SILENCE! #232
July 14th, 2017
“SOME LIKE IT SCOTT!”
With The Family Beast still busy chewing on cigars with the big boys of Amazon “Optimus” Prime, mere minutes away from negotiating a deal that will see them broadcast into living rooms and pockets across the world, Gary Lactus is forced to do the one thing he didn’t want to do…. negotiate with the Skype-inept monsters of Mindless North for a second episode running.
Despite the usual technical problems that occur when North and South try to get together – blame Nicola Sturgeon for nationalising Scottish Skype in a better reality! – Gary Lactus is joined by Illogical Volume and Mister Attack, their shirts wet with rain, their bellies full of macaroni and rage.
<ITEM!> Who sponsors Gary Lactus? Some guy called Dave. Who sponsors the sponsemen? Fuck it, I dunno, Geoff Johns probably.
<ITEM!> The gang discuss the recent Small Press Day, the life changing/band forming dangers of encountering strange works by shifty creators in darkened rooms and the explosive properties of turtles.
<ITEM!> Shifting effortlessly out of the classical forms he has already mastered and into the new realm of Perhaps, R. Gary R.R.R. Lactus presents his new science fiction masterpiece: A Westworld.
<ITEM! > The question of who the nicest Mindless One is raised again. Will Illogical Volume prove that he is actually a callow, cynical monster whose whole existence is a lie perpetrated against human decency by actually holding a twitter poll to determine whether people think he is nicer than Mister Attack? Only time will tell.
<ITEM!> In SILENCE!…Because The Film Has Started, Gary Lactus is surprised by Spider-Man: Homecoming, and the Scottish are grumpy about Marvel movies and enthusiastic about gingers and ants.
<ITEM!> With all the relevant admin taken care of, the trio dive arse-first into the Reviewniverse for purposeful wallow in the inky pleasures of comics. John Allison’s Giant Days, new non-hierarchical/anonymous arts project SLAB, Al Ewing, Dan Brown and Travel Foreman’s Ultimates 2 (which Illogical Volume has finally started to read!), Craig Collins’ Oubliette, Hot Trash Dimension and Ross Geller Fanzine, the cosy era of the Justice League, Gumby comics, and the wonderful info-comics produced by the University of Glasgow’s Wellcome Centre for Molecular Parasitology.
After making a speedy exit from the Reviewniverse, the team take a brief detour through the pages of Show Call…
…and tolerate Illogical Volume promoting Cut-Out Witch (drawn by the wonderful Lynne Henderson), Looking Glass Heights and Living Rent before heading off in search of more dinner.
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.
July 14th, 2017 at 4:51 pm
Is that the A-Team font my name is in on the pic? Yaldi!
July 14th, 2017 at 5:29 pm
All for you my love, all for you.
July 14th, 2017 at 11:35 pm
Haven’t listened to the podcast yet but I had to let Gary know that Infamous Iron Man #10 has four fantastic pages of two of the Fantastic Four sitting and eating at a diner. Is Brian Michael Bendis listening to “SILENCE!”?
July 15th, 2017 at 1:32 pm
Continuing with my bad form of commenting on my own posts, a few thoughts on the thoughts we had during this episode:
[ITEM!] On the transformative potential of Small Press Day, Gary Lactus got me thinking about how amazing it would be to be young and at least a wee bit queer, and at least a wee bit familiar with the reality of life in the UK in 2017, and to encounter Paul John Milne’s comics at one of these events.
To encounter those weird, funny adventure comics and to know that they were obviously, tangibly made out of the stuff of your life… how fucking amazing would that be?
[ITEM!] Because I was bored at the bus sop, I did my own Tim Key-esque adaptation of A Westworld.
It’s not a patch on the R. Gary R.R.R. Lactus original, of course, but I hope to play my small part in establishing it as the foundation myth of a better world yet to come.
[ITEM!] I’ve been meaning go buy my uncle some John Allison comics for years. I should really get round to that.
His mild bemusement will be well worth the minimal effort and expense involves.
[ITEM!] You can hear me struggling to work out how to approach the piece on arresting people with assets over £100k here, I think.
It’s a fun, cheeky article and a fine line of thought, and I instantly wanted to be on the side of the whole project because it sounds like exactly the sort of thing I’m all about… and yet, there’s also the lingering instinct to go in studs first, like:
“As a member of the Scottish Green party, of course I’m required to say that think that any attempt to fix our economy needs to make sure that our society isn’t based on the principle of taking everything for what it’s worth and fuck the future.
“Climate change is going to fuck us all, but it will fuck those who have already been fucked over and exploited by imperialist powers first, so merely capping the grosses excesses of wealth doesn’t seem like a suitable fix to me.
“Instead, as a socialist, I would argue that any economic reform that did not involve a massive shift in the ownership of energy production, industry, housing and land is doomed to be a mere reshuffle of our current brutal, exploitative system.”
Bit stern, bit joyless, very much the cunce. I’m glad I didn’t say it, and yet… here I am saying it anyway, like the windy arse of a boy I am.
I really did mean it when I said that whole thing sounds like a great endeavor though!
[ITEM!] On the endlessly egressing realities of the Morrison JLA stories, where what will win the day in one reality won’t necessarily be the right choice for another – Rock of Ages is the classic example, of course, but I also think about the thread in Crisis Times Five where the Spectre is taken out of commission but the only course of action is to wait out the generations of life that are playing out in fast forward on the big yin’s inert form.
Coolbrained Marc Singer managed to find an expression of non-interventionist liberalism” in the rolling action of those stories; I fancy that I could do deconstructionist reading that feeds into the play between the endless re-establishment of order and the endless revelation of new orders; if the Ewing/Foreman Ultimates2 is less gripping than the best of those JLA stories, then it is at least as well attuned to creative reading.
[ITEM!] Is Travel Foreman the boss of journeys? I believe so but I’m willing to be proved wrong.
[ITEM!] I moved Craig Collins’ shed this morning. Like I said on the pod, I struggle for critical distance these days.
We may leave the question of whether I moved his shed with his blessing or not open for now.
[ITEM!] I really wish we’d had time to get into the pile of comics I’d brought with me that weren’t written or drawn by men, but at the end of the pod I found myself loathe to try to sum up, say, Maria Stoian’s Take It As A Compliment in a two minute rush.
Two solutions present themselves: either I need to get back on SILENCE! or I need to write about comics again. Both of those plans sound good to me – let’s see how I get on with them!
[ITEM!] Despite being called Mister Attack, Scott is clearly the best and nicest Mindless.
[ITEM!] Lynne Henderson is currently the wrangler in chief for the Young Leith Ghost Team and you should all give her your time, attention and money.