SILENCE! #63
May 20th, 2013
I’M NOT GOING TO DEBATE YOU, JERRY! I’M NOT GOING TO DEBATE!
(The scene opens, as Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 hangs in notion-space, a burning neon digital star of impeccable cyber-breeding)
We cut to: SILENCE!
The 3-d camera prowls across a vibrant landscape of shifting wordscapes and roaming flocks of ideaforms. The sky is burning vermillion, dappled with thought-bubbles buoyed on an endless layer of hot air.
With a triumphant scream of raw pulsing data, Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 bellows:
“<ITEM> Sponsorships, jinglehoods and the SILENCE! News with droning human newsbags Danny Beastman & Gary Lactenberg.
<ITEM> The Reviewniverse is breached and The Beast & Lactus storm it’s ramparts. It’s a gimpgasm of comics talk about 12 Reasons To Die (Big Ghost!), Dream Merchant, Dream Thief, Fall of the House Usher, Legion Of Superheroes, Wolverine & The X-Men, Red She-Hulk, Regular Show, Wonder Woman, Savage Wolverine, Cable & The X-Force, X, Nova, Age of Ultron, FF, Prophet, Uber, Black Beetle Fatale and 2000ad.
<ITEM> Thrilling new feature Reader I Couldn’t Finish It has Green Arrow and Supergirl.
<ITEM> The show really gets going with impassioned discussion of Eurovision and Tony Hart.
(Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 exits, chased by bear…)
SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.
May 21st, 2013 at 10:54 am
I hate how killy Wolverine is. Him along with the Captain “listen here son” America and Tony the weapon dealer just sort of piss me off. They’d vote Republican for sure. And be controlling fathers.
May 21st, 2013 at 11:18 am
PS you guys talking about what sounds like the kind of meandering, eerily 80s feeling show I might stumble across on 3 a.m. rerun television was probably the highlight of the show. Maybe you need to take a break from Marvel and DC… Comics shouldn’t be torturous!
May 21st, 2013 at 2:51 pm
Yeah, but there simply isn’t that much else on a weekly basis that’s any better. There’s usually some big 2 stuff that’s great each week but this really was an exceptional uninspiring Wednesday.
May 21st, 2013 at 4:46 pm
Dream Merchant felt like a movie from the 80s…
May 21st, 2013 at 4:53 pm
Hmmm. I quite like Dreamscape with Dennis Quaid. An oddball treat.
May 21st, 2013 at 10:32 pm
Very true. And your consumption rate is super high. The comic count is proof!
May 22nd, 2013 at 8:39 am
I like the new ‘Reader, I couldn’t finish it’ feature. I wish I had the fortitude to not finish things that are shite, but then I’m not toughened by repeated entry and exit of the Reviewniverse.
P.S. Eurovision is great. I am sad the Klaus Nomi/Princess Edea Romanian opera person did not win.
May 22nd, 2013 at 8:49 am
My girlfriend said that the beginning sequence with the various countries entering across the walkway was basically The Hunger Games.
May 22nd, 2013 at 9:45 am
To be honest a few well placed arrows might not have gone amiss at certain points…
May 22nd, 2013 at 10:19 am
Arrow should have been fired at the cameraman who didn’t know when to zoom right in and when to zoom out to show the onstage larks. Moan moan moan.
And also at whoever managed to convince everyone that Bonnie Tyler minus Jim Steinman was anything other than a terrible idea.
Eurovision: better than comics, sometimes.
May 22nd, 2013 at 6:36 pm
All my comics are going to be Eurovisioncentric from here on out. To be fair, much of my life appears to consist of clumsy flirtation in languages I barely speak with disinterested TV presenters in unlikely clothes, so it’s no great change.
I read COMMANDO: HEXNACHTEN, last week. MacDonald & Pino on a story about a female fighter pilot. Post-Ennis, this seems less uncommon, but given the format, the rigid Soviet professionalism and utter lack of romance did come as something of a surprise. The actual comic was pretty good – it’s really about a British pilot who keeps almost dying, and how it affects his resolve – and it’s worth a sken, if you’re in a WHSmith/buyingthedigicomic state of mind.
I also bought the Digital Dandy, which is really good, especially if you buy it in bulk. Bit rickety in the Android App edition, but otherwise, ace.
//\Oo/\\
May 23rd, 2013 at 3:45 pm
Incidentally, while there has not to my knowledge been an X-team of ageing x-pats, there has been a team of Genoshan refugees called the ‘X-Patriots’. They showed up in Peter David’s X-Factor in the early 90s, and one had a really huge head with bits jutting out, and another was a ripped, speccy Glasgow lad who liked art. His mutie art powers led to him being oppressed by norms, but.
The character finds of the century!111!!11!
May 23rd, 2013 at 8:29 pm
Nice though it was to be reminded of Tony Hart, you missed the big Al Ewing news of the week, he’s going to be writing a Dredd / Mars Attacks crossover! I think that could end up being the most insanely entertaining comic of the decade…
Speaking of female fighter pilots (as Matthew Craig was) I reread the whole Garth Ennis / Russ Braun trilogy about the Russian fighter pilot Anna Kharkova in one go. This is one of the best things Ennis has ever written and covers a lot of interesting, often ignored history and has a very, very moving ending but doesn’t seem to have got much attention at all. Next time you’re faced with a week of dreck, why don’t you review a run of a good series like this instead?
Don’t worry,there’s some good stuff coming back to 2000 AD soon, Aquilla (a very well researched fantasy set in Roman times by Gordon Rennie and Patrick Goddard) and Greysuit (a VERY VERY violent spy thiller updating Mach-1 by Pat Mills and John Higgins)
Also Gary, you do a great American accent! I bet you could do a great impersonation of that twat Gary Lactenberg and mercilessly take the piss out of him!
May 23rd, 2013 at 9:28 pm
I can’t explain why, but TBMD saying “Bring back Jim Shooter. Don’t, really…” made me laugh for a long time. Then later he called Gary Lactus a human toilet and very quickly this was my favorite episode of Silence! ever.
May 23rd, 2013 at 10:36 pm
Dredd, Mars Attacks & Al Ewing?
holy fuck.
May 24th, 2013 at 2:03 pm
I have loved what I’ve read of Ennis’ Anna Kharkova stuff. Read the first of this last series but somehow missed the second so didn’t do the third this week. More Wednesday vigilance is required.
May 24th, 2013 at 11:28 pm
You know there was Take Hart before Hartbeat, don’t you?
May 25th, 2013 at 10:36 am
yes of course, but Hart Beat had better music
May 25th, 2013 at 2:51 pm
And Vision On before that, Amy Poodle, as I clearly said in the podcast. That was co hosted by the Vision which is why it probably slipped your mind. Most folk remember Vision On for the rusty faced robot’s endless depictions of The Scarlet Witch, miserably rendered in tears that longed to be human rather than Tony Hart’s fun elephant drawings. All that changed of course as Hart took centre stage with Take Hart and Hart Beat. It’s a little known fact that Tony Hart only got the job because Tony Stark was demanding too much money.
May 25th, 2013 at 5:09 pm
That was me, by the way.