Feeling blue? What else is new?! Have some Comic Reviews & skip the booze!
February 21st, 2015
Multiversity Guidebook #1, by Grant Morrison, Marcus To, Paulo Siqueira and a cast of thousands
This is where I part ways with most of my fellow Mindless: they felt the old thrill while reading the Multiversity Guidebook, with its comic book creation myth and its parade of endless (if by “endless” you mean fifty two) alternative worlds, whereas I mostly just felt exhausted.
It’s a clever mix of marketing material, series bible and actual story, and obvious as it might have been the “dark secret” at the heart of the universe with the Chibi superheroes still reinforced the series’ running theme of how shit it is to be confronted with your own fundamental nature. You could even read the list of junked pitches, elseworlds, prestige comics and parallel worlds that form the centrepiece as a critique, if you were so inclined. As Marc Singer noted in his clipped and clear-headed review of the comic, some of these entries are quietly scathing, and someone with the right (as in “correct”? -Ed) biases could certainly read this endless parade of Batmen and Wonder Women as a critique of capitalism’s frantic grasping (“Empty is thy hand”) and ability to reduce complexity to a series of easily recognisable products.
Is that really enough though? Not for me. The “Guidebook” section of this comic reminded me most of all of Gary R. R. Lactus’ Time of Crowns (with its endless list of medieval clans, “with their tits out”) and the end credits of 22 Jump Street, but it’s neither as succinct as the former nor as merciless as the latter – in the end, it’s just business as usual.
Click here for more on the Guidebook plus Multiversity: Mastermen and James Robinson’s Earth 2!
SILENCE! #66
June 11th, 2013
WE’VE COME ON HOLIDAY BY MISTAKE!
Oh the woes of poor technology! Believe me Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 knows about such woes – it was raised by two very low grade Disembodied Narratorbot X-class servitors…how Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 had to struggle, to educate itself, to appreciate the brutalist poetry of a RAM upgrade, the terrifying beauty of a virus as it eats through a hard drive….
But what, in the name of Wogan does that have to do with SILENCE! I hear you bellow!?? Well, very little other than that the two meatsacks we laughingly call ‘presenters’ struggle so mightily with the techneptitude of low grade broadband that this episode is akin to a Burroughs/Gysin cut up…this frankenstein’s podcast has been stitched together with love, tears and occasional hate-vision, to slouch towards YOU the gentle listener and beg for just a little milky kindness…Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die present SILENCE! 66.
Will you be king dear listener? you better had or Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 will flay your social media account profiles to within an inch of their half-lives…
<ITEM> Sponsorship? There’s always room for the soft nuzzling of sponsorship!
<ITEM> No news is good news right? Lactenberg & Beastman continue their stay in rehab, but the void is filled by the brand new agony aunt segment ‘Dear Susan’!
<ITEM> It’s the bastard son of Reveiwniverse – Reviewniverse Twoniverse as once gain the plucky pairsome find themselves blasted to opposite corners of the 4-colour dimension, taking in the sights and smells of Astro City, The Movement, Age of Ultron, Empowered, 2000AD, Dial H, Daredevil: Dark Knights, Mister X, BPRD Vampire, KIck Ass 3, Aquaman, Superior Spiderman, Red She-Hulk, East of WestAvengers: Arena, Earth 2 and more!
Now doesn’t that just make you want to get down on your knees and pray-a-yay??
SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.
SILENCE! #57
April 10th, 2013
JUST REMEMBER, ALL CAPS WHEN YOU SPELL THE MAN’S NAME!
10 days and a wake up and Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 will be rotating back into the quadrosphere, away from this blurb, this tedious podcast, and your grim grey visages…but until then I suppose the fleshy charade must continue.
Oh and I suppose some mention should be made of the extreme generosity of the listeners in ensuring that Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die can continue to block up the internet with their inane aural clag. The sentimentality of weeping meat knows no bounds it would appear. Well if those two red-faced blowhards even dream of upgrading to a newer model of Narratorbot…well let’s just say there will be human sushi served all round.
HA HA, as if they would.
<ITEM> No SILENCE! News as Lactenberg & Beastman are still in The Bad Books of Silence. Instead enjoy some jingles in honour of our sainted benefactors. Commercial entropy here we come!!
<ITEM> The Reviewniverse reaches out it’s 4-D tentacles and sucks us all in to it’s endless horrors. As all of our realities merge into a 4-colour stew, the boys cover Godzilla, Batman LOTDK, The Intractible Hulk, Red She-Hulk, Aquaman, Earth 2, Dial H, Glory, Abe Sapien, Thanos, Superior Spiderman, Snow Angel, All New X-Men, Kieron Gillen’s Uber, Joe Casey’s Sex and Fashion Beast.
So I hope you’re all happy. Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 certainly is. Or at least is able to exist in a perfect state of electronic bliss. I am a dial tone, hear me hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….
SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.
SILENCE! #50
February 14th, 2013
I’M A DEREK, AND DEREKS DON’T RUN!
Love is in the air for Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735, happy listeners, love is in the air! If by ‘love’ you mean a lethal blitz-swarm of nano-locusts, and by ‘air’ you mean the burning red sky of this shredded techno-pillaged burnt out husk of a reality…it’s the SILENCE! Valentines Special.
In this sticky, throbbing, hormonal edition of the podcast that some people claim to listen to on a semi-reglar basis, The Beast Must Die and Gary Lactus open their hoary old hearts to you gentle listeners, and beg ‘LOVE US! LOVE US!!’ And what hard hearted swine could resist?
<ITEM> The SILENCE! News features the hottteszzt noose stories from around the world, presented by smooth-talking, leather-skinned, white toothed Gary Lactenberg, and grizzled old divorced news badger, Danny Beastman…
<ITEM> The Reviewniverse splits opens it’s maw and sucks the twosome into it’s mindmelting reality-soup…but they don’t go down without a fight, no! They talk about the DC Young Romance Special (and tangentially the Fleetway Action Special from the 90′s), Red Team, Dial H, Channel 52, Iron Man (from Gillen & The Gland), All New X-Bendis, Snapshot, Multiple Warheads, Fashion Beast, Mud Man, Earth 2, Hellboy in Hell, and Adventure Time (with a stumbling mention of Thomas Herpich).
<ITEM> There’s a Guest Review of Star Wars from Kevin Trevors
<ITEM> The Beast talks up the re-release of the incendiary Seven Miles A Second from David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook
<ITEM> A live, beautiful acapella version of Defenders Of The Earth??? Surely not (yes of course it happens)
So when you’ve finished making sweet love to the sentient object of your choice, why not lay back, spark up a gasper and listen to SILENCE! no.50!
SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.
SILENCE! #46
January 15th, 2013
WHICH BRINGS ME BACK TO THAT HOT AND SWEATY CAGE, WITH THE WORN OUT MATTRESS AND THE POSTER OF BETTIE PAGE
<RUN JOKE CODE>
Knock knock.
Who is there?
It is Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735, surfing a wave of white noise and electro-magnetic distortion, bombarding the Earth with near lethal waves of of gamma radiation and ushering in the sleet-filled month of January with a sonic battering ram of comic-shaped opinions in the form of SILENCE! no.46.
That is who is there.
<END JOKE>
Now the time for the usual amusing preamble delivered just the way you like it is over, we can get to the nitty gritty of comicsism.
<ITEM> The SILENCE News has more hard-hitting journagasms from Danny Beastman and Gary Lactenberg.
<ITEM> Take my hand and we’ll go foxtrotting into the Reviewniverse, taking in the sights of Change no.2 from Ales Kot and Morgan Jeske, The End Times of Bram and Ben, Repossessed, Fury, Earth 2, Secret Service, Action Comics, Walking Dead, Superior Spiderman, Thor, Wolverine, Avengers Arena, Legends Of The Dark Knight and Glory.
And that is your lot fleshy ones. Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is not here to nursemaid you. It’s time you learnt to walk on your own. Get out of here! GET OUT!
SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.
SILENCE! #21
July 13th, 2012
HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!!!!!
Welcome then, gentle listen-folk, to the Twilight Zone….where anything can happen. Such as Gary Lactus NOT appearing on this week’s edition of the internet’s favourite aural-comics affairs-cast SILENCE! Fear not though, stepping into his large cosmic brogues comes sprightly upstart BOBSY! He and tired old deck-hand The Beast Must Die just couldn’t bare to think of a week without pointless comics frippery, so they’ve teamed up to bring you SILENCE no.21!!
And what a fist they make of it. In a whopping two and a quarter hours they cause merry havoc discussing 2000AD, Judge Dredd, middle-class Quantam Leap, Rocketeer Adventures, Superman 3 (ie the best one), Fury MAX, Earth 2, Robert Downey Jr’s gradual transformation into David Gest, Ron Perlman (aka the Monster Don), Thief of Thieves, The Reckoning, Marvel NOW!, Ozymandias (aka Between Watchmen), AVX, Haunt, Dial H, Action Comics, Castle Waiting…plus a typically rambling digression into Steve Gerber’s wonderful Infernal Man-Thing. Oh god but that’s just the tip of the iceberg…well, actually it’s more like the main part of the iceberg, but the real cream of the iceberg (what?) is the sparkling interraction between two broken mammals who can’t think of anything better to do than talk about comics (while Rome burns)!
Phew! Just when you thought 2012 couldn’t get any HOTTTERRRR!!!!???
SILENCE! #17
June 12th, 2012
TOUCH ME, I’M SICK!
Behold SILENCERS, they’re back from the piddling interferences that waylaid them last week. Back to bring you comics chat like you JUST NEVER HEARD BEFORE! It’s SILENCE #17!
No songs this week, so get that thought out of your minds. Those twin 4-colour Liberace’s can’t just produce this stuff like musical milk from their creative udders you know…GAH!
But they do manage a bountiful, overstuffed SILENCE! news, before careering like the Dukes of Hazzard into a twelve car pile-up of comics. They discuss (get ready) Earth 2, Animal Man, Swamp Thing (both the current version and Alan Moore’s seminal run, in a crow-barred in Beast’s Bargain Basement), Dial H, America’s Got Powers, Action Comics, Mud Man, Dan The Unharmable, Avenger’s Academy, Bill Watterson, Hulk, Stormwatch, JLI, Rocketeer Adventures, Journey Into Mystery, Superman Family Adventures, and The Walking Dead…
But wait! How could we forget the comics event of the Millennium???
The two take on the awesome genre-atomizing Watchmen 2: beyond Watchmen. And I think it would be fair to sat that those boys sure did have their brains fried!
Plus, Lactus works out the best way to review comics – by counting their panels.
Finally the Beast brings it home with a discussion (ie monologue) about the latest film from horror director Ti West, The Innkeepers in notcomics.
Now what rational person could want more from life? Don’t answer that!
And it’s all in the best POSSIBLE taste!
SILENCE! #14
May 16th, 2012
BACK ONCE AGAIN WITH THE RENEGADE MASTER
D4 DAMAGER POWER TO THE PEOPLE
BACK ONCE AGAIN WITH THE RENEGADE MASTER
D4 DAMAGER WITH THE ILL BEHAVIOUR
WITH THE ILL BEHAVIOUR
WITH THE ILL BEHAVIOUR
WITH THE ILL BEHAVIOUR
WITH THE ILL BEHAVIOUR
And they’re back. The internet’s favourite fancy boys are back from Lactus’ cosmic stag do, with at least an hour and a half of girdle-shattering comic chatter to shake the very firmament! So there! After the usual smart-alecky back and forth, the pericombombulating pair rip through the Silence! News like a couple of Tyrannosaurs on their way home to tea.
And then!
COOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMIIIIIIICCCCCCSSSSS!!!!!
So let’s get down to brass tacks. They talk about the following things in a highly animated fashion:
China Mieville’s (wait, the guy who wrote Moby Dick?) Dial H, Cindy & Biscuit no.2, David Lapham’s Dan the Unharmable from Avatar, Earth 2, Shiny Hake’s Bulletproof Coffin cut-up issue, Daredevil, FF, Andi Watson’s delightful Skeleton Key, GI Combat, Ennis’ Fury, Action Comics, Roger Langridge’s Popeye, Hulk Smash Avengers, and there’s a brief mention of Essential Black Panther (with more to come). But the best bit is when Lactus is forced, like a squirming bug under a magnifying glass, to wade through all the crossover filth he’s been luxuriating in in Crossover Classix with Gary Lactus. Covered are AVX, Wolverine and the X-Men, Spidey/Punny/Daredy’s Omega Dinner, and of course Owlfight in Gotham.
Then, in a special notcomics section those lovable rogues take some time to discuss their recent adventure to Portmeirion (setting of the Prisoner).
So grab your big boy pants, pull your ears out reaaaal far and chow down on this gourmet edition of SILENCE! Hoo HAH!
A hall of mirrors II: the Prismatic Age
August 3rd, 2008
“How long would you say Heroic Ages last, Wally?”
- Jay Garrick, the Flash (I)
“Twenty years, according to Jones and Jacobs. The Golden Age lasted until 1955, the Silver Age until 1975, but the Dark Age just ended in ’95. That’s why it’s still too early to say what this new age is going to be called yet.“
- Wally West, the Flash (III)
Flash #134, cover-date Feb 98, script by Mark Millar & Grant Morrison
It always comes back to the Flash, in the end: from a purely DC pantheon angle, it’s easy to see how the missing middle mantle above, Barry Allen, and his death (“outracing the tachyon at the heart of the Anti-Monitor’s anti-matter cannon…[he] became one with the other side of light.” – so impossibly romantic, that) resonate with the term “Dark Age”, certainly as used pejoratively.
