SILENCE! #28
August 28th, 2012
DO NOT FEED THIS PODCAST AFTER MIDNIGHT!
What so never feed it at all?
It’s always after midnight!
Who feeds podcasts anyway you chump?
WELL???
Hi there, and welcome to the sole justification for electricity, SILENCE no.28! And what a time you chose to stop by. It’s a veritable cornucopia of comics bull$hit! A very poorly Beast and Lactus drag themselves from their sickbeds to deliver a particularly rambling SILENCE! News, covering super-smoochies and the return of Dr Who. Then it’s a hop, skip and jump into the weekly comics, includifying Batman Inc no.3, Dan The Unharmable (with a stomach churning digression into The Walking Dead 100 in which the pair compare injuries like that scene in Jaws – no, not the one with Roy Scheider and the kid you moron!), Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom from Waid ‘n’ Samnee, the sad end of the line for Dave Sim’s Glamourpuss, AVX: Uncanny X-Men, and the 50th anniversary of Amazing Spiderman. Booyah.
There’s a SILENT question from no-one’s favourite Robin, Tim Drake, and the answers include Power Pack and Hobbes (and the Beast manages to criticise charity comics, the mean-spirited, heartless bastard) Then he takes us wading into the recesses of the Beast’s Bargain Basement with a retrospective of lost 1970′s horror publishers Skywald. Add in a recommendation to check out Joe Dante’s wonderful Trailers From Hell website for notcomics and you have a plucky edition of SILENCE! that manages to overcome adversity and become a champion in it’s field. Go SILENCE! Don’t forget to check below for some lovely Skywald images in the SILENCE Gallery….
(As always, thanks to James Stokoe for his wonderful SILENCE! banner)
August 29th, 2012 at 4:09 pm
My brother who used to read Zit comic hasn’t been reachable as he is away on holiday or something. The turd. So I’ve to been able to find out if he has any ‘Crab Shat’. I’ll keep at him, though. It is good to talk to one’s family, I suppose.
Or I could always just break into his house, and have a rummage. I’m sure he’d appreciate that.
Also, that Skywald collection sounds fucking ace (have read a wee bit of Skywald stuff in various compilations) but it’s not available from the Headpress website anymore, and is in the region of £100 on Amazon. Arghh.
August 29th, 2012 at 4:47 pm
Damnit! I want crab shat in my hands!
August 29th, 2012 at 10:53 pm
It’s awful how the big guides to the b&w horror magazines are so hard to find… even TwoMorrows’ Warren Companion is going for close to $50.00 on the low end now. The Saga of the Victims collection Beast mentions is still pretty affordable, though… that was Headpress too.
I’d also recommend Feral House’s The Weird World of Eerie Publications (intro by Stephen R. Bissette!) – if Warren was the respectable house on the scene, and Skywald was the outsider take — and Curtis/Marvel the opportunistic bandwagon-jumper — then Eerie Pubs was the most unrepentant garbage, cranking out the goriest, most low-cost shit, which naturally led to some strange and memorable happenings…
More and more I feel the b&w horror magazine scene is one of the big zones of rediscovery today… especially with all those Spanish Alberto Breccia devotees working at styles almost totally divorced from anything popular in the English language! The Beast is right that these comics are ill-remembered, but they were a counter-mainstream, one that ‘lost’ the battle of becoming pop history, without appealing enough to the aesthetes of the time…
August 30th, 2012 at 12:13 am
There’s something wonderfully free about the Skywald stuff. For every flaunting of basic storytelling, there’s some genuinely experimental techniques. The fact that they happen in the same story is all the more fun. When you add Hewetson’s freeform purple prose you end up with occasional rough magic…
August 30th, 2012 at 2:02 am
I’ve only read the Cloak & Dagger appearances in Power Pack, which in itself is a sad distinction on my part. Much like the Marvel Zombie who snubs DC comics as if they weren’t the same old shit, I may have missed out on some good Weezie stories because I was reading the harder stuff.
Oh, and I never saw Seduction of the Gun as an educational comic on par with the others… that is one beautiful, insane looking comic with urban dialogue assist. Please write about it.
August 30th, 2012 at 8:16 am
Didn’t that have Vince Giarrano art? He was pretty underrated really – very dynamic, energetic and loose (plus – Haywire!). No Breyfogle, but still pretty great.
I may check that one out – to the back issue bins!
August 30th, 2012 at 11:04 am
For the educational comics round-up:
Apparently prevailing opinion among idiot teenagers in the United States circa 1984: “Ellen, you dummy, don’t you know it’s better to be thrown clear of the car in an accident?”
http://blogintomystery.com/2010/09/08/buckle-up-american-honda-presents-dc-comics-supergirl/
And I probably shouldn’t tell you this for fear of reprisals but I bought the complete Calvin and Hobbes sourced through abebooks.com for $40. That deal has since…expired. It is a source of constant joy for my son and I.
August 30th, 2012 at 11:59 am
Whyioughta…
August 30th, 2012 at 9:13 pm
#24 was my jumping on point for Glamourpuss. And it dies 2 issues later. I am the comics Typhoid Illusionator :(
I also love Dan the Unharmable but just want to see him slacking about listening to the Melvins. All this story malarkey’s overrated.
August 31st, 2012 at 6:38 am
Actually, I think that when Tim Drake was asking you who your favourite sidekick was, he was sort of hoping/expecting to hear you say, ‘Why, you’re our favourite sidekick Tim!’, rather than an extended character assassination on why he’s so shit. Shame on you both, you’re worse than Russell Brand! You’ve probably traumatised the young lad for life…
The crossed / black kiss censorship comparison is interesting. I seem to remember an interview with Jacen Burrows saying the odd thing about working for an American publisher (as opposed to a European one) was that he was allowed to show as much carnage as he wanted in the strip, but drawing anyone with an erect penis was completely forbidden. [supply your own rant about how fucked up that is here]
I think Calvin and Hobbes is probably the thing I’ve reread more than anything else. One of the little things I like about it is how Watterson drops little hints Calvin’s mum probably had her own ‘imaginary’ friend when she was younger and Calvin takes far more after her than his dad…
Also, Gary, if you like the Marx Brothers, Mark Evanier, (who seems to have met everyone) has done some good essays about his time with Groucho which you can find here…
http://www.newsfromme.com/pov/col238/
August 31st, 2012 at 6:40 am
Also, if anyone needs an introduction to how wonderful Calvin and Hobbes is, here’s a good place to start
http://www.progressiveboink.com/2012/4/21/2912173/calvinhobbes
August 31st, 2012 at 7:20 am
One of the things that always tickles me is the way that Calvin’s Dad always makes up ludicrous answers to Calvin’s questions, thus increasing his son’s furtive imaginings and paranoia.
So many things to love – the strip that was done in a photorealist romance newspaper strip style, but with the characters voiced by Calvin and Susie…proto-Glamourpuss!
August 31st, 2012 at 8:29 am
Just realised I didn’t mention Scalped at all despite it being the final issue of one of my favourite comics. I am an idiot. It was good and I liked it.
August 31st, 2012 at 9:09 am
There’s always next week Lactus…
This is the strip I meant:
http://cdn1.sbnation.com/imported_assets/1025863/bill5.gif
Man, that Progressive Boink selection is spot on. This one too:
http://cdn2.sbnation.com/imported_assets/1025908/jon8_GIF.gif
Such lush formal experiments. Watterson is really one of the medium’s very best.
August 31st, 2012 at 11:46 am
Watterson’s an amazing cartoonist, one of the few ‘daily comics’ people that can make me laugh just with his immense drawing skill. Some of the expressions are amazing, like the way Calvin’s face gets all liney and crumpled when he’s angry or scheming, for instance.
I’d also recommend that tenth anniversary Calvin and Hobbes book,as mentioned in the podcast – there’s some good stuff about syndication and the comics business in there, as well as just interesting anecdotes.
I think my favourite strips are maybe the Racoon story that’s mentioned at Progressive Boink (so sad and earnest without being cloying), and I also never fail to laugh at the one where Calvin gets Hobbes to draw his hair back on with a yellow marker pen.
September 1st, 2012 at 6:28 pm
Totally agree about the Racoon strip. Also, I had some friends whose young son died unexpectedly a few years ago; they used that strip about the dead bird in the funeral service and all the visitors mentioned how much it helped them come to terms with the tragedy.
Also while we’re doing the Watterson Love-In, I also like how it tackles issues of belief in God (via, for instance Santa Claus) in a sensitive way that’s probably set far more people on the road towards atheism than a strident, divisive self-publicists like Richard Dawkins will ever acheive…
September 2nd, 2012 at 8:52 pm
I can highly recommend the 2011 documentary, ‘Corman’s World’ to any listeners who enjoy the Trailers From Hell website, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185371/
Perhaps it’s already been discussed and recommended on the Mindless Ones blog; if not, get thee to an internet retailer of your choice, where it should be cheaply available. It’s a fun romp through the great man’s career and oeuvre, albiet an hagiography.