SILENCE! #185
April 28th, 2016
WRAP MY TONGUE ROUND A BUMBLEBEE MOUTH
…strange news from a distant star incoming… beaming live transmissions from the satellite heart… set..set the controls for… the blackstar … we are one nation, a nation of millions, one nation under a groove… it takes…millions… of nations… this is major… can you hear me… can you hear me…?
<ITEM> What? Who? Why? HOW?
It’s only a right rowdy ruddy great episode of SILENCE!
<ITEM> But hark? Where is the Space God? While Gary Lactus scrubs his helmet and prepares for his one-man war on comedy, The Beast Must Die is joined by Lord Nuneaton Savage for a special edition of SILENCE! Expect ramblings from beyond the stars…
<ITEM> Some sponsorship, including news on the great Comics & Book Exchange in Notting Hill. Savage also talks up his musical shanigans with the mighty meaty Teeth Of The Sea. The Beast Must Die Also Talks About Cerebus Again.
<ITEM> Sound the harmoniums and set the synths to stun as we enter The Reviewniverse with a swing in our step and a jaunt in our hearts. But wait! What’s this? The RETROVIEWNIVERSE??? Hold tight as we explore the highways and byways of longform comics rambling… taking in a whole damn bunch of stuff including, but not limited to Madballs, Transformers Vs GI Joe, Miami Vice Remix, toyetic indies comics in general, Ben Marra, Gi joe, Battle Action Force, Film /Comic Adaptations, Tim Burton’s Batman, Peter Milligan, The Programme, The E, aters, Shade The Changing Man, The Extremist, Bix Barton: Master Of The Rum & Uncanny, mike Baron’s The Butcher, and believe me when I say a whole lot more…Oh and The Beast Must Die Also Talks About Cerebus Again.
<ITEM> A special guest appearance from Dave & Emily and then it’s off, out and up. It’s an hour plus of stream of consciousness comics chat just the way you ordered it. So get stuck in.
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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! Comics of London.
April 29th, 2016 at 1:04 pm
Top show sirs. Looking forward to checking out the new separate tatquarters of the comic and book exchange, and rifling through the back issue bins. Hurrah!
Tam was rattling on about Bix Barton just the other day actually, I remember it but not vividly. Another one for the list of ‘things to get round to read again probably not until I retire’.
Madballs were a toy I liked but my folks wouldn’t buy for me. I did however win a runner up prize in a draw in the Buster comic and won one of the little blighters! ‘Bash Brain’ (formerly known as ‘Crack Head’ name changed for some reason). I think those and Garbage Pail Kids and MUSCLE men and all that kind of lowbrow ‘neon snotty gore’ toys and art, had an influence on my drawing as a yoof. Still got a soft spot for it.
Nice to touch on those late 80s/early 90s Bat-titles as well. Kelley Jones’ work was ridiculously good and weird.
April 29th, 2016 at 3:16 pm
Recently bought a hardback of some of the Moench/Jones Batman comics, and it is a lurid thing of joy, not as far removed from their work on the Elseworlds stuff than you’d expect. The exaggerated/made-up musculature and ludicrous cape work absolutely fantastically in a way a lot of those Image lads of the 90s could only dream of!
Loved all the Milligan talk this episode! Don’t listen to detractors of the later Shade issues! It meanders and feels a bit off, as the story feel kinda finished by that point, but it becomes compellingly nasty and is still very Milligany.
There’s a load of Bix Barton in a 2000AD Extreme Edition I have, and it is great fun. You’re right that Milligan is one of the few actually funny folk from that whole gang, though I reckon when Morrison gets it right, he is a laugh, too (The Filth and the Flex origin issue of Doom Patrol especislly. Sad, absurd laughs are the best ones)
Not read all of The Programme, but I recall it being a kind of weird companion piece to The Winter Men. I remember the colours being fantastic, for sure. Looked it up, they’re by the amazingly-named ‘Jonny Rench’.
Madballs, they were ‘good’ for having thrown at me by my brother, from what I recall.
April 29th, 2016 at 7:06 pm
Loved the Milligan musings. Read Enigma from my local library at least 15 years ago but it was out of print for ages and going for silly money on E-bay, it got reprinted in 2014, but like his Shade the Changing Man it seems like DC have just decided to not bother completing collecting it in trade and just bunged it on comixology like Sandman Mystery Theatre.
Remember reading the Elektra series he did in the mid nineties been weird for Marvel at the time and the kind of thing that is pretty much textbook bargain bin basement territory but the recent stuff of his I’ve read disappointed (new 52 Stormwatch) although that just may be an attempt to polish a turd handed him by DC editorial.
Yeah, he’s very much the nearly man of British comics. His & Millar’s comparative careers are proof that we live in a broken world.
More Savage/Beast please, and Good luck Gary with your ridiculous psuedonym’s show.
April 30th, 2016 at 12:07 pm
Great show and good to hear so much love for Peter Milligan. Steve Gerber’s a good comparison. They both had an immediacy to them which means that while lots of their work hasn’t held up so well over the years, I still have so much affection for how they spoke to me at just the right time in my life that their deficiencies don’t really matter.
That said, the stuff he did with McCarthy IS still just plain wonderful and timeless and ‘Flowers for Rhino ‘remains far and away my favourite ever spider man story
May 2nd, 2016 at 10:17 pm
I really love your podcast(big fan of Bobsey’s thoughts on morrison and moore too).I’d like to apologies for my pitiful and (very)drunken attempt at trolling…was a bit misguided and was just fishing for reactions…got them!!!but I’ve even heard about it on other websites so I guess,my ‘bill hicks’ act need practising…I just wanted to get across the ludicrous trend going around the internet about white privileged liberals asking artists and thinkers to change their work to fit their world view,to me,it’s the most insane and right wing thing to do,why would you rail against Picasso to embrace more gay/trans themes?it’s not relevant and massively ego-centric,paranoid and narrow minded in my opinion.It’s the new “angry internet” standard…i can’t understand why any convo about comics,guitars and art (my main interests) always end up being about race and gender issues.CHOICE and ANTIESTABLISHMENT and ANTAGONIZING thinking is what made art,and what helps change the world.why would you write bad review of a Batman comic(with it’s history and well known demographic,for exemple) for not embracing your world views…ludicrous and frankly childish…take it on board and think for yourself then decide you don’t like it and read something else or write your own to show pips your idea of what a comics should say.But no,’angry/right on’ internet will get every poster,every artist and opinionated person on the net to agree and embrace their world view or suffer the wrath of the “wright” thinking masses…don’t want it,don’t think it’s clever,and it’s just a default reaction when stuff doesn’t agree with some sort of easy social conscience…I just wanna discuss Punisher max for what it is,not feeling guilty and pressurised to justify it and make it fit in some sort of existential and right thinking internet consensus…
ANYWAY…keep up the good work,no high production US podcast will ever get to your level of genuine,intelligent critics and i applaud you for it,and youguysarefunnylike.Sorry for poisoning your comments with what i thought at the time(of my tits…don’t do it kids!) was not an attack on your female guest(massive apologie to her,didn’t mean it to come out like that) just a way of saying…”it’s a fucking mainstream american comic,what do you expect,enjoy it for what it is,or read something else…but don’t put it’s author in a pillory because he didn’t address the issues you wanna shout about.
TL;DR:There’s a time and a place
love you guys…and everyone =)
May 2nd, 2016 at 10:29 pm
hum…interresting to see all the love for Milligan in the comments,when all this “thing” started because of a comment on one of is recent output…oh,the irony…
LOVE
May 4th, 2016 at 11:35 am
I’m not sure you understand what a review is, or what the difference is between open critique and thought control.
May 4th, 2016 at 12:55 pm
The idea of reading something “on its own terms” away from all that nasty “but is it sexist or racist” stuff is a weird one. Culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum, eh. Similarly, it is possible to read, say, Punisher MAX, and still think it’s a fucking great comic while also noticing and thinking about the dodgy stuff going on in it.
As Maid of Nails says, ‘open critique’.
There’s this odd thing of anti-’sjw’ (puke) types thinking people only notice shitty stuff in pop culture ‘cos they want attention, and aren’t genuinely annoyed, let alone upset or offended. Why is it so hard to believe people can see something racist/politically dodgy etc and genuinely have feelings about it?
May 4th, 2016 at 8:13 pm
What is with the weirdly prevalent idea that race, sexual orientation, gender identity, sexism, etc weren’t talked about before Tumblr?
Despite being written by a white dude, Othello talks about race. A lot. It’s subtitled The Moor of Venice, for a start.
The lais of Marie de France and the writings of Hildegard of Bingen – from the 1100s – challenged patriarchal constructions of femininity and gender.
Plus, back in the day people were hitting that same-gender ish left and right (the Sacred Band of Thebes was an elite fighting unit made up of pairs of male lovers, for example), and lots of cultures have traditions of recognising and honouring trans/non-binary identities.
So it’s not like these discussions are new.
PS: the establishment in the West, and the establishment in much of global media, is still white guys.
Messr Thrillin’ – coincidentally, I was rereading Punisher MAX today, and while Garth Ennis actually seems to have an understanding of the socioeconomic effects of institutional racism, the way he writes Barracuda’s dialogue is cringe times. Also, at the end of Valley Forge, Valley Forge, I cried (didn’t do that the first time I read it). Maybe I’m especially responsive to the combo of Parlov’s art + Ennis’ Manly War Hour?
May 6th, 2016 at 12:31 pm
Thanks Obat!