SILENCE! #64
May 28th, 2013
LIVE! LIVE! LIVE FROM THE RHYTHM HIVE!
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is 64 (bits)? Let’s hope not. Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 wants to live fast, and burn out leaving a ghost smear of data across your screen. But speaking of 64… let’s go, Theseus-like into the labyrinth that is…SILENCE!
<ITEM> Jinglesjism, Sponsorism and Newsbizzum with Danny Beastman & Gary Lacte…no wait, it’s The SILENCE! News interns Chris Ware and Hawkman.
<ITEM> Reviewniverse a-go-go! Featuring a very special appearance from the sentient bit of blue mould that is…Bobsy, and he’s talking about Occupy Comics. And Heroes Against Hunger. And The Beast tries to goad him into talking about Jim Starlin’s gonzo 80′s wild years. Then TBMD and Gary Lactus soldier on into the quaglands of weekly comics in a very synchronised episode, covering Tank Girl: Solid State, The Bounce, Sex, Green Team, Daredevil, Superior Spiderman, Batman Inc, Justice League, Miracleman, Miniature Jesus, Lobster Johnson, Victories, Mind MGMT, Fantastic Four, Uncanny Avengers, Superman, Judge Dredd and 2000AD.
<ITEM> With guest appearances from Ms Beast, Lady Lactus and ‘Hungry Eyes’?
So if that doesn’t whet your appetite then…then you probably can gain no nutritional value from attempting to air-bite a podcast. Idiots.
SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.
May 29th, 2013 at 6:47 am
Beast, I think you might be thinking of Crossbones, rather than Bane.
I’m sure a Batmanthology Inc. title would be wunnerful, but the thought of the whole superhero world being Goddamn Bat-Shaped (is that the monoculture?) fills me with sadness. I’d be afraid of it ending up like refridgerator poetry – or Pow!etry, amirighte? The Bat[gender] of [location], also starring [sidekick/love interest/offspring]. They resemble/co-opt [local heroic/pop culture archetype] and die off-panel in [cross-over/event/agony].
David Wynne: particlefictioncomic dot tumblr dot com and comicsy davidwynne. Ideasman is really clever and inventive.
I haven’t been to the comic shop for a while. Been two-timing them with digital Dandys and the like. The digiDandy is really good, if a bit rickety (as I think I’ve mentioned before), but one faskinating thing about it is that it runs a really trad superhero strip, Retro Active. If you’d picked it up at ThoBubs for a quid or read it on smackjeeves for free, you might be impressed by the straight-facédness of it, even though loads of small press comicos (incl. me, obvs.) do superheroes. But to see them try such material in a children’s humour comic you can only buy online (slighty circuitously) makes it actually kind of cool, and makes me wish they’d pushed the envelope with the comic a little more before it left print. The whole Dandy is a little like that, and I shall of course be pitching a revival of Black Bob.
I shan’t hear a word agin’ DeMatteis, by the way. His issues of Spider-Man, where our hero tries really hard to induce a major psychotic break before coming to the conclusion that it’s just too much faff, are really good. Plus, he established (or merely reinforced) that Peter Parker doesn’t drink, which is ROCK.
Batman’s Lunchbox Of Death (who machines those logos? Alfred?) probably contains a copy of Holy Terror. And that hash about Wonder Woman? Come on. “She has no Kryptonite?” Horseradish. She has the same weaknesses as any superhero: point out the logical flaws in her milieu, situation and backstory until she collapses under the weight of her own diaphonous unreality.
Alternatively, get Steve Trevor in a headlock and threaten to noogie him into a stupor unless she lets Batman bash her bracelets together (making her a slave to his will, removing her powers, etc.). It doesn’t even have to be Steve Trevor: Steve Bruce would do.
(Men with two first names; whadayagonnado?)
(Maybe it’s like Mark Millar’s solution in Red Son: harsh truths, encapsulated in a single sentence. “Why don’t you put the whole WORLD in a bottle?” “You’ll never please your father’s ghost.” “You stink of hake, and you’ve been filmed on a seahorse.”)
I’ve also fallen victim to cheap digicomics deals at Kindle (check out the sub-£3 Dreddnibi & cheap Transy comics) and The ‘Ology. Picked up a couple of issues of Generation Hope and wanted to see less of the bolshie future-spawn (caught myself shouting at the screen at 4am: “why doesn’t anyone just tell this little shit to shut up and do her Calculus?!”) and more of Scott Summers’ Immaculate Office.
(Eighteen pages of Scott lining his pens up *just right* with the edges of his desk, then a Sentinel head flies through the window, followed by Wolverine on fire. “Slim,” he says, as Scott impassively broods.)
//\Oo/\\
May 29th, 2013 at 12:49 pm
Wunner Womyn’s got the same weakness as many a fictitious woman; male writers. Which means if Superman could tap into some existential Nillian, Beyond 3D Monitor-level powers, he could deduce with relative ease that all he needs to do is access a new area of his Super-Vision; “Super-Male Gaze” and reduce (strip?) her to a 2-Dimensional cardboard cut-out who can’t beat him because of her feminine incompetence.
May 29th, 2013 at 1:03 pm
In this context its classic Geoff Johns 101:how do you make the character awesome? You TL the audience they ate awesome. BECAUSE!
May 29th, 2013 at 1:06 pm
Or rather “You tell the audience they’re awesome. BECAUSE”. Bloody banana fingers…
May 29th, 2013 at 1:27 pm
See thon Zenith’s getting reprinted, in hardback, limited edition, for about a cool £100, pre-ordered only from 2000ad online from the 1st of July?
I want it but I can’t have it.
May 29th, 2013 at 5:38 pm
oisoundlikeblurintransformersthemoviethereandtheresloadsofthingsishouldhavesaidbutneversorry
May 29th, 2013 at 7:30 pm
The reviewnuverse seems to be a tricky place to get stuck in…
May 29th, 2013 at 8:57 pm
I forgot about Jaime Hernandez. DAMN IT! Also, I think it’s pronounced ‘Hi-Mee’ rather than ‘Jamie’. But we’re English so ‘Jamie’ will serve. I once got bollucked by a Brazilian dude for saying ‘Pie-ella’ instead of ‘PIE-YAY-YA’. Who the fuck in England says ‘pie-yay-ya’?
I believe the hulking cosplay brute you mention is a friend of mine and Tam’s- Big Dave, and his costumes were likely Bane the first day, and Crossbones the second. He can often be seen knocking about the cons dressed as Wolverine (I believe he was sporting a Black Adam outfit at the last one). He’s a good guy, just don’t let him do his Bane ‘back-breaker’ on you.
May 29th, 2013 at 9:02 pm
Some random thoughts on the podcast:
Hopefully Hawkman & Chris Ware will replace those inveterate ingrates Lactenberg & Beastman permanently.
Kudos to Gary Lactus for the ‘post-trauma’ observation.
As to Batman’s special item designed to kill him, surely it’s just a claymore-mine-bondage-gag with the ‘front toward enemy’ on the inside…
I too cannot afford the Zenith collection, and am dubious about Rebellion’s use of the phrase “Both Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell have been informed of the exciting plans for The Complete Zenith” sounds very corporate-noncommital so I’ll wait for clarity on the rights issue and hope a cheaper tpb collection doesn’t make my moral stance of abstinence harder to sustain.
DC in the 80s with the exception of the British invasion & DKR is a completely alien country to me so I’d be interested in a talk about Starlin’s work there, especially if it’s a complete turnabout to his 70s Marvel cosmic stuff.
May 30th, 2013 at 8:59 am
Tim, if you haven’t read Starlin & Wrightson’s ‘Batman: The Cult’, you really are missing out. Imagine Batman co-directed by Larry Cohen and Mario Bava. Lurid as fuck.
May 30th, 2013 at 12:43 pm
Have to admit I found that Superman and Batman vs famine pretty moving as a young teenager which was, after all, the age group it was meant for.
And bad as it may have been, (and I’ve no desire to revisit it whatsoever) I don’t remember anything in it that was nearly as dodgy as Bono singing ‘Thank God it’s them instead of you’!
Also do you remember the similar x men ‘heroes against hunger’? I think that’s probably the only time Alan Moore wrote some X men and Richard Corben was drawing that segment too…