Thighbootman

Between 2017 and 2022 Wide Vercnocke created a whole series of vertical comic strips for the Brussels magazine Bruzz, and ‘Thighbootman’ is a selection from them. In a beautifully designed RISO-printed book we meet not just the eponymous Thighbootman but Mr Unicorn, a delirious dinosaur, a werepig, a female wrestler and countless reincarnations of the author in full covid frustration. His ‘quarantoons’ inimitably portray the emptiness and hopelessness of the covid lockdowns.

A great many of his surreal strips are inspired by cultural activities (films, concerts, plays) that are mentioned at the back of the book, but in Vercnocke’s universe they can easily stand alone. That universe is almost boundless, aside from the format of the strips. Metamorphoses and mutations have a major role to play. Vercnocke zooms in, zooms out, changes perspective, makes things stretch, grow and change. His work is unapologetically fantastical and subversive, as is his humour.