SILENCE! #19
June 24th, 2012
I’LL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND! I’LL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Ha ha! Hello SILENCERS! Under the brand spanking new SILENCE! banner from celebrity orc-peddlar James Stokoe, you will find the latest hot shot comics rot from notorious 4-colour sex pests The Beast Must Die and Gary Lactus. Quake, then, frail ones at SILENCE! no.19…special early morning edition.
A slightly frazzled and sleepy pair take on the release of the recent Dredd trailer for SILENCE! news, then the coffee starts kicking in and they barrel into some full-blooded discussion of comics, including 2009 the third volume of Alan Moore and Kev O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century series. Also spoken of: Saga no. 4, Hellblazer (Biz + werewolves), Secret history of DB Cooper no. 4, Journey Into Mystery, AVX something or other, and Daredevil. The Beast brings back ‘You Should’ve Known Better’ with his take on Tony Daniels’ Detective Comics and then things peeter out as an over-excited Lactus realises he got up way too early.
It’s an hour and ten minutes of comics shpoonk, and it comes in a handy ear-pill sized format. So jump up, jump up and get down with the comics podcast that the world believes might change everything for everyone….SILENCE!
June 25th, 2012 at 4:30 am
what a delicious delight to see silence up already. thanks uncle gary & mommy beast for all the love you spritz upon your mindless minions. happy days.
June 25th, 2012 at 11:36 am
Amy has been fleshing out the contemporary fashion argument in our LoEG thoughts post. My thinking on that score is twofold. Firstly it helps with verisimilitude, although I totally take TMBD’s point that the League isn’t our world so slack should be cut. Secondly I enjoy the creativity of fashion and think that it helps to point in the direction of the social contexts that form it. Fashion, presented with thought, can add real depth to the depiction of any culture. A point that wasn’t lost on Moore and O’Neill in 1969.
June 25th, 2012 at 10:26 pm
Really nice stuff. Re: the appearance of the Anti-christ’s nemesis in Century: 2009, as you said an amazing surprise to pull out of the hat and beautifully referencing the far more strange and powerful original from the books than the later movie. The line about being “companion to the women who paste up the stars” is part of one of the stories that also features a woman ‘older than the earth’ who can break off her fingers (they grow back instantly of course) and hand them out to the children as sticks of barley sugar…wonderful old-fashioned creepiness that probably wouldn’t get allowed now.
June 25th, 2012 at 10:31 pm
I haven’t read LoEG 2009 yet (apparently it’ll take a couple more days for the electrons to cross the Atlantic and hit ComiXology, I suppose), but thanks for this podcast fellas. I run hot and cold on Moore, and I was a bit concerned about how I’d take 2009, but you guys sort of… eased those fears some? I still need to check it out to see if I’m open to Moore’s feelings on modern culture (I think he’s said in interviews that he’s going to be “unkind”), but while listening to your discussion I felt a little gear tick over in my head, shifting me from “I’m curious, but expecting a trainwreck” to “I’m curious, this might be pretty good.”
Really looking forward to your written thoughts, too. That last round of annocommentations was tremendous and completely changed what I thought of 1969. Hands down best reading on LoEG thus far.
June 25th, 2012 at 10:37 pm
Thanks, David. We won’t be replying to LoEG thoughts here because….
Our first post goes up tomorrow.
June 25th, 2012 at 10:38 pm
The first part will be up tomorrow, David.
It’s a really good comic.
June 25th, 2012 at 10:40 pm
TWINS!
June 26th, 2012 at 1:03 am
You know you’ve read a lot of comics when you start dreaming about them– I’ve spent an awful lot of time looking for a Barrw Windsor-Smith drawn Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic that I wasn’t sure I’d dreamt or not, I just remembered it looking brilliant.
June 26th, 2012 at 1:06 am
no time to listen just yet, but serious and heartfelt congratulations on that banner. it is silence-worthy.
June 26th, 2012 at 7:10 am
It is rad isn’t it? I don’t regret the face-tattoo I got done of it one bit.
June 26th, 2012 at 10:13 am
Or one Gary is getting in advance of his wedding. Lucky Lady Lactus!
June 28th, 2012 at 5:16 pm
I do also worry that the Dredd trailer doesn’t seem to show the Big Meg as I’d like it (the closest I’ve seen to that is still Fifth Element, I reckon), but I felt all shoogly inside when Karl Urban said his “I am the law”, and he looks pretty Ezquerra-y to me.
I’m much more excited about this film that I expected to be, quite frankly.
PS Mean Machine and the ABC Warrior in the Stallone Dredd were fucking great. Shame the actual film itself was so amazingly dull, like so many 10PM-on-channel-5 action films.
PPS I really like the actual ‘Silence!’ logo by Stokoe, quite apart from the cool fried-egg/exploding eye fun. You lucky people, with your new banner!
June 28th, 2012 at 6:02 pm
I wish I was excited by Dredd, but, as the man say, it just looks like The Raid. The ‘I am the law’ thing thrills for sure, but it’s pure momentism, isn’t it?
June 28th, 2012 at 6:14 pm
It is, yeah, but it’s enough to entice me as I am weak and trusting. I have enough vague faith that it won’t just be a series of generic action sequences bookended by Dredd-verse ‘signifiers’ to pacify dweebs like me.
Oddly, I’ve yet to actually see a trailer for The Raid (let alone the film itself). If I go and watch the trailer now on Youtube, should I expect my Dredd enthusiasm to diminish significantly? Only one way to find out!
June 28th, 2012 at 6:16 pm
Hmmm, well, if anything, watching the trailer for The Raid has made me want to see The Raid quite a lot.
June 29th, 2012 at 12:04 pm
The Raid trailer does a good job of getting you excited for the film without giving away nearly any of the really insane bits.
June 29th, 2012 at 11:37 pm
Yeah, there is a bit of a silver lining to Tony Daniel’s Batman stuff. You do get the sense that he’s having a blast while working within his comfort zone (i.e., not trying to be Grant Morrison or reproduce R.I.P.). I haven’t read any of his Detective stuff, but when he was on Batman I’d dip in to read a few issues here and there. Sometimes it was mindnumbingly bad or boring; other times it was quite fun for what it was. He’s very inconsistent as a writer, and you rarely get the sense that he’s learning a lot about craft, because he seems to relapse into bad habits (two steps forward, then two steps back). But when people lambaste his work as totally awful, I always have to say “Well, there’re some redeeming qualities to it.” And it is just kind of cool to see an artist/writer having fun and trying to become a good overall creator.
I never dream about reading imaginary comics, but I often dream about hunting for back issues in comic shop bins.
Hope the wedding goes off without any super-villains crashing it. You are due.
July 2nd, 2012 at 12:44 pm
John Wagner was saying at Glasgow Comic Con that there’s nothing else in the Dredd film that’s as jarring and un-Big Meg as the bit with modern day cars that’s in the trailer, and was generally positive about the whole thing? Also, mentioning it’s a bit like the Raid, he says it’s different as it’s set in the future. Which made me laugh.
I like that John Wagner.
July 2nd, 2012 at 3:58 pm
John Wagner rang our hotline to say that he likes you back!
July 2nd, 2012 at 4:04 pm
What a nice man!
July 2nd, 2012 at 4:15 pm
I know, it’s fucking nuts!