I drew these four because they were already in the room. I did not sit down to invent a universe. I sat down to mess with people I actually know, unstick a blank page, and laugh at versions of my own life that used to run the place.

Dave is my dad. Not the name, the face. He was losing his hair and sensitive about it, so I took the hair and made the rest worse on purpose. The pervert streak is the extra twist. It is how I show love and how I get even at the same time. He looks enough like the drawing that the joke lands without a caption.

Richard came first. When I cannot get into a creative state I draw phallic things until the overthinking dies. That first shape is still in him if you look at the structure. He is the playful, unfiltered side of the work. The part that starts crude and somehow becomes a character with a bow tie and a job.

Vicki is both of my ex-wives compressed into one person. They were both insane in their own way. One of them stabbed me with scissors. That is why she is holding them. The art is cheaper than therapy and it lets me keep the story without having to keep the relationship.

Meatball is an older me. Heavy drinker, always in some shit, always talking other people into coming along, always finding a way out. Persuasive in the worst and most useful direction. He is on a shorter leash now. Most days.

That is the real origin. Prixville is just what happened when those four refused to stay on the sketchbook.

Prixville is the town you find when the map ends and nobody bothers to put up a new sign. It is held together by four originals who never quite grew out of the versions of themselves that got them there. They are not heroes. They are the reason the place still has a pulse.