Mindless Ones

GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON WHY I SHOULDN’T WIN

Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die crawl back into your skull and deposit a number of topics.  The big news is dropped in a very special edition of Inside The Wanker’s Studio in which Gary Lactus conducts a hard hitting, no punches pulled interview with a name that’s about to be shouted so loud by so many that it will echo down the ages, Dan White.  Dan’s big book of Cindy and Biscuit is to be published on August 15th 2023 so get ready to buy copies for everyone you know.

The Beast rejoins Gary as the pair enter The Reviewniverse with Unstoppable Doom Patrol, Garth Marenghi Live, Zero and Michael Kupperman’s Patreon.

Then it’s off to SILENCE! (Because The Film’s started) where The Beast has seen Guardians of the Galaxy III

After that it’s massive revelation, moths and away…

@frasergeesin

@thebeastmustdie

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If you were brave enough to come to the haunted spa town commonly known as Harrogate for last year’s Thought Bubble, you might have heard tell that Dan White was out there flogging  the second instalment of his new horror anthology, Sticky Ribs.  You might have struggled to substantiate this rumour – who could be sure of anything in that eerie mist? – but if you’re anything like us, it’s the sort of idea that would have stayed with you.  What is Sticky Ribs?  Is it safe to read?  Can it travel across the threshold of your grandmother’s house without being consumed by fire? Ever fond of a tall tale, Broken Frontier’s Andy Oliver decided to elaborate on the rumour of this harrowed comic in his usual comprehensive manner: 

This is prime White material with the juxtaposition of innocent, childlike diary entries and horrifying reality perfectly counterpointing each other and, through their contrast, making events all the more chilling. It’s Maurice Sendak by way of Cormac McCarthy, with wide-eyed innocence going hand in hand visually with a surrounding inescapable devastation.

This year, in the absence of the face-to-face contact and unquantifiable murk of a physical comics convention, we finally feel that the truth can be told to the shuddering masses.  Sticky Ribs is real… and you can buy it at Dan’s website! Don’t believe us?  Here’s the cover to the second issue:

Dan’s legendary kids comic Cindy and Biscuit can also be purchased at his website, with volume one now being available in tasty digital edition! 

If you want to encounter the digital edition of Dan you can do so here, but think carefully about initiating this encounter if you value your immortal soul. 

Our very own Dan White (aka The Beast Must Die) has been interviewed by Matt Colegate for The Comics Journal!  Colegate talks to The Most Handsome Mindless* about Terminus, Insomnia, Cindy and Biscuit, writing for this site, and the development of his art style, and it’s all well worth a read if you like what’s best in life.

A teasing excerpt:

When did you start noticing that your style was developing? Was it an incidental discovery or was it something you were working towards?

There’s a hodgepodge of influences that I can see in everything I do, but it’s nice that a style has formed. When I’m doing a brush stroke I’ll be thinking  “the way I’ve drawn those bushes is really Bill Watterson.” The style also came out of admitting that I didn’t have to do figurative art work. I could still tell stories that I liked by using cartoons. I should say that the biggest influence in my life is Chuck Jones. Seeing the Warner Bros. cartoons broke me forever.

So you were quite strict about wanting to be a cartoonist?

I just admitted, y’know, “You’re not going to be Simon Bisley and you’re not going to be able to draw Batman”. Nor would I want to. My uncle was an illustrator and I used to look at his work and the looseness of the brush work used to really appeal to me. When I realized I could tell the stories that I wanted by cartooning, and not being a slave to anatomy and photo-referencing, that was really liberating and I think the style developed there. It was quite organic.

A lot of your work – Terminus for example, which you did weekly for Mindless Ones – consists of single panel pieces. What is it that appeals about that format?

The one panel strip is traditionally used for political cartoons or simple visual gags, but I wanted to explore what you could do. They were like haiku experiments in paring down the text. Doing it on a weekly basis was great – doing anything on a weekly basis is great because it’s a way to refine your style – and I noticed that I was getting much better at paring the words down. I wanted to do something that wasn’t necessarily funny. What about if you had a one-panel comic that just disturbed you, or made you feel a bit sad? Somebody on the internet said “It’s like a fortune cookie that you open up and inside there’s an obituary.” That was the perfect description of what I was trying to do. He didn’t mean it as a compliment but I put it on the back of the first collection anyway. It was about trying to capture something and suggest a whole world in a panel. There was a nerdy element also, because I got to tell a science fiction or horror story simply. Horror is a thing that comes up again and again in my work and Terminus was a good way to flex some of those muscles.

If you’ll forgive me for sliding straight into huckster mode – this is the internet in 2016, after all – I’ll just right ahead and say that if the interview put you in the mood to read/buy Dan’s comics, we can help you out with that!

I mean just look at this sequence, from the most recent Cindy and Biscuit book:

SERIOUSLY – BUY DAN’S COMICS!**

***

Footnotes:

*Aside from Gary Lactus, who is of course the face of bad backs, and also – in his ridiculous stage name of “Fraser Geesin” – Jack of All Polymaths.

**Unless you’re broke, obviously. We don’t actually want to bankrupt you or anything. Or at least, The Beast Must Die doesn’t…

Right then, sorry about this. Gary Lactus here. Hello. We’re very nearly back. What we have here is an exciting mixture of TWO amazing formats.

FORMAT 1: I, Gary Lactus apologise my way through some reviews of things like, (well exactly like to be honest) Satellite Sam, The Walking Dead, Uber, Avengers, The Superior Foes Of Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Dial H.

FORMAT 2: A LIVE recording from Cartoon County, straight after The Beast Must Die (in his best Dan White costume), had been interviewed by Alex Fitch of Panel Borders, the radio programme and podcast about comics. He’s proper and it’s good so definitely go and enjoy it! What happened after isn’t as good as Panel Borders but it’s fun. Alex joins us along with plenty of folk like Dave Stone, Joe Decie, David Lloyd and Bobsy chipping in with opinions on comics! Actually it’s a bit of a drunken free for all but with me holding the mic throughout and going on with Bobsy for too long about Jupiter’s Legacy. There’s also talk of Aces Weekly and… I’m sure there was something else… Anyway, what’s the point in me listing everything here? I’m not some goddamn Narratorbot! Hopefully if you’ve read as far as this you’ll have some some idea as to whether you want to listen or not.

Oh yes, I do sing an amazing song which you’d never guess was completely improvised. And there’s a special new Summer Special theme tune.

It’s fffphreschhh!!!

click to download SILENCE!#68

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

As previously mentioned, the Mindless dream team of The Beast Must Die, Illogical Volume and Andrew “Mandrew” Hickey made it down to Leeds for this year’s Thought Bubble comics convention. These are their recollections of the event, as distorted by the passing of time, sleep-deprivation, alcohol consumption, and the brain-scrambling dazzle of a white lounge suit:

Enter the Mindless (23 Chambers)

Terminus archives!
My Blog!

What no Terminus? Sadly no, not this week. Due to the considerable strain and effort of moving house I’ve been unable to do a Terminus this week. Just a one week hiatus, and it won’t happen again Sir.

Instead I thought I’d shamelessly pimp my wares in the form of my contribution to New British Comics #2, an anthology of…well what it says on the tin really. Here’s the twist: it’s edited and published in Poland…

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Terminus archives!
My Blog!