Dougie Patterson and Ivor Thompson
Created by Garth Ennis and John McCrea

Two mates from Belfast, DOUGIE PATTERSON and IVOR THOMPSON, with sweet fuck all else to do except drink and piss away their lives, decide to provide Belfast with a service it's clearly and dearly missing: they're going to be private detectives.

That's the flimsy premise for Dicks, an on-again, off-again serries of comic books by Garth Ennis and John McCrea.

Okay, so Dougie's not exactly a genius, but he's Albert Einstein compared to best mate Ivor, a none-too-bright weasel who was booted out of the U.V.F. after shooting himself in the foot. It soon becomes clear that neither has any real aptitude for detective work -- they're basically your garden-variety screw-ups. But hey, the whole detectives angle is just an excuse on creator Ennis and McCrea's part for their "heroes" to get pissed, fuck around, and get into deep shit (often literally) with various thugs, local gangsters, the British army, the ghost of Ivor's bootlegging Uncle Shuggie and the like, anyway.

And besides, no case ever gets in the way of them going down 'round the pub to hang out with fellow shallow-end-of-the gene-pool specimens like The Wanker and aspiring drug addict Spence.

Rude, crude, full of toilet humour -- and the stuff found in toilets -- it eventually becomes clear to one and all that Dougie and Ivor may never make good detectives, but they will always be dicks.

Definitely not your grand-dad's comic books, but if you're in the mood for big laughs coming from extremely low places, try this one out. With its swirling, vomit-flecked blend of toilet humour and a seething political incorrectness that has to be seen to be believed, this comic's sure to offend absolutely everyone. Even the retards who love it. Everybody purge!

Garth Ennis began his comic-writing career in 1989 with the series Troubled Souls, before moving on to the short-lived but critically acclaimed British anthology Crisis (illustrated by McCrea), which spawned a sequel, For a Few Troubles More, a broad Belfast-based farce which re-introduced two supporting characters from Troubled Souls, Dougie and Ivor, who would eventually land their own American comics series, the suitably named Dicks in 1997.

Ennis and McCrea went on to much bigger things, including such "other lowlife, socially-degenerate" comic book characters as Preacher and Hitman (both for DC's Vertigo), among others. But Dicks, for some reason, seems to be a labour of love, appearing sporadically throughout the years...

UNDER OATH

• "I never forgot Dougie and Ivor, not once, not even with all the Preachers and Hitmans and Punishers and all the other stuff I've been doing down the years. They remain my all-time favorites of the characters I've written or created-- my pride and joy, the ongoing saga of two idiots from Belfast, by two idiots from Belfast."
  -- Garth Ennis

COMICS

• FOR A FEW TROUBLES MORE
  (1990)
  Collects original Dicks story from issues #40-43 and 45-46 of Crisis.
  
  
• DICKS
  (1997, Caliber Comics)
  4 issues
  Black & white
  Written by Garth Ennis
  Art by John McCrea
  
  
• BIGGER DICKS
  (2002, Avatat Press)
  4 issues
  Black & white
  Written by Garth Ennis
  Art by John McCrea
  Reprints and expands previous mini-series.
  
  
• DICKS 2
  (2002-03, Avatar)
  4 issues
  Black & white
  Written by Garth Ennis
  Art by John McCrea
  
  
• DICKS X-MAS SPECIAL
  (2003, Avatar Press)
  One-shot
  Black & white
  Written by Garth Ennis
  Art by John McCrea
  
  
• DICKS WINTER SPECIAL
  (2005, Avatar Press)
  One-shot
  Black & white
  Written by Garth Ennis
  Art by John McCrea
  
  
• DICKS
  (2012, Avatar)
  Written by Garth Ennis
  Art by John McCrea
  The legend continues, as this new monthly series colorizes all the previous Dicks adventures, with an new series, Bigger Dicks, set to follow.

COLLECTIONS

• .DICKS: VOLUME 1...Buy this book
  (2003, Avatar)
  Collects the original four issue "Bigger Dicks" run, back-up stories & glossary.

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.