Mindless Ones

I’LL SAVE MY BREATH AND TAKE IT WITH ME, TIL A HUNDRED YEARS OR SO

Blurbs.  Does anyone actually read them?  The Beast must Die created this format for the SILENCE! show notes and it has become a hated chore for whoever is unfortunate enough to be creating it.  Am I just typing into a void?  Tell you what, if you’re reading this, let us know by writing the secret phrase, “OH DEAR LORD MY GUTS ARE FULL OF SQUID!” and tweeting us, emailing to us or posting it on the Facebook page.  Thanks.

<ITEM> The Beast Must Die is back to save Christmas a full eight months early.

<ITEM> The Beast has got naked and gone bathing in a world of eased restrictions, rubbing dusty old comics all over himself.  Full report inside.

<ITEM>  Gary Lactus has a great new business idea.

<ITEM>  Come with us to Reviewniverse, with The Union, The Spiral Cage and 2000AD‘s Summer Offensive featuring Judge Dredd, Big Dave, Slaughter Bowl, Really and Truly and Maniac 5 of course.

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Guest contributor Strontium Cat takes a look at how Judge Dredd arrived at the most recent John Wagner penned epic, Machine Law.

2000 AD’s recent Machine Law (progs 2115-2122) is one of my favourite ever Judge Dredd stories and deserves some attention. The Galaxy’s Greatest comic and its signature strip have now been going for forty two years, so it’s easy to take it for granted and overlook what remarkable, interesting work John Wagner continues to do with his creation.
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I LOVE YOU BUT YOU’RE SO PARTICULARLY BORING

ITEM SILENCE! #213 is on your doorstep with a dozen roses. But how does it know where you live?!

ITEM When comics podcasts are outlawed, only outlaws will have comics podcasts. Your outlaws this week are Gary Lactus, Lord Nuneaton Savage and Maid Of Nails

ITEM Maid of Nails stops by with a Very Special Report on 2000AD’s 40th birthday celebrations and what renowned comics creators get up to when they’re drunk.

ITEM In the Reviewniverse we find Squirrel Girl, All-Star Batman, Resident Alien, Nemesis shoots Slaine in the face, Motor Crush, Blubber, Judge Dredd, Picnoleptic Inertia, lady War Stories, and Cerebus…in HELL?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

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Maid of Nails: You can’t put the Punisher in everything. He’s a specific person for specific contexts, and this is part of why I love the Garth Ennis run so, so, so much. Basically, he’s made for a Garth Ennis context.

Botswana Beast: It’s American crime. I can see how it works in 1980s comics, to an extent — well, in the Daredevil series on Netflix, he is contrasted with Daredevil, and they do take scenes from Ennis’ Punisher, like in issue #3 of Marvel Knights. They fairly directly transpose them.

MoN: It was SO COOL. I was just sad that Maginty wasn’t in it. I love that dude.

BB: Maginty is in Punisher: War Zone.

MoN: With the Urban Freeflow Crew, doing parkour all over the place for no reason. That’s not in the comic.

BB: Nope.

MoN: I was sad to see him go. I mean, he was a really messed-up guy who did messed-up stuff, but I enjoyed him a lot, in a sort of weird way.

BB: That’s the one thing we’ve not talked about, and it’s kind of an absurd thing. Frank Castle, as a notional superhero…

FOR THE RIGHT TO BE GOVERNED, WASTE THEM WITHOUT MERCY

As our (pretend) close personal confidant Luke Haines will tell you, “it’s not for God’s love/ it’s not for cocaine,” which are the only two extremes on the religion-80s drugs scale.

Of course it’s not, you dirty heathens! It’s for COMICS.

All-inclusive SILENCE!, the comics podcast that makes you listen to ladies etc sometimes. Gary Lactus is joined by emergency guest Maid of Nails all the way from the Razor House in darkest Caledonia, who like any other Strong Female Character can talk massive amounts of shit just like Them Goize.

<ITEM>Comedy, maternal pop culture reviews, we’ve got it all. Find out whose mother really wants to hear more about the Ents, and exactly how to catch Gary Lactus’ comedy show in London.

<ITEM>The Reviewniverse spawns chat of Judge Dredd,  2000AD, Wolverine Goes To Japan On His Gap Year, Nighthawk, Bitch Planet,  Civil War II, The Ultimates,  Wicked And Divine, Wonder Woman, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Auaman, Punisher,  All Star Section 8 and some talk of the Preacher TV show thing.

<ITEM>Watch out for the Nipple Collector

Click to download SILENCE!#194

“What’s the podcast full of chat

That’s made for  you and me?

It’s S-I-L-E-N-C-E!

Hey there, Hi there, ho there you’re as welcome as can be

It’s S-I-L-E-N-C-E!

SIII-I-LENCE! SIII-I-LENCE!

Forever hold our graphic novels high, high, high!

SII-I-ILEN…”

*ca-click* BLAM!

Ahhhh. Silence.

<ITEM> Why what’s this? Not just one, but TWO special guests on this special guesticode? For sheezy! None other than old skool classic Mindless One, Botswana Beast, but returning sparring partner Maid of Nails are here, joining ol’ Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die for this latest installment of 4-colour digressions and mega-ramblings.

<ITEM> Sponsorship, maybe some cat stuff and of course the usual digressions.

<ITEM> A Reviewniverse 4-way?? Yikes, this one’s gonna hurt! Tackled are Grant Morrison’s Wonder Woman: Earth One and it’s a nice deep dive that also takes on Sensation Comics, Beto Hernandez, BDSM, Feminism, Nameless, Doom Patrol, and more. Then we get into The Discipline, Silver Surfer, Gerber and Golden’s Mister Miracle, Judge Dredd, John Wagner, Pat Mills, 2000AD, Garth Ennis’ Enemy Ace, Punisher War Zone, Marvel Unlimited and more more more

So pull up your trousers, get out of the flower beds and settle down for the warming aural-soothe of this latest, greatest edition of SILENCE!

click to download SILENCE!#184

IT’S A MUST THAT I TAKE THE STREETS BACK SO FAST, EVERYBODY THINKIN’ IT’S NOT GONNA LAST…

Okay big picture people, big picture only. Blue sky thinking, big picture stuff. Blue sky, big picture, out of the box stuff people. Big, blue, out-of-the-box thinking. Big picture, blue sky thinking, right out of the box, take the ball and run with it stuff people. Big runny blue balls, right out of the box. OK people? OK?

<ITEM> It’s the comics podcast that man, feels like a woman! It’s SILENCE! you lucky, lucky pea-pods.

<ITEM> Not just any episode, but one of our fabled Guesticodes featuring none other than Kelly Kanayama aka Maid of Nails. Scholar, Rob  Liefeld character, and Frank MIller gang member? Whatever, she’s here and she’s raising the bar. Limboing smoothly under it are old hams Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die.

<ITEM> Sponsorship as usual, but with some red hot Dundee recommendations! Also The Beast has some life admin to share, and is ready to introduce…the Phantasmacats! Also, Team Poppet and the Final Solution?? Oh and Dicks. Don’t forget the Dicks.

<ITEM> Let’s go go go into The Reviewniverse, and it’s a humdinger. We talk The Discipline, Shade The Changing Man, The Extremist, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan and bondage, Ted McKeever’s Pencil Head, Cerebus The Aardvark, problematic creators, Jiro Kawata’s Bat-Manga, Black Widow, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog and a slab more.

<ITEM> Gary has to duck out early so The Beast and Maid of Nails sing it out in style…

GERTCHA!

click to download SILENCE!#179

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Living legend David Wynne has commissioned me to write 500 words on this topic. Last night in the pub he teased me with the idea that I was going to be tasked to write 500 words on Frank Miller: Feminist Icon.

Having worked out my pitch for that one in the shower this morning (it’s actually really easy to read his work as an extended deconstruction of chauvinist tropes… so long as you just DON’T LOOK AT THE WOMEN IN HIS COMICS and only pay attention to the men – not an approach that’s conducive to feminist values, hence why this reading of Frank Miller is unlikely to catch on anytime soon) I now find myself face with a far more daunting task.

Five hundred words on “Hard Men with Big Truncheons: The Sexual Politics of Mega-City One”. I mean seriously: what can you say about this subject? What can’t you say?

Casting about for a place to start that wasn’t the bathroom, I asked Douglas Wolk…

With the very sad recent news that Brett Ewins passed away at the too-young age of 59, gone to join Thrax, Mad Tommy and the rest of Bad.Co, the Mindless Ones would like to honour the man through his art.

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