Mindless Ones

THESE ARE THE FABLES ON MY STREET

It’s Oscar season! You know, that season where it’s okay to  hunt people called Oscar! But before you run and grab your pistols, shotguns and catapults, why don’t you rest up for a while and take in the latest podstravaganza from the Dempsey & Makepeace of podcasting, Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die! The podcast is SILENCE!, the time is now and the trousers are TIGHT! Too tight as a matter of fact…I’m seeing lights. Take me to the lights…take me now….

<ITEM> It’s a fist-sized portion of sponsorship, with the usual subjects, and some lovely jingles for some of the dearest of dear listeners. Oh and they talk about ancient ITV gameshow 3,2,1, because, y’know, comics.

<ITEM>  The Reviewniverse opens it’s welcoming arms and the boys take it’s embrace. Synergy, cosmic oneness and all that aul shoite…Multiversity: Mastermen, Silver Surfer, Affordable Amazement Catalogue, The Sound of Drowning, 2000AD, Rumble, Transformers Vs GI Joe, Wonder Woman, Hawkeye, and Frank Miller’s Holy Terror all come between the crosshairs.

<ITEM> The final item! Goodbye!

Click to download SILENCE!#132

Contact us:


si************@gm***.com












@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

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! Comicsof London.

Multiversity Guidebook #1, by Grant Morrison, Marcus To, Paulo Siqueira and a cast of thousands

This is where I part ways with most of my fellow Mindless: they felt the old thrill while reading the Multiversity Guidebook, with its comic book creation myth and its parade of endless (if by “endless” you mean fifty two) alternative worlds, whereas I mostly just felt exhausted.

It’s a clever mix of marketing material, series bible and actual story, and obvious as it might have been the “dark secret” at the heart of the universe with the Chibi superheroes still reinforced the series’ running theme of how shit it is to be confronted with your own fundamental nature. You could even read the list of junked pitches, elseworlds, prestige comics and parallel worlds that form the centrepiece as a critique, if you were so inclined.  As Marc Singer noted in his clipped and clear-headed review of the comic, some of these entries are quietly scathing, and someone with the right (as in “correct”? –Ed) biases could certainly read this endless parade of Batmen and Wonder Women as a critique of capitalism’s frantic grasping (“Empty is thy hand”) and ability to reduce complexity to a series of easily recognisable products.

Is that really enough though? Not for me. The “Guidebook” section of this comic reminded me most of all of Gary R. R. Lactus’ Time of Crowns (with its endless list of medieval clans, “with their tits out”) and the end credits of 22 Jump Street, but it’s neither as succinct as the former nor as merciless as the latter – in the end, it’s just business as usual.

Click here for more on the Guidebook plus Multiversity: Mastermen and James Robinson’s Earth 2!

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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What’s The Story?

Every April 1st, an unknown bank robber steals $100,000, sometimes from banks which have much more money, and no-one knows why

IN THE SEA THERE IS A WHALE WITHOUT ANY EYES

This…is the voice…of the Mr Rons! Welcoming you, your skin and ALL your internal organs to the family bucket-sized extravaganza that is this week’s SILENCE! Dundering halfwit Gary Lactus and professional irritant The Beast Must Die are joined by know-it-all princeling Bobsy in what is already being touted as the finest podcast of the year. Isn’t that special? Yes. Yes it is special. Mummy’s special podcast. Smart time!

<ITEM> Bit of the ol’ who’s yer sponsor, and The Beast tells the boys all about the magnificence of Grey Gardens.

<ITEM> Who’s afraid of the big bad comics? Not these three fearless psychonauts as they bravely push against the 4-colour skein and break through like calves hanging out the back of a cow into…The Reviewniverse! Plus for the first time in the history of time… the weighing of comics! So: Transformers v GI Joe – 68g, Darth Vader – 78g, Uber – 76g, The Names – 49g, Amazing Spiderman – 65g, Winter Soldier – 53g, War Of the Trenches -620g, Freud – 463g, Bitch Planet – 63g, Prometheus : Omega – 93g, Trencher, 2000AD – 75g, Shackleton – 208g, Hip Hop Family Tree – 554g, They’re Not Like Us – 46g

<ITEM> What are you looking at? Is nearly two hours of solid hott goldchatz not enough? Well it’s time that you lot learned to lower your expectations. Nope, lower than that. Lower. Sort of Real Housewives of Vancouver low. Good. Now kick back and enjoy.

Click to download SILENCE!#131

Contact us:


si************@gm***.com












@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

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! Comicsof London.

SARAH HORROCKS – BRUISE (self-published, 2014)

From the cool blue risotone colour to the grey static hiss of the prose, Bruise is heavy on the cyberpunk stylings:

The comic itself follows up on that initial promise, coming on almost like a young William Gibson who’s got too lost in the poetry of his own thoughts to ever force them to fit a form as traditionally satisfying as a “novel”. Actually, scrap that “almost” and focus on the real novelty here, achieved through jagged collage of familiar tropes. Include the squinting cool of the front cover and the miraculous map of the back (as you must) in the run time and you’ve got one hell of a joyride here:

16 pages of bad road

We were so hot for Plok‘s extensive and illuminating reading of Guardians of the Galaxy (you know, the one with the raccoon that thinks it’s not a raccoon) that we invited him back to talk about X-Men: Days of Future Past, Jennifer Lawrence, Ellen page and their role in a series of movies that are just full of “great” men…

You all know this guy, right?

Right, then.

We’re ready.

…

…So, goddamnit, after all this time, they finally have a chance to make a genuine statement about difference in these X-Men movies. Or, rather: the X-Men franchise itself has that chance, and takes it. They don’t want it to, obviously…would like it to somehow be other than it is, even though the way that it is, is all their own doing. Oh, it almost breaks your heart, doesn’t it? Watching them floundering around trying everything they can try just to miss the point, yet the point still comes through, the meaning still comes out, inevitably. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, and all that. Instant karma…

Or, maybe not “Instant Karma”, actually. Not primarily.

But maybe something else.

I have to be honest with you: this is the only lens through which I can view X-Men: Days Of Future Past where it even counts as a movie that’s about anything. For what’s really happened here? I am, I freely confess, just a bit too old to have been tagged by the famous Kitty Pryde Nerd Crush – myself, I always liked the skinny, scared Jewish kid from the suburbs who was smarter than she thought she was, with the fairly-useless power – Chris Claremont used to talk about how maybe if she phased her hand through some loose rope for about an hour, maybe gradually the fibers of the rope would unravel – but Ellen Page was so astonishingly born to portray a film-version Kitty Pryde that she threatens to make actual even ALL the different kinds of Kitty Pryde out there, even for me who never really believed in about half of them. The Chess Grand Master. The Yogic Flyer. The Pro-Solar Mechanic. The Perfect Girlfriend. And just look at her whaling away on the thing, for heaven’s sake! From the second she wheeled to face Vinnie Jones in X3, perfectly improving on a Paul Smith cover (uh, it was a Paul Smith cover, wasn’t it?), my nerd-breath was absolutely taken away. Every time she’s been on screen, she’s been acting the CRAP out of this real-life-Kitty-Pryde thing…but you hardly get to notice it, because I think she’s been given, all told now, about ten-and-a-half minutes of screen time to do her thing. Even here, in what was really HER story in the comics, she’s doing dramatic things, badass things…even when it seems all she’s being asked to do is be hurt by Wolverine’s abduction of her storyline, she is heroically soldiering on and doing everything you and I probably couldn’t without breaking down and breaking right in two. Holy shit, and does anyone imagine that Ellen Page couldn’t have carried an X-Men movie? Wolverine would still be in it, you know. He would have a pretty cool part, in fact! Why you could even still have given Hugh Jackman top billing…but it would’ve been Kitty’s story, and so it would’ve been the right one, instead of the wrong one.

Click here to go back… to the future!

Shhhh! Be vewwy, vewwy quiet…I’m huntin’ PODCASTS! Huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhu!

Those two titans of tedium are back to wet your collective whistles. And thank goodness, because can you imagine having to live your life with a dry whistle? The indignity..the trauma. Did you know that over 50,000 people a year have to suffer with the chaffing, itchy embarrassment and shame of a dry whistle? WELL DID YOU? If it wasn’t for these two brave podsoldiers waging their lonely war against dry whistles…well. I don’t know where we’d be.

Where are we?

Oh that’s right – SILENCE!!!

<ITEM> A healthy, happy, bouncing baby sponsorship! Featuring Gary’s SKLENT teaser, The Beast talking about seeing Richard McGuire discussing his masterful Here live, and Dave McKean (did someone say Arkham Asylum 2????)

<ITEM> Oh you, me and the Reviewniverse makes three! Bumper edition featuring Nameless, Annihilator, Multiversity Handbook, Bitch Planet, John Allison’s Scary-go-round, Expecting To Fly, 2000AD, Stray Bullets, Miracleman, Superman, 21st Century Tank Girl, Batman, Ant Man, Wytches, Saga, Ms Marvel, Dying & The Dead and probably some more.

<ITEM> What? No more items. You’ve had enough.

Gary Season, Beast Season, Gary Season, Beast Season…

Click to download SILENCE!#130

Contact us:


si************@gm***.com












@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

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! Comicsof London.