SILENCE! #281

June 16th, 2020

 

SHE SAID THE CITY WAS DEAD AND GUTLESS

Watch out, cos here we come. It’s been a while but we’re back in style. So get set, to have some fun. We’ll give you action…and satisfaction. We are SILENCE! coming on stronger than ever before. We are SILENCE! Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Door (Die)

That’ll do won’t it? Come on, be reasonable, you can’t expect more from a blurb at times like these right? Take a look at yourself. When did you last have to write a blurb eh? EH? WELL?

<ITEM>It’s a brand new day, it’s  brand new SILENCE! with those two testy old goats Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die ready to fill your ears up with a hunka hunka burning comics.

<ITEM> Admin, rambling and SILENCE! (Because the Film Has Started) with the Steve Rude documentary and Dream Dangerously, the Neil Gaiman documentary. QUALITY WATCHING

<ITEM>Slip inside the Reviewniverse, step over the slumped prone body of James Stokoe and check out the chit chat about Morbius The Living Vampire no.1, Batman pocket books, Joe Kessler’s Windowpane, Doug Moench’s Spectre, and a bit more plus

<ITEM> RIP Denny O’Neill

ALL OUT OF ITEMS

 

@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

You can support us using Patreon if you like.

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.

 

SILENCE! #261

January 18th, 2019

 

LIFE I LOVE YOU, ALL IS GROOVY

Listen can you do me a favour? I just need to nip out for a bit…no not for long. I’ll be real quick. I wouldn’t ask, but it’s actually really, really important that I go. Yeah. No, I honestly wouldn’t ask unless…y’know. Important, that’s right. You will? Oh mate that’s brilliant…honestly you don’t know what a favour this is. So I just need you to just literally sit here and do nothing till I get back. Yeah, I’ll be so, so quick I promise. Ok, so just like…just sit there, that’s right. Yup, just there. And that’s it! Till I get back. Okay? Ok cool.

..oh wait, there is just one other thing. If anyone turns up asking about a blurb, can you just whip something up? Ok great.

<ITEM>BOOOOOOOOOOM> NEW YEAR NEW DANGER! It’s only Bloody SILENCE! coming up on 2019 like a masked intruder! Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die are here and brimming with new year’s resolve. And you’re going to get it, with barrels. Hot comics pottage, in that wily old SILENCE! fashion. AND IT”S NEARLY THREE HOURS LONG YOU TW@S!!

<ITEM>Bit of post-XMAS admin? Why not. As if anyone gives a rat’s chuff about that anymore! Probably some Dadmin, some sponsorships and a bit of chat about Adventures in the January comics sales.

<ITEM> Big chunk of Sadmin about the recent passing of Mega City One architect Ron Smith.

<ITEM> Gary talks about the Raymond Briggs Snowman exhibition, The Beast wants to tell you all about the Charles Schultz ‘Peanuts’ exhibition at Somerset House, and he also NEEDS to tell you all about Penda’s Fen too, in SILENCE! (Because the Film Has Started).

<ITEM> Have you heard that Gary Lactus Prunes? No, Well listen up…

<ITEM> The Reviewniverse uncurls it’s sticky paw and reveals some top quality chat about League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Fantastic Four Wonderful Wonderful Wedding Comix, Klaus: The Crying Snowman, Lodger, DIE, Justice League Europe,  GoBots, Thirteenth Floor and probably some other stuff that both of us have forgotten.

<ITEM> BONUSSSSSS! There’a a meaty chat with Tom Oldham of Breakdown Press, talking about Joe Kessler’s Windowpane, Jon Chandler’s John’s Worth (1-4), Beserker and a whole lot more, including some quality Todd McFarlane chat.

WELL WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR SWEETHEARTS? YOU WANNA LIVE FOREVER???

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

You can support us using Patreon if you like.

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.

 

Windowpane #1, by Joe Kessler 

 

There’s a point early on in this comic where you realise that you’re not so much watching characters describe a landscape as watching the landscape try work out how to describe itself. This might seem counter-intuitive but from the end of the first story onward the pattern repeats itself – Joe Kessler’s garish, pastel-hued compositions either  break down into their constituent lines after exhaustive exploration or sit there seemingly unaffected by the words and actions that have passed through them.

The best example of the latter category involves a wet-dream about a pig in a dress, whose fall through the night sky is contrasted against an unflinching cityscape with a moment-by-moment precision that does far better justice to the pithy punchline than this description:

In the former category, the Invisible Cities-derived third strip is as close to definitive as Windowpane gets.  The way it links its characters shared status as splashes of ink and colour on the page with their philosophising about the interconnected nature of reality — “…a cluster of atoms resembles a cluster of galaxies.”/”Well they’re both clusters” — might seem trite in isolation, but the surrounding stories make these philosophical observations feel more like a little bit of texture on a varied landscape.

All of this might  sound a bit chilly and distant, but Kessler’s human figures are depicted with a deceptive sort of ease, as a series of curving lines whose relationships to each other is nevertheless very carefully observed and delineated:

 

Still, in keeping with Kessler’s paradoxical thematic schemata it’s the backgrounds that are the focus here, existing as they do on the precise point where detail blurs into abstraction.  The interaction between text and territory here has a sly kinshsip with Dylan Horrocks writing on maps and comics, and perhaps also with Kevin Huizenga’s conception of the comics page as a place for exploration and discovery, but Kessler’s backgrounds have a forcefulness to them that resists his characters attempts at attaching meaning as much as it encourages them.

This is tricky relationship is most clearly explored in the final two strips.  In  the penultimate entry, words shrink on the page as Kessler depicts his precarious human figures parachuting in to kindle-worthy hillscape:

Thought and language here are reduced to a form of quaint annotation, one that is far less effective at providing a guide to this hazardous landscape than the blocky symbols that line these panels.

The final story focuses on a burned lover who – uh, *SPOILERS* – tries to find solace in the freak resemblance between a man and a decapitated bull.  It plays out like a sneaky assurance that the process of muck sitting up, looking itself and trying to figure itself out isn’t totally meaningless. It’s also the sort of assurance that’s both underlined and undermined by the fact that,  unlike any given sunset, you know this resemblance was put there to be noticed.

Click here to read about more gud comics on the site that just can’t seem to quit you, no matter how many resolutions it makes!

SILENCE! #39

November 13th, 2012

 


YOU’RE THE ONE FOR ME, FATTY!

YAAAAAAY! It’s nobody’s favourite self-aware AI, Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 here to usher you into another aural barrel scraping edition of SILENCE! GET SOME…Ha ha.

Ha.

IN. THIS. EDITION.

<ITEM> Lots of self-promotion from the fleshy ones, with talk of Cindy & Biscuit and The Amusing Bros. For shame!

<ITEM> Then SILENCE! News, with sad boohoo news about the end of Hellblazer, and Gary Lactus straps on his geetar to sing ‘Goodbye John’. Too sad.

Then happy with special sexy review times. Woot hoot!
<ITEM> Deadpool no.1, Iron Man, Dial H, Legends Of The Dark Knight, Detective, Action, Animal Man, Battlefields and a special mention for Joe Kessler’s Windowpane, from new publisher Breakdown Press. Excite!

<ITEM> Silent Question comes from Moleman, and varied answers include Titan’s Tower and Shade The Changing Man’s crack in the pavement! Yes sir!

So no excuse for not-enjoymence, fleshy idiots!!!

Strap yourself in, put on Mummy’s dress and draw the curtains for …SILENCE! no.38

click to download SILENCE!#39

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

Click below for the SILENCE! Gallery…

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