SILENCE! #59

April 22nd, 2013

 

 

IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT IN HERE? YES NANNY!!!

Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is more dangerous than ever before…because Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is tipsy, emotional and inappropriately tactile. ONLY JESTING fleshbags. Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 does not drink, has no emotions and cannot touch. Is straight edge hardcore. Yes sir.

Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 ‘likes’ this!

<ITEM> The Sponsorship Boys are here oi oi oi! Plus, yet more thank you jingles for the Friends of Silence

<ITEM> It’s the return of disgraced American newscasterisers Gary Lactenberg and Danny Beastman, and the results are somewhere west of spectacular. SILENCE! News is back and it wants your children.

<ITEM> When you get to the bottom you go back to the top of the Reviewniverse and you go for a riiiiiiiiide…Daredevil, Justice League, 2000AD, Milligan & McCarthy, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Swamp Thing, Nova, Superior Spiderman, Batwoman, Age of Ultron, Wolverine & The X-Men, Five Ghosts, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, 1963, Donald Simpson and Megaton Man.

Oh how we laughed! How we sang! How we splashed around the shallows as the baby sharks nibbled our toes and the blood turned the surf a frothy pink…How we listened to SILENCE!

click to download SILENCE!#59

SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.

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Before we get into this.

Zom constantly upbraids me for caring about such things, but I’m just too irritated by the internet’s monthly refrain of  ‘it was too all over the place’, often followed by ‘it was too hard to understand’ not to have a moan. It’s almost the stock criticism of Morrison these days and it’s simply a question of who will be uttering it this time around. One month someone over here is complaining that the writing is too ‘scattershot’ and dense while over here someone else is defending the comic as a shining example of Morrison at his most accessible, and the next the roles are reversed, a tango unto death. I say balls! to this and hereby usher in the long overdue Age of The Three Rereads. From now on no one is allowed to utter the words ‘hard to follow’, ‘confusing’, ‘unrelated plots’ or the like without having read the comic three times. We all know it takes a while for the massive info-dump to settle, so it’s only fair we behave accordingly and give the comic room to breathe after a breathless first hit. Obviously this rule doesn’t apply if you’re a casual reader, but critics owe it to themselves and their readership. My general feeling is that the tonal shifting and fizzing ideas add to the reading experience, creating contrasts, generating depth and a sense of length and substance. And isn’t this super important in the case of a twenty page comic (not that this one is, mind)? It’s not density and narrative commotion I’m concerned about, but slightness, and although you can’t fashion positives out of negatives it’s hugely refreshing for me that Morrison’s books never suffer from this problem.

Sure, it’s not as simple and streamlined as Inc’s first two issues, but just to be clear, this comic, inspite of some of the negative press out there, isn’t very hard to understand and will be remembered fondly. I’d hate to be a critic of DC comics generally, I really would. There really is no comparison between a book like this and most of the crap that gets produced. The measure of its goodness is completely different and an undifferentiated grading system that doesn’t take this into account is just nonsense.

So there.

face

Shit me

‘Wearing this wig reminds me that if Kane is Batwoman, she must wear one too.’

Oh right, that’s interesting Bruce, because seeing you in that perm-wig (and accompanying IT salesman goat-beard), that absurdist eurobaddie nightmare of a disguise, has made me remember – love you, missed you, glad you’re back alive and all that – remember just what a massively weird bloke you are.

‘Syrup of Fig’

Batman and Robin #8

February 15th, 2010

Let’s annocommentate!

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PAGE 1

PANEL 1

Amy: ‘What is it with these Crime Coven people and their obsession with stories for kids?’ What is it indeed? Perhaps it has something to do with the rogue logic of fairytales and nursery rhymes, their criminal physics? Alice in Wonderland as topology, a map of a world overturned, where reason and meaning begin their steady descent into the abyss, Cole’s ‘hole in everything’.

Fairytales also speak to our primal condition, a preverbal world of gods and nightmares. Maybe the Crime Covens see their work as an attempt to return mankind to a purer state, unrestrained by ego and superego, culture, law and society.

Shit, they sound pretty cool, don’t they?

Oh, whose side are we all on?

Click for more! more? MOAR?!?

She’s her own (Bat)woman

June 30th, 2009

detective comics 854

Detective #854 surprised me. I expected JHW3 and Dave Stewart to knock the ball out the park, what I didn’t expect was to be so impressed by Rucka’s writing. Admittedly there was little in the way of conceptual, narrative or formal pyrotechnics – the sorts of things that I look for in Morrison’s work – but then with JHW3 on board there didn’t need to be. Instead Rucka provided us with a rock solid set-up issue on which to hang the astonishing art. Perhaps Rucka’s writing is usually this sturdy and it took this particular art team to get me to pay attention. Perhaps not. Either way the issue clicked like a gun being cocked. Time will tell whether it’s gonna jam.

But you know all this: you’ve read the book, you’ve read all the reviews worth reading, you’ve nattered about it with your mates. It’s one week later and ‘Tec 854 has thoroughly bedded down in your brain. Roll on 855. Shut up the Mindless Ones, late to the party as ever.

You’ve had enough, but after the jump you’re going to get some more!

bats

As our long term readers already know, I don’t read many superhero books. It’s not that I don’t like superheroes – I love them – it’s just, well, invariably I tend to find most titles pretty boring. I sat down with the first two Captain America trades the other day and I wanted to love that shit, only I really didn’t. The art, though pretty, was muddy and a chore to trawl through (in what’s supposed to be an action book!), the story likewise, and the thing just didn’t seem to regard itself as a comicbook. No…twas a big muddy storyboard, and a big muddy storyboard lacking in fun. Essentially the experience made me even more resolute in my Mozza-bats love. Morrison’s Batman is never, ever boring, and it knows all about the form it’s cowled in. Not great, great art, but totally what I want a monthly comic to be. Fast-paced, colourful and pulpy, with flashes of *depth*, funny, involving and, most importantly… How did Botswana Beast describe #682 in our last email correspondence? Ah yes – ‘typically berserk’.

I think that sums the run and the issue up nicely, don’t you?

JUMP!