Dirty Frank (comics)

Dirty Frank is a fictional character created by Rob Williams for the 2000 AD comic strip Low Life. Dirty Frank is an undercover Wally Squad Judge in Mega-City One who has a tendency for ignoring protocol. He often refers to himself using third person.

Publication history
Creator Rob Williams talking about the inspiration behind the character:

Dirty Frank was visually drawn to be a dead ringer for Alan Moore, which was down to Henry - a genius' choice, that. Frank’s tendency for speaking in the third person in a self-aggrandising manner came from watching Premiership footballers, particularly Tony Adams, being interviewed. It always seemed slightly mad to me.

The character first appeared in 2000 AD #1389 (May 12, 2004), and then in issue #1392, drawn by Henry Flint. Dirty Frank was first featured in the story "Rock and a Hard Place", drawn by Simon Coleby. Coleby fleshed out the character and has discussed his creative choices:

We share a love of ludicrously overwrought, heavy metal too, which certainly surfaced in one of the stories we created. If I recall correctly it was a chat about Rammstein which lead to the decision that Dirty Frank, at his most frenzied moment of metal mayhem, would probably start screaming in German…

...

Frank is outwardly insane, but I always feel that there is a sternly controlled, analytical core to the character. .. During my work on Lowlife I particularly enjoyed working with Frank as it's impossible to push the character too far, and I found that I became comfortable drawing him very quickly. I think that his mannerisms and expressions developed and grew as I continued to draw him. I have no idea why it seemed right to add those "I am 2", children's birthday badges to his coat, for example, but that kind of thing just fell into place as his personality developed on the page.”

Subsequently, Dirty Frank became the lead character in the Low Life series. After Simon Coleby left to work on The Authority, D'Israeli became the character's main artist. D'Israeli discussed approaching the character:

There's the question of Dirty Frank of course; in some ways he's a more complex character to interpret (he has more than one facial expression for a start), but after some playing around I decided to stick pretty closely to Simon Coleby's version. There were two good reasons for this; first, Simon's really made the character his own, and I wanted the readership to be drawn straight into Low Life: creation without spending the first couple of episodes adjusting to a new version of the character. Second, all my attempts to change the look of Frank ended up looking like degenerate versions of Ian Culbard.

Appearances

 * Low Life:
 * Mega-City Undercover (160 pages, Rebellion, January 2008, ISBN 1-905437-52-8) collects:
 * "Paranoia" (with Henry Flint, in 2000 AD #1387–1396, 2004)
 * "Rock and a Hard Place" (with Simon Coleby, in 2000 AD #1425–1428, 2005)
 * "He's Making a List..." (with Simon Coleby, in 2000 AD Prog 2006, 2005)
 * "Baby Talk" (with Simon Coleby, in 2000 AD #1521–1524, 2007)
 * Mega-City Undercover volume 2 (144 pages, Rebellion, April 2012, ISBN 1781080410) collects:
 * "Creation" (with D'Israeli, in 2000 AD #1624–1631, 2009)
 * "Hostile Takeover" (with D'Israeli, in 2000 AD #1700–1709, 2010)
 * As Yet Uncollected:
 * "The Deal" (art by D'Israeli, in 2000 AD #1750–1761, 2011)
 * "Saudade" (art by D'Israeli, in 2000 AD #1805–ongoing, 2012)