coloured late night doodles, a real testament to both his raw visual imagination and his carefully honed craft.

Rounding out Dan’s offerings way up there in the giddy heights of table B2 is a collection of his single page Insomnia comics.

Like Terminus, Insomnia first ran on Mindless Ones dot com way back in the day. Like that comic, it’s a real masterclass in precision, but where Terminus was drawn in the playful, unsettling style that Dan would fully develop in Cindy and Biscuit, Insomnia made use of a series of painterly effects to get across is haunted absurdity. I can’t wait to see how this print edition looks, and if you’ve never read these strips before, I fully recommend that you give them a try.

In a heartwarming display of brotherhood, Dan will be putting his bucket of fizz down and putting his The Beast Must Die mask back on for the SILENCE! to Astonish panel at 2pm on Saturday 16th November in Panel Room 2.

The Beast will be joined in this endeavour by his trusty co-hosts, Gary Lactus and “Affronted” 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.

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.