Mindless Ones

Maid of Nails: You can’t put the Punisher in everything. He’s a specific person for specific contexts, and this is part of why I love the Garth Ennis run so, so, so much. Basically, he’s made for a Garth Ennis context.

Botswana Beast: It’s American crime. I can see how it works in 1980s comics, to an extent — well, in the Daredevil series on Netflix, he is contrasted with Daredevil, and they do take scenes from Ennis’ Punisher, like in issue #3 of Marvel Knights. They fairly directly transpose them.

MoN: It was SO COOL. I was just sad that Maginty wasn’t in it. I love that dude.

BB: Maginty is in Punisher: War Zone.

MoN: With the Urban Freeflow Crew, doing parkour all over the place for no reason. That’s not in the comic.

BB: Nope.

MoN: I was sad to see him go. I mean, he was a really messed-up guy who did messed-up stuff, but I enjoyed him a lot, in a sort of weird way.

BB: That’s the one thing we’ve not talked about, and it’s kind of an absurd thing. Frank Castle, as a notional superhero…

Welcome to Diane… #18.

As the curtains close on the Laura Palmer case, Rosie, Adam and Mark  grapple with the question of guilt as presented in episode 16 of Mark Frost and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, also known as Arbitrary Law.

Ben is confronted by his slimy ratbastard past, Donna and James wonder if their relationship is cursed… and the beast bit twice before Cooper could catch him. Leland says BOB killed Laura, but Leland’s just crazy, right?

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It is in the name of the father that we must recognise the support of the symbolic function which, from the dawn of history, has identified his person with the figure of the law.

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Next episode: Bro’s on the go

Botswana Beast: So the central arc of Punisher MAX, which I think really begins in Mother Russia and ends in Valley Forge, Valley Forge, is all based on this plan, post-9/11, causing terror in order to provoke more foreign interventionism. It’s something to do with the Soviets — well, the Russians, not the Soviets, because it’s not 1989 —

Maid of Nails: But it is framed very much as “the Soviets,” because, you know, General Zakharov from Man of Stone is old-school.

BB: He’s a great character, but he also does horrible things like throwing a baby off a cliff.

MoN: Yeah, he herds a bunch of people off of a cliff and this one woman who’s about to go over gives him her baby to try and save it. And he lifts up the baby like it’s The Lion King or something, and then he throws the baby over the cliff.

BB: That’s literally one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen, certainly in a Marvel comic.

MoN: So it’s okay that the Punisher’s trying to kill him.

BB: I can’t actually remember the intricacies of this general’s plan, but it’s to provoke war. And of course these are not real soldiers like Frank Castle, like the other respectable Special Forces —

MoN: Or the SAS.

BB: Ennis has a fucking erection for Special Forces guys. In the story they’re just pen-pushing dirty motherfuckers that never saw a day’s combat in their lives. It’s just an ant farm; it’s a game to them, and they’re total shitlords. And they get killed as well.

MoN: That’s very satisfying, though, because they’re not cool like the SAS or Frank Castle.

BB: He doesn’t actually kill the SAS guys, does he?

MoN: No, because they’re too cool.

BB: Well, they’re not SAS guys in this story. They’re American Special Forces.

MoN: But Yorkie’s in there. He’s SAS. Anyway, Rawlins is the guy who’s going around stirring up shit on behalf of the American government, and he’s just the worst person in the entire world.

BB: He is a gigantic piece of shit.

MoN: If someone has completely no feeling for fellow human beings at all, then I can see how they might end up in something like human trafficking. But Rawlins — he has passions, at least, so it’s even worse. O’Brien, you know, the one who wants to bang the Punisher, is his ex-wife. There was some kind of attraction there. Then there’s the thing with Nicky Cavella, when Rawlins comes in to see him like, “Heyyyy, remember me?” and then goes down on him.

I really hate torture scenes, but when he got his, I was like, “YEAH! Fuck you, Rawlins! I hope they take your OTHER eye out!” This comic kind of makes you want horrible things to happen to people.

There’s a bit where he pays off a bunch of Middle Eastern guys to fly a plane into something and make a giant deal out of it —

BB: And the CIA do do things like that. He makes a fake jihadi cell, because that’s his job and there’s essentially profit in war. Frank Castle ultimately gets to the top of the fuckin’ tree and kills these bitches with the help of Good Soldiers, as opposed to the bad soldiers.

MoN: The bad soldiers, who are bureaucrats.

BB: Middle-class soldiers.

MoN: Rawlins is a really good contrast to the Punisher, though.

BB: A lot of characters are set up that way. Like the Russian general, Zakharov. They are all sort of counterpoints: men who have broken in different ways — well, broken to the civilized eye.

MoN: See, “civilized” — people like Rawlins are the ones who make civilization, and the implication is that it’s kind of always been like that. But Frank didn’t know that when he was in Vietnam, although he probably learned while he was there how bad it could get.

BB: I think there’s certainly an issue with his origin, that this bureaucracy isolates his encampment, which would be overrun but for —

MoN: His awesomeness?

BB: Essentially, although it does kind of delve into this slightly fantastical thing where he makes a deal with Death. Which is his totem, after all, with the skull.

MoN: How many of those shirts does he have, do you think? Is it like how cartoon characters have an entire closet filled with just the same outfit?

BB: 40 or 50, anyway. He’s got the T-shirt versions, he’s got the versions where you suspect there may be clubs held in the skull’s teeth.

MoN: That seems like it would make it really hard to bend over, because they’re right up against his stomach. They’d be in the way. It’s one of the few things that is slightly unrealistic about the Punisher.

Welcome to Diane… #17.

Rosie, Adam and Mark eat too many sweets and stay up waaaay past bedtime to watch the fifteenth installment of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks, Drive With a Dead Girl.

Naughtiness is afoot, and the theme is mischief. Leland’s dancing on the furniture. Norma’s new dad is betting on the sly, and Catherine Martell toys with Ben’s freedom. She’s a caution, isn’t she?

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…within the death of an unknown creature, its vanished identity abstracted in terms of the geometry of this vehicle. How much more mysterious would be our own deaths…

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Why not insert our contact details under the fingernails of your friends and families? Tell them on the golfing range. Tell them on the road. Tell them down the Roadhouse. But whatever you do, do tell.

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Next episode: Gotcha! or The One that got Away

Some more thoughts on the London Graphic Novel Network‘s second S.M.A.S.H. event, as previously discussed here.

You can watch the panel I contributed to below:

My speech at the start of this panel now exists like the death of Orion in/around Final Crisis, in a mini-kaleidoscope of different versions and recordings scattered across the internet – suits me, given the daft flourish about the Tower of Babel I threw in at the end of it!

The other panellists brought a range of expertise, and while there weren’t any heated arguments, I think our personalities and perspectives clashed in a way that was generally illustrative – Hannah was comfortable enough in her own skin to be flip and funny about taste, Katriona‘s contributions were considered and precise, and Mark‘s focus on technical skill neatly offset my own pseudo-academic tendencies.

As for the broader event, if you’d asked me I would have said that the crowd skewed young and “progressive” (not a term I’m over-fond of myself – I like specificity, a sense of what is being advanced – but having just used it like this I can see the appeal of its vagueness) but there was some pushback when Kelly Kanayama/Maid of Nails discussed the use of racist tropes in the first Warren Ellis/Bryan Hitch Authority story during the panel on MEANING.

Reconstructing intent was a running theme of all three panels (the other two were ART and DIVERSITY, remember), and in this instance it took the form of the Good Man defence

The first, and most important, thing to say about Alan Moore’s Jerusalem is that it’s not, for the most part, a difficult book to read.

Welcome to Diane… #16.

Join Rosie, Adam and Bob as they grab a beer, crack some peanuts and settle into their groove at the Roadhouse. Something sad, bad and dreamy is happening in the fourteenth episode of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks, Lonely Souls.

We witness the Reveal. Tojamura drops the mask, Harold Smith bares his soul, and the spirits at the roadhouse step into the spotlight. Laura Palmer was raped and murdered by XXXX, dear listener. We’re so sorry.

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If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

We’re sorry that this episode is a bit of a downer, but we hope you’ll agree it was the way to go. Please forgive us and come back next episode when we will have… maybe a little more fun. Thanks too for bearing with us while we went on holiday for a few weeks.

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Next episode: Take both your souls out into the sunshine with a nice round of golf.

THE ENGLISH MOTORWAY SYSTEM IS BEAUTIFUL AND STRANGE

Can you help us? We went on holiday by mistake…

That’s right Boils and Giggles, Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die have returned to brighten the corners and blow the dust from your ear-holes. How did you cope? What did you do? Where did you go to get uninformed, half-baked opinions about comics? WHY? HOW? WHO? Well don’t fret….SILENCE! is back and all is right again in the world*

*apart from everything that’s wrong and the fact that we’ll be lucky if we make it out of the decade as a species

<ITEM> Who wants some admin? Some sponsorship? Some waffle? Digressions? Begging? Apologies? All present and correct. Your mileage may vary.

<ITEM> DIY horror and comedy gone bad

<ITEM> Top secret news about SILENCE! #200…although by ‘secret’ I mean that we’re talking about it publicly on a podcast that anyone can listen to.

<ITEM> Finally we breach…THE REVIEWNIVERSE?!!? Like a Kirby-collage it reveals it’s shimmering 4-colour splendorousness… Discussed: Stray Bullets, Batman, Blue Beetle, JLI, New Superman, Kill Or Be Killed, Falling Asleep Watching Films, Batgirl, the transience of pop culture, Sun Bakery, Sixpack & Dogwelder, Loeb & Sale’s Challengers Of The Unknown and more more more.

<ITEM> Live DIY and paint on the recorder.

<ITEM> Out-the-backdoormin and the promise of a rosy future.

Didn’t you miss us? Couldn’t you just weep?

 
Click to download SILENCE!#199
 

THE ENGLISH MOTORWAY SYSTEM IS BEAUTIFUL AND STRANGE

What’s The Story?
Every year, twelve of Gotham’s multi-millionaires gather for a secret beauty contest-cum-charity donation…