SILENCE! #149
July 13th, 2015
YOU’RE A THIEF WITH STYLE
No blurb here people. Nothing to see. That chalky outline you see there? That’s where a blurb used to be. Good blurb. An honest blurb. Till some punk just walked up to it, blew it away. Now this town got one less blurb in it, and ain’t it just that little bit colder for it?
<ITEM> Well well well. Well. Well? Good, then let’s bear down for midterms with SILENCE!, the podcast that walks like a monkey and smells like one too. Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die skirt the very outskirts of professionalism in the way that only they can.
<ITEM> Sponsorshibboleth, SILENCE! News reports on the hott comixzz nuce from SDCC, The Beast Must Die talks the Cindy & Biscuit entry at TV Tropes, and we unveil the shambolic SILENCE! Patreon!
<ITEM> Open our hearts gentle people, sing like angels and join us in The Reviewniverse, for a vigorous bout of comics fisticuffs. The frankly bafflingly weird Bloodstrike leads the pack, after the boys fail to review Providence. Then it’s Archie, Omega Men, Batman, Cheer Up, Constantine, Section 8, Starfire, Injection, Strange Fruit and 2000AD
Click to download SILENCE!#149
Contact us:
@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie
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This edition of SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the greatest comics shop on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton. It’s also sponsored the greatest comics shop on the planet GOSH! Comics of London.
July 15th, 2015 at 9:47 am
Moustache Batman is good.
All is well.
COMICS
Liefeld, I do like looking at his early X-Force stuff with the flat colouring as it makes me laugh and smile and has a certain charm. Since he discovered computo-colouring, though, it’s been impossible to look at, unsympathetic over-rendering attempting to add solidity and ‘realism’.
He’s an odd one, though. He’s been doing comics for years now and his style hasn’t evolved or improved in any way whatsoever.
Has anyone read the Mark Millar Youngblood with Liefeld art? Hateful turd of a comic. Got it in a bargain bin once.
PROVIDENCE: I look forward to a Full Review that explains to me why issue 2 is good, as I just thought it was Moore doing that “I am explaining connections between books, that I have noticed” thing, lecturing away with very little point in it being a comic. A feeling only compounded by the interminable dreck of the ‘backmatter’ which seems to just laboriously spell out themes and plot points already explicit in the story itself.
As I say, though, I am willing to reconsider opinions! I will have to give it a reread, and am open to change. I am a citizen of the world.
July 15th, 2015 at 6:57 pm
I’ve been on vacation in the mountains and without need of my most desperate forms of escape for the last few weeks. A stack of reading awaits. I’ve mostly been looking at stuff on the iPad, but only when I’ve been able to tear it away from the toddler. I caught up on Saga, which I had abandoned a couple issues in, and I must say that I still agree with Bobsy, though Fiona Staples is clearly one of the best in the biz. It feeds an itch, I guess. I’m also reading JLI from the beginning, which has been a treat. I feel like I can pick up any major title from DC in the 70s and 80s and have a dece time.
I got that French actioner Lastman from the library on a number of recs, but I don’t have much to say about it. Charming and light, with intimations of a richness. I bet kids love it. I just don’t care as much about these narrative structures built around tournaments/training/etc. I mean, why not just go back and rewatch 36 Chambers? Or even Bloodsport. This seems like a Hunger Gamesed version of better things, tho it is pleasing that the young protagonist has no apparent gifts. I hope he remains useless and teaches forms of value that don’t involve having super-special hero messiah talents. I do like the loose lines, but I have a hard time appreciating it beyond a kind of vulgar formalist frisson.
Returned from the local comics shoppe with Island, Lone Sloane, Godzilla in Hell, and the latest Crossed+100, all of which I’m eager to get around to soon. Astronauts in Trouble leapt of the shelf at me. I never read The Walking Dead, but I like the starkness of this B&W. Thumbed through the 40 buck hardcover of the earlier Stokoe Godzilla comic to find the Silence refs. Such a beautiful thing to happen.
Re: Last week’s discussion of The Amateurs: Stechschulte is one of my favourites. His most recent, Generous Bosom, is a slower burn, more restrained, but very worthwhile. Retains that jarring off-kilterness, the disquieting tone. He also sells lovely watercolours on his tumblr. I bought this one last year:
http://crepusculararchives.tumblr.com/post/108200692989/the-grateful-dead-watercolor-5-x-7-c-2014
It’s hanging in our dining room.
In other news, wife and I are hopping the pond to Bath next week. She’s presenting work at the Defoe Society, and I’ll be wandering the streets for a few days. Any comic shops I should seek out? Other recs while I’m in town?
We’ll be in London quickly, on our way to Strawberry Hill, so I might swing up Gosh again as well. Still haven’t picked up the Cindy & Biscuit collection….
July 16th, 2015 at 8:46 pm
I actually like Archie for the unchanging iconic thing that it is and think new takes on it work best when they are like Archie vs Predator and treat that as a given. There is something strange and kind of cool though about how they have been trying to reinvigorate the franchise for decades now (it seems) and it makes no difference because the Digests and Double Digests are ubiquitous and stomp out anything else they do. It is a bit fascinating why they bother. In a sense Marvel & DC are the same way with their big characters, always trying to change them or kill them off and they just can’t make anything stick against these colossal creations.
July 17th, 2015 at 10:12 am
RUB THE BLOOD! TBMD made that Bloodstrike comic sound amazing! Maybe Liefeld is so far ahead of the game, he’s being meta-ironic about meta. Or maybe the baby man is just still stuck in 1991. RUB THE JUNK! The most annoying thing about Liefeld is that he seems to be a very nice guy. He’s super enthusiastic about everything, and it would be tough meeting him in real life, he’d be really friendly, and it would get to the point where you felt obliged to like his stuff.
FUCKING RUB IT, BITCHYPOO!
July 17th, 2015 at 7:34 pm
TBMD reading out the narration in Bloodstrike made me think of that one Calvin & Hobbes strip sending up ultraviolent 90s superhero comics (complete with Watterson doing a decent pastiche of Jim Lee Image art): “I could FEEL my spine SHATTER. It HURT. A LOT.”
July 19th, 2015 at 5:45 pm
If you enjoy Shropshire’s Own Charlie Adlard on AiT, then I can also recommend Codeflesh, the grounded bail bonds-’em-up indy supercomic he did with Joe Casey.
I haven’t read many comics this week. Weird thing about this week’s Beano was how it shoehorns Essential Dog Safety Information into a strip about Dennis’ callous disregard for his mother’s liberty. Also, Minnie’s Dad gets outed.
//\OO/\\
July 19th, 2015 at 7:36 pm
The only nice thing I have to say about Archie is that it inspired the cast of Peter Bagge’s Hate which is probably my favourite ever comic.
Also, in case you were wondering, the opposite of ‘Baby Bear’s Porridge’ is apparently ‘Strawberry and Rhubarb pie’, in comic terms this would probably be something written by Brian Azzerello and drawn by Greg Land.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/16/bear-pies-colorado-bakery
July 19th, 2015 at 10:10 pm
Oh god, that horrible ‘realistic’ Azzarello dialogue coming from the mouths of the horrible ‘realistic’ Greg Land pictures.
Strawberry and rhubarb pie, indeed.