SILENCE! #138
April 15th, 2015
A KNIFE, A FORK, A BOTTLE AND A CORK, THAT’S THE WAY WE RUN NEW YORK
Lette me telle you a storye…let me weave you a dream
Come then gentlefolk, down the hitherymost further-far path into the faraway mistymost woods at the bottom of the garden. You’ll have to be quiet as the quietest church mouse and nimble as the most hop-skippety-jumping frog. Now close your eyes… do you hear those far away tinkling bells? Those bells that sound like tears on a drisly Wednesday evening? Those are the Belles of Gaiman’s Folly, tolling. Down the furtherymost farthest dingly lane in Gaimain’s Folly there’s a Magick Cheese Shoppe. On a dusty, musty old shelf in the back of the Cheese Shoppe, they keep all the faraway most forgottenest things…Christmas is kept their 364 days a year, as are childhood dreams and the first sweet taste of love. Would you like to go there with me gentle stranger? Would you?
Now do you see that doorway opening just out of the corner of your eye? Grab my hand and make a wish…wish for something sad and sweet and we will twirl you and I away from ths sadde world of grown ups and jobs and cares, and spin, spin merrily into the magickal realm of Gaiman’s Folly…come on let’s spin, and wish and spin and wishandspinadnwishwishwishspin…..
Wait, what the f*ck is that? A Tesco Metro? This isn’t Gaiman’s Folly, it’s Watford.
Oh well, I guess we might as well grab a King Size Snickers and a Chocolate Yazoo and settle down in this carpark and listen to the latest SILENCE!
<ITEM> Dancing in the disco, bumper to bumper, wait a minute where’s me jumper? HEY! BOBSY’s wearing it! That’s right Dear Listeners it’s one of those episodes where the intellectron levels of the podcast skyrocket, with dunderheaded Gary Lactus and dunderpanted The Beast Must Die scrabbling to catch up, dragging their proverbial knuckles through the proverbial dust…
<ITEM> Sponsorshenanigans, Breakdown Press’ Safari, Gary Lactus’ Brighton Fringe Show and the pure love of Point Break. Do you want to know more..?
<ITEM> And they’re off! Into the Reviewniverse and none of them fall at the first hurdle! Straight in with Nameless, Dark Star, Kaijumax, Surface, Albie Briggs, Event Horizon, Convergence, Batman & Robin, New Statesmen, God Hates Astronauts, Transformers Vs GI Joe, Jim Steranko, 2000AD, Descender, Disney Infinity, Jupiter’s Circle, Southern Bastards, Avengers Ultron, Batman Eternal, Copra and Dragon’s Claws.
<BONUS ITEM> Bobsy and The Beast review a comic they haven’t read and hasn’t been published yet…Black Widow! We’ll call this segment The Art of Reading Without Reading.
“And that was all” said the Dream Weavre.
“Goodnight comics”
“Goodnight Dear Listeners”
“Goodnight SILENCE!”
Goodnight.
Click to download SILENCE!#138
Contact us:
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@frasergeesin
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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.
April 15th, 2015 at 2:43 pm
Saw something on Bleeding Cool yonks ago about the Copra guy having done a few pages of GI Joe as a tryout or pitch, sumit like that, included a few pages of Snake-Eyes rucking with Stormshadow, it was from before Copra began so they said.
Massive love for Geoff Senior, Dragons Claws is very close to my heart too, was remaniscing about the shape of the N.U.R.S.E tower/headquaters with my bro only the other day.
April 15th, 2015 at 10:35 pm
You are bully of Niall Gaiman because he is genies and you are not. You cannot change how special is Niall Gaiman because he is too strong for that. And you are not. Niall Gaiman is ‘the shaikspeer’ of graphic novels; now don’t take my word for that. Take it from Norman Mailar, who said those for Nialls books. Do you have that? No you do not. That is why Niall will not listen to you boo hoo
April 15th, 2015 at 10:50 pm
What were the results of the Competition Competition?
April 15th, 2015 at 11:24 pm
Can we still submit to the competetion competetion?
April 16th, 2015 at 6:47 am
Yes. Competition competition still open!
April 16th, 2015 at 6:53 am
Re: Steve Drestijk-Locke and Niall “Neil” Gaiman, is anyone else hyped up for the start of our war with Scientology’s internet goons?
*SPOILERS* – turns out Bobsy was a cylon all along!
April 16th, 2015 at 8:05 am
For really real though, it’s going to rip the internet apart!
April 16th, 2015 at 9:46 am
Beast : I’m sorry to have to break it to you, but ‘Point Break’ really isn’t a very good film despite a couple of fantastic action sequences and the bit when the guy ingeniously tries to shake off his pursuer by throwing a big dog at him.
Bobsy : Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much, Easy Solaris is actually far, far better than hard Solaris. Much closer to the spirit of the novel and half the length because they chop out all those endless tedious scenes of that bloke being ponderous in the rain.
April 16th, 2015 at 10:14 am
My idea for the competition competition is for a competition where you win by entering the least amount of times.
Is Dreamsneezer (because of all the dusty dream sand) Gaiman still returning to Miracleman? I think the majority of his Miracleman stuff was great, but the thought of reading any more Gaiman appalls me. He’s too far gone. Once you’ve heard him talk, he’s unreadable.
I am ‘well into’ Copra. Some of the best-looking ‘powers’ scenes in comics, I reckon.
Dragon’s Claws also is great, though my main memory is a discarded copy blowing about in the wind at the start of the Transformers Time Wars.
Oh, the ‘Reading without Reading’ section is fantastic, by the way. I’d happily listen to a whole show of that. Read less comics! Judge more!
April 16th, 2015 at 1:11 pm
Tam, I’d love to mount a spirited defence of Point Break but the truth is, there’s not really much point. It comes from a deep place of irrationality and the pure love of Swayze + Keanu, zen surfing, absurdly skewed masculinity, crunchy action sequences and Gary Fucking Busey. Plus it has a character called Warchild.
April 16th, 2015 at 2:26 pm
It was a good time for war children.
http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1185172/warchild2.jpg
April 16th, 2015 at 3:25 pm
I don’t know if tam is wrong about Point Break, but I do know that tam is wrong about Solaris. Also, I know that the Beat Muss Diet is wrong about Sam Elliott being Sam Shepard.
April 16th, 2015 at 3:32 pm
I much prefer the idea of Sam Shephard the playwright and poet playing a bouncer in Road House.
April 17th, 2015 at 6:53 am
I’m with The Bette Mice Deity on Point Break. Exciting, stylish, juicy/goofy subtext, just the right amount of cheese. What’s not to love? The movie seems to enjoy a little renaissance every few years where people write articles about it as if they’ve re-discovered it as this secretly great thing. I watched it every so often throughout my teens and twenties but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it now. Perhaps a Point Break/Roadhouse double feature is in order.
Comics-wise you covered all my faves for the week except for Saga, which continues to be excellent and surprising. I also revisited the Morrison/Millar Flash run, about half of which has aged rather well. Guess which half?
April 17th, 2015 at 10:33 am
Fun fact: there’s a Roadhouse DVD cover out there that features my friend’s fist punching through it, towards the viewer. The Design Team couldn’t find an adequate image of Swayze’s fist, so opted for the pale knucks of a Scottish weakling instead.
I like Roadhouse. Gorgeous zen bouncer that has a gory death move. Fun stuff.
April 17th, 2015 at 11:25 am
A Point Break / Road House would fucking SLAY.
Thrills – that is an uber pop trivia fun fact.
April 17th, 2015 at 11:27 am
Oh yeah , Justin. My thoughts on the MozMill Flash: http://mindlessones.com/2009/04/02/flashback-morrison-and-millars-flash/
April 17th, 2015 at 4:34 pm
Just want to note that the bit on Copra between Lactus and Bobsy is emblematic of this show’s best qualities: Lactus doesn’t get it, and feels no compunction to articulate why. Instead, Bobsy is tasked with identifying the familiar but edifying combination of pulp and form that make it such a compelling work.
And that’s as it should be. Why spend too much time picking away at the ways a comic doesn’t satisfy the idiosyncrasies of taste? (I admit that in this very same episode the Beast really scalded Ethan Van Sciver, but these moments are few and far between and never feel gratuitous.)
That said, I do think Copra is one of those comics (like Prophet and Transformers vs. GI Joe) which illustrates the limitations of y’all’s sometime occasional resistance to reiterating your enjoyment of particular comics month-to-month. We don’t mind hearing yet again that a comic is good if in the process we hear the ways it is getting even better. Fiffe’s storytelling has gained depth with every arc, as Bobsy so ably notes… So, please, keep talking about it. Maybe Lactus will come around?
April 18th, 2015 at 2:54 pm
The art in “The Surface” looks to me like P. Craig Russell inking Rick Veitch. It fits the book, and overall I agree that it’s pretty great. I don’t think he gets “weird” altogether to well, though. You mentioned really enjoying the first issue’s last page reveal, but the environment looked more like the set of “Silver Spoons” than anything else.
That said, I agree whole-heartedly with the Ethan Van Sciver comments. Unless he decides to draw one of his brother Noah’s stories, I’m not letting my eyes anywhere near one of his comics. Bobsy nailed it when he described it as Perez with all the fun sucked out.
For what it’s worth, I fully endorse Copra. It’s gotten progressively better, and the regular release schedule reminds me of the days when you could watch a monthly artist grow into himself (it was almost always a him back then, which I think we can all agree sucks). I wish more artists would do what Fiffe’s doing, but I suspect economics pose a major obstacle to it. Honing a craft is difficult when the market views craft as an impediment to quarterly returns.
April 19th, 2015 at 5:57 pm
Good stuff on The Flash, Beast. You liked the Jay Garrick story a bit more than I did, but it is the best of the Millar-led issues. My faves were the two three issue arcs – ‘Emergency Stop’ and ‘The Human Race.’ The latter in particular is just perfect superheroics and reassures me that my love for 90s DC isn’t purely nostalgia-based.
April 19th, 2015 at 10:19 pm
Surface is a four parter AFAIK (the covers have 01-04 & 02-04 respectively) and seem to remember something on Bleeding Cool when it was annouced at the Image Expo in early 2014 that Nameless was a 4 parter as well, although not 100% sure on that one.
April 20th, 2015 at 6:32 am
Thank you, intern. Now get back in the cage!