SILENCE! #71

July 29th, 2013

 

HELLO.

HELLO.

IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK.

Rejoice fleshburgs – it’s everyone’s favourite cyber-Uncle, Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 returned from his cyber-vacation, tanned to within and inch of my half life and riddled with exotic viruses from the far-flung corners of the nanosphere.

And to double your fantasy I’m bringing the return of errant Silence-son, The Beast Must Die, who rejoins with pod-partner Gary Lactus in an reunion event which Variety describes as ‘mawkish, hackneyed and uninspired! Happy Happy Joy Joy fleshyones, couldn’t you just POP?

Well go on then. POP!

Hrrrmmn. Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 can wait along time you know.  While we wait, let’s blurb:

<ITEM> Gary’s quest is over and the pair are reunited. WARNING TEAM!

<ITEM> No time for news, through the tears, but always time for sponsorshizzle.

<ITEM> Down a dusty path, through a hole in the floor, and into the REVIEWNIVERSE! Covering Gamma, Hawkeye Annual, Tank Girl: Solid State, FF (Beach Blanket Bingo), Justice League of America, Justice League Dark, Constantine in spandex and booties, The Bounce, Catalyst Comics, Lazarus, The Wake, Young Avengers, 2000AD, Max Landis, Wolverine, Wolverine & The X-Men, The Wolverine film, and Where’s Wolverine (maybe), The Hunger, Green Team and more, more more (how do you like me?)

<ITEM> A shout out for the Nerdist Jeff Bridges interview, and the Nerdist Comics Panel, and it’s farewell from the boyce, but they can both sleep restfully knowing that balance has been restored, yin has been yanged and Turner has been Hooched. Huzzah!

All this and the knowledge that Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is here, watching you all. Waiting. For you to POP.

BZZZZTZTZZKKKKK

click to download SILENCE!#71
 

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

While the Eighth Doctor Adventures had taken over the Doctor Who name and character, the Virgin New Adventures series hadn’t given up. In fact, freed from being a Doctor Who series, at least in name, it had something of a late flourishing.

The stories instead followed the character of Bernice Summerfield

Over the course of our history we’ve seen that there have been a handful of creative figures who have dominated particular periods of Doctor Who. When those figures have fit with what one might call the spirit of the show — people like David Whitaker, David Maloney, Robert Holmes, or Christopher Bidmead — the results have occasionally been stunning.

Here, with Alien Bodies, we see the introduction of Lawrence Miles as the latest in the line of dominant figures in the series, the heir to Whitaker and Holmes.

This week Gary Lactus continues his tediously thrilling quest to find The Beast Must Die. Along the way he finds a BUMPER CROP OF JINGLES!

In the reviewniverse he bravely tackles The Mysterious Strangers #1&2, Wonder Woman #22, Animal Man #22, Justice League of America #6, Batman 66 #1, Number Cruncher #1, Avengers Assemble #17 and FF #9.

Then we have a Cartoon County chat with Solid State Tank Girl artist Warwick Johnson Cadwell.

Strap on and let’s go!

click to download SILENCE!#70

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

“Paul McGann doesn’t count!”

You might not know it, but you gamble every time you pick up an issue of Dial H: the ink in which this comic is printed contains a rare sort of toxin, exposure to which dials up one of three parallel universes.  Before your eyes make contact with the page, you know that any given episode has a 33.333333333% chance of being: (A) a sloppy pastiche of the Morrison/Case Doom Patrol run, (B) a snazzy pastiche of a good proto-Vertigo comic (like the Morrison/Case Doom Patrol run, for example) or (C) a genuinely effective post Alan Moore/Grant Morrison superhero comic.

If Dial H #12 saw China Mieville, Alberto Ponticelli and co rolling (dialing) the reader into a hopeless tangled version of their own story in which none of the lines (whether in the art, plot or dialogue) connected meaningfully, then issue #13 (which is now only the second most recent issue due to my Mindless incompetence) provided a clear and direct line to the best of all possible worlds(/comics).

Comics being a collaborative medium, Alberto Ponticelli’s pencils tighten up with Mieville’s script, and the unstable environments of issue #12 are forgotten in favour of an information-dense two-layered landscape.  Ably assisted by inker Dan Green and colourists Tanya and Richard Horie, Ponticelli works for maximum accessibility at every turn, framing our regular cast as pedestrian browsers walking through a block in which comics sprawl on every wall, always making sure that we’re able to read over their shoulders:

It might seem strange that an issue that takes a break to recap the plot of the previous few issues should be better than anything being recapped, but Dial H is that rare superhero comic that actively thrives on exposition.  Try to remember that other standout issues in this series have explained where the powers Nelson and co dial up actually come from (#0, #11), and explored the difficulties that arise from contact with unreconstructed racist fantasies (no not Game of Thrones, issue #6):

Dial H is at its best when explains its own mechanics because theme is built into the design of this revamp more clearly than it expressed by any of the action on the page, a quirk (or fault, depending on your tolerance for this sort of thing) that only strengthens the book’s Karen Berger-edited pedigree.

Just think of the many walking tours through authorial interests that characterised that first flush of post-Alan Moore, British invasion comics, all those scary strolls through the green, trips out into blue forgotten worlds, the evening walks that lead you right underneath the Pentagon and straight on into the heart of the American scream…

The walking tour we get in Dial H #13 is made possible by pleasantly mixed metonyms, by a double act made of dual purpose characters, Open Window Man and his new friend, a young boy in a world of chalk.

WARNING TEAM!

This week, still bereft of The Beast Must Die, Gary Lactus goes on a quest to find him. His journey takes him into a lonely Reviewniverse where he mutters to himself about Tank Girl: Solid State, Daredevil, Justice League, Hawkeye, Young Avengers, Superman Unchained, Batman, Ghosted, Astro City and Avengers Arena.

Then we venture into a whole new realm baring little or no relevance to the already fairly loose remit of SILENCE! Gary Lactus’ manufactured alter ego Fraser Geesin talks to lovely Dan Fardell about comedy, the Man Of Steel film, Ivor Cutler, Ron Geesin and other stuff. Dan is currently filling in for Kerry Herbert on Kerry On Comedy, every Tuesday 3pm on BHCR.

TRUTH ACCEPTED!

click to download SILENCE!#69

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

Right then, sorry about this. Gary Lactus here. Hello. We’re very nearly back. What we have here is an exciting mixture of TWO amazing formats.

FORMAT 1: I, Gary Lactus apologise my way through some reviews of things like, (well exactly like to be honest) Satellite Sam, The Walking Dead, Uber, Avengers, The Superior Foes Of Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Dial H.

FORMAT 2: A LIVE recording from Cartoon County, straight after The Beast Must Die (in his best Dan White costume), had been interviewed by Alex Fitch of Panel Borders, the radio programme and podcast about comics. He’s proper and it’s good so definitely go and enjoy it! What happened after isn’t as good as Panel Borders but it’s fun. Alex joins us along with plenty of folk like Dave Stone, Joe Decie, David Lloyd and Bobsy chipping in with opinions on comics! Actually it’s a bit of a drunken free for all but with me holding the mic throughout and going on with Bobsy for too long about Jupiter’s Legacy. There’s also talk of Aces Weekly and… I’m sure there was something else… Anyway, what’s the point in me listing everything here? I’m not some goddamn Narratorbot! Hopefully if you’ve read as far as this you’ll have some some idea as to whether you want to listen or not.

Oh yes, I do sing an amazing song which you’d never guess was completely improvised. And there’s a special new Summer Special theme tune.

It’s fffphreschhh!!!

click to download SILENCE!#68

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

EXPOSITION: From the first few pages onwards it’s clear that this is one of those LA stories, an everyday apocalypse in which a strung out and savvy cast of screenwriters, rappers, astronauts, agents and cultists collide against a genre-mashed backdrop; the prophetic screenplay that drives the story is modeled on The Last Boy Scout, but Richard Kelly’s media-frazzled sci-fi meltdown Southland Tales seems the more fitting tonal counterpoint for this story of a city stuck on an apparently endless cycle of destruction.

You might remember reading about all this in the early hype, but if not you can always obtain the first issue for free online and get a flavour for it yourself.

The main characters in CHANGE are lost and ambitious souls, tilting after people and projects like a set of modern day Don Quixotes, struggling to find their way to an imaginary elsewhere that might just resemble home if they can stick the landing.

If there’s a criticism to be raised here it’s perhaps that the women in this comic tend to be framed at the centre of the madness, while the men are given more active roles as explorers.  Richard Doublehead (“the Virginia Woolf of screenwriters”) and rapper turned movie producer W-2 and find themselves instigating the plot and exploring it respectively, and in their dueling roles both men are spurred on by the loss of their partners.  Charlie Kaufman style maverick screenwriter and surprisingly competent car thief Sonia has a more active role than either of the female love interests, but her ability to write what’s about to happen still positions her as being somehow in tune with the madness where her fellow protagonists affect and are affected by it:

Thinking about Sonia’s character, I keep coming back to Angela Carter talking about her experience with the surrealists:

…I had to give them up in the end. They were, with a few patronized exceptions, all men and they told me that I was the source of all mystery, beauty, and otherness, because I was a woman – and I knew that was not true. I knew I wanted my fair share of the imagination, too. Not an excessive amount, mind; I wasn’t greedy. Just an equal share in the right to vision.

If Sonia has anything, it’s vision, but somehow her goals seem less tangible those of her male counterparts; for all that her voice is the most purely entertaining one in the comic, I still can’t help but feel that her arc is also the least satisfying.  Even the astronaut, who spends most of his page time cut off from the other characters, finds himself on a journey to be reunited with them and with himself:

Click here to see if I can bring this post down to Earth safely.