ARC FESTIVAL 2026! New issues of Fraser Geesin and Laurie Rowan’s Pricks have been one of the highlights of the debut releases at Thought Bubble over the last few years. While the fifth issue of Pricks wasn’t ready quite in time for our TB Month last year that just means we can comfortably slot it into our ARC Festival coverage for 2026. This is one of the finest and funniest satires you will read in comics, made all the more relevant for its brutal swipes at the most deserving of targets.
Like many ongoing narratives you get to the stage with something like Pricks where it becomes extremely difficult to summarise plot developments without ruining the reading experience for newcomers who, after all, may wish to pick up all issues to date on the strength of what they see here. At its heart Pricks uses brilliant absurdism in a roasting of the kind of misogyny that surrounds us and permeates every level of our world. But that seems hardly sufficient as a description of its rapid procession of clever takedowns and ever more imaginative digs at the very worst corners of society.
The lives of main characters Roger and Darren – the two mediocre, middle-aged, white men the series focusses on – continue to be impacted by the twists and turns of the previous issue. Roger’s involvement with the Worthing Successful Businessmen’s Men’s Club for Men has been one of the comedic highlights of the series so far but this time around he’s about to make a life-changing decision based on a four and a half minute feature film, with dramatically drastic consequences. While Darren, recently horribly mutated by gammon radiation from the Willy Wonka of abattoirs Mr. Guildbourne’s local factory, finds his life continuing to collapse around him.
Other highlights herein include the move for the town of Worthing to leave the UK (“Wexit”), more spoofing of social media influencing with character Richard Excitement, and that aforementioned movie for those with the briefest of attentions spans, Baddie Getters XIV: Lethal Gettening. Visually Pricks #5 is a strong mix of the utterly (but appropriately) grotesque and some quite sublime comic timing.
As ever, Pricks is the tasty satirical treat it is through a recipe that blends the ingredients of slapstick violence, clever wordplay, a mouthwatering sense of the ridiculous, and a delight in being as cruel to its awful central characters as possible. Long may that continue.
Fraser Geesin & Laurie Rowan • Self-published, £5.00
Review by Andy Oliver
Fraser Geesin and the Mindless Ones will be at ARC Festival comics fair on July 11th-12th. For the full details on everything ARC has to offer check out their website here.
Poster by Lando
