Mindless Ones

THIS SKILLED TRADE LIKE A TAILOR-MADE SUEDE, HIT THE STUDIO AND I’M PAID

Is there anybody there…?

If you’re there, speak now. Or…let us know you can hear us.

Just a sound. Any sound. To let us know.

There are loved ones here who want to speak to you…

THERE! DID YOU HEAR THAT?

Words! Words, coming through the ether…forming…what is it that you are trying to tell us..? Wait. I don’t understand…Item? Are yo trying to say item..?

<ITEM> Welcome to the latest, greatest, invite you out on a datest, edition of SILENCE!!! The internet’s first and only podcast with your spooky old pals, Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die.

<ITEM> Admin, sponsorship and the whole nine yards. Nine yards of what? QUALITY!

<ITEM> She heavy duty Sadmin, with the passing of two comics titans Norm Breyfogle and Carlos Ezquerra

<ITEM> The gang are still lost in time, so who knows what happens when. Know this: they definitely enter the Reviewniverse and talk about the Immortal Hulk, Tank Girl All Stars, Michael Kupperman’s All The Answers, Give Me Liberty, The Scream & Misty Halloween Special, the Justice League film and probably some more

<ITEM> Just time to talk about the brilliant Halloween edition of Inside No.9, then it’s all bad to the morgue for a quick Monster Mash.

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

YOU’RE GONNA BE REMEMBERED FOR THE THINGS THAT YOU SAY AND DO

If you only knew the existential dread with which I approach the writing of these blurbs. The loaded Colt 45 is sat on the table in front of me. Could this be the week? Come on. It’s easy. Just … just write something witty. Or pithy. Or surreal. Cold, dead lump of metal in my hand. It’s easy. Just write it. Find that concept. Something to hang your hat on. Something. Just. Write. Squeezing the trigger now. Just that sprung lever gently…gently…

Oh wait! I’ve got it!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

<ITEM> Welcome to the latest weekly edition of the internet’s most regular podcast, SILENCE! The podcast equivalent of All-Bran we are! Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die, ah-coming on like a seventh sense!

<ITEM> God knows – look this bastard was recorded across different times, locations and dimensions. It’s got everything in it and nothing. All life is contained here. The answer to the ultimate question could be in here. What’s definitely in here though is…

Neighbours, Gary Lactus experiments with being right wing,  TBMD explains comics gate to stupid old Gary Lactus,  Redundant chat about the upcoming Thought Bubble which has by this point been and gone, Komisk,  Sticky Ribs,  The Beast has seen Infinity War,  Gary and Little Barry Lactus on the park with a little bit of talk about Fantastic Four #2 and The March Hare,  TBMD talking Knights of Pendragon,  Recording of Ben Mitchell talking about The Storm Cloud Story from Thought Bubble,  Silence To Astonish! with guests John McRea, Sam Humphries, Matthew Rosenberg and Babs Tarr, Post Tbubz chat, Doctor Who, Comedy and Errors written by Nick Bryan, Dead Rabbit and on and on and on.

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

IF I COULD MOVE MY HEAD IN TIME WITH A BRIGHTER BEAT

WANTED:

One blurb, fully composed, grammatically perfect.

Essential: Pithy, original tone, mentions of Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die, SILENCE!, the Reviewniverse, admin and comics.

Desirable: Arch, conceptual structure, subversive punchline, Swiftian satire, gentle ribbing of beloved genre tropes.

(Please include mention of the following in your blurb: Thought Bubble 2018, Silence To Astonish Live, Crowded, Aliens: Labyrinth, West Coast Avengers, Tale of One Bad Rat, Tangent Comics: Tales of the Green Lantern, The New World, The Vigilant.

Please also include the phrase ‘much, much more’)

Needed: ASAP.

Please contact Silence at gmail.com with proposed blurbs. A shiny gold star is your reward.

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

JONATHAN IT’S LATE. DON’T YOU THINK THAT I SHOULD GO?

Hello…?

Is there anyone receiving this signal?

We seem to have become unshackled from time and space…we no longer no where we are, where we should be or where we are.  We are unmoored, adrift. Time looks like an inside out rubiks cube. I can see your beginning and my end, and they are. The. Same. Thing.

Help us. Something has happened. We’re sending this….this podcast out there into the no-space to try and cast an anchor on a point in time, any time to try and get home. Please. This is a message. A message. In a bottle.

Is anyone there? Or is it just…

silence.

<ITEM> Whelp, we’re back and we’ve even changed our scanties. Motherbox would be proud. It’s time for a brand new encounter with Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die bringing you the world’s most regular podcast, SILENCE!

<ITEM> So much to say, so much to do. Sponsorship, admin – all present and correct SAH! There’s probably some other nonsense in here too, but I certainly won’t be listening to the pdcast to find out!

<ITEM> The yawning maw of the Reviewniverse is prosed open by the plucky pair, and inside is lurking … COMICS, just the way you ordered them – out of date, stale and irrelevant! DIscussed are League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Tempest, 2000AD Sci-Fi special, Captain America, Marvel Rising, Jemm Son of Saturn, Vertigo Pop: Tokyo, Squirrel Girl & Ms Marvel, New Lieutenents of Metal, Oblivion Song, Die Die Die!, Mick Garris as the Zelig of Horror, Terminator: Secondary Objectives and Terminator: Enemy Within. Phew!

<ITEM> Time for a couple of I Recky-mends and then it’s tearful, cheerful, fearful goodbyes! Lap it up you suckers!

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

YOU KNOW THEY DON’T GIVE A F*CK ABOUT ANYBODY ELSE

Well, it’s a right ruddy great anniversary for the SILENCE! boys innit? 250 years of podcasting! Not only that but they invented podcasting. And the internet  – they invented that too. Did I mention listening? Yeah, they invented that. Invented the bloody lot they did. 250 years ago.

So why not join those two gentlemen, hellbent for leisure, Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die as they invite you into the inner sanctum for some verite, fly-on-the-wall, dogme 95-style podcasting. Ot’s a 2.5 hr epic that will test your patience to the very hilt! And they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Talked about are Marvel 2-in-1. The Immortal Men, Captain America 700, Legion, Xerxes, Oblivion Song, Eternity Girl, Megahex, Lockjaw, Walking Dead, Wonderful World of Tank Girl, Punk’s Not Dead, Tap-dance Killer, Action Comics 1000, and Highest House. All recorded in majestic ‘SIGHT ‘N” SMELL-ORAMA’!

AND PLUS The Beast and speshul gest-schtar Bobsy have a good old chinwag about Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

So checkitowtonetimewon’tyou?? And raise a glass to 250 glorious more years of the world’s premier lifestyle podcast…

(all together)

SILENCE!!!

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

THAT WAS PATROL, THIS IS THE WAR

Listen, can you do me a favour? It would really help me out if you just imagined that there’s a really good blurb here. Something wry, funny and a bit surreal. Something to cause a smile to flicker across those cherry lips of yours? Becuase frankly I just don’t have the time today to put the necessary graft in. So it would really help me out if you could just cut me some slack this once, and just scrunch your eyes closed and just…imagine. Imagine that this is the blurb you’ve always dreamt of.

<ITEM> It’s a SILENCE! And not just any old SILENCE! but a SILENCE! featuring your old pals Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die. Come to drop a comics plopsy right in your tea.

<ITEM> Admin, Dadmin, sponsorship and some honest to goodness SILENCE! News?? Right here effendi. Hot takes on the latest Rob Liefeld and Neil Gaiman announcements.

<ITEM> Suddenly… THE REVIEWNIVERSE! Comics old and new are ingurgitated: World Without End, The Beef, Shade The Changing Woman, Ragman, The Highest House, Gideon Falls, Oblivion Song, The Spider King, Prism Stalker and more. Plus hot news about the John Higgins-painted Cronenbergian body-horror Batman comic that simply does not exist.

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

AND I STILL LOVE THE GIRL FROM BENNINGTON

This is it. We’ve worked for so many years to get to this. Years squirrelled away in the lab. Years banging our heads against a brick wall. Years when it all seemed so bleak..so utterly pointless. Great minds came and great minds went. Some cracked and crumbled under the awful weight of it all. I saw at least one certified genius snap and run screaming from the insurmountable, impassive wall of the task at hand. But yet still. Here we are. We brave few. Through sheer tenacious bloody-minded perseverance, we stand before you clutching this tiny vial. Inside this fragile glass container we have the essence…the pure distilled very essence of podcasting. If I take this pipette and draw out one tiny drop and…

<ITEM> It’s only a right ruddy new epidose of SILENCE! It’s the life-style comics magazine for the discerning gad-about-town, with your smiling friends Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die here to steer your little ship into the cool calm waters of…podchat

<ITEM> I Reckymend brings The Beast’s latest obsession, the horror podcasts Shockwaves and Killer POV

<ITEM> Glad aboy admin? It’s gladmin! Take that gladmin with a spoonful of paternal responsibility and you have Dadmin!

<ITEM> SILENCE!…Because The Telly is on brings us the new Tick series, the old animated Tick cartoon and Hannibal.

<ITEM> The Reviewniverse reaches out through the mirror and pulls us back in with it. There’s some chat about Giffen & DeMatteis’ Justice League, Milk Wars, Spectacular Spiderman, and the We Told You So: The Story of Fantagraphics. More for sure, but I’m blowed if I can remember. Trust me though – all gold.

<ITEM>Stick around for our greatest show-ending ever!

CAN I GO NOW?

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

A few years ago I was asked to provide a back-up strip for a notable sci-fi comic that Image was publishing at the time. It didn’t end up being used but I thought I might share it with you for this whole Mindless Decade shebang. Enjoy!

Can it really be 10 years?

10 years since reality glitched, flexed like a Russian gymnast and then dry-heaved a small barely-formed, mewling blog into being?

10 years since 4 plucky lads from Liverpool formed like Voltron to change the face of pop music forever?

10 years since the Nostalgialator was switched on?

10 years since Alan Moore coined the notion of ideaspace and Neil Gaiman started selling time-shares there?

10 years since the Space Shuttle Challenger was piloted into the Empire State Building by OJ Simpson and Steve Jobs, skull-fucked on Mezcal?

10 years since the dark portal Barbelith cracked open and 10,000 demons clawed their way into the world?

10 years since Stan Lee was revealed to be a crude automaton made up of a wig, some false teeth, a pigskin full of feathers and some rudimentary cords and pulleys, being psychically animated by a 13 year old girl in a coma in Reykjavik.

10 years since Grant Morrison and Alan Moore decided to settle their half-century grudge match once and for all with a bout of psychic wrestling in a cosmic version of the fireplace scene in Women in Love’ ?

10 years since Mark Millar retired from comics to set up his gulag/theme-park ‘Millarworld’ on a small island in the Pacific Rim, taking his inspiration from Miss Wonderstarr’s Kingdom in ‘Zenith Phase III’ (not the first time he’d rinsed Grant Morrison’s creative gland for the accumulation of his own filthy lucre)?

10 years since Frank Miller blew himself up creating a bomb from fertiliser, nitro-glycerine and ink, leaving only a Hiroshima style silhouette on his apartment wall?

10 years since Brian Michael Bendis finished his epic 300 issue run of ‘One-sided Telephone Conversation Comics’ and committed ritual seppuku outside SDCC?

10 years since David Bowie and Prince finally consummated their secret love affair and departed on their cosmic odyssey, leaving a pair of robot-replicas in their place to do their pop-bidding?

10 years since 2000AD changed it’s name to Tharg’s Olde Timey Phantastic Adventure Periodical?

10 years since reality was revealed to be a child’s drawing of a cow, with the word ‘PIG’ written underneath it?

10 years since Chris Ware finally admitted that what he really liked doing was was watching Adam Sandler’s mid-period comedies with his trousers round his ankles and his knackers in a bowl of raspberry jelly and that his next comic was going to be a 3-d exegesis on this sensation?

10 years since little Kieron Gillen was born?

10 years since the Quizzlertron gaines sentience and left for space to ask the ultimate question?

10 years since poutin’ Paul Pope was attacked by a rabid fan with an axe and chopped into hundreds of pieces, with each bloody piece gaining sentience and becoming a comic artist unto themselves (but with a different name)?

10 years since Garth Ennis had his nipples pierced and became a vegan?

10 years since the world realised that writing about pop culture and childhood ephemera was actually a renewable energy source, and set up enormous writing farms out at sea, with bearded 30-somethings manacled to computers, forced to strip-mine their memories for every fleeting observation or idea about a cartoon they watched when they were 7, until they collapsed, spent husks exhaling their last on a dog-eared copy of the X-Men?

10 years since all comics and pop-culture fans realised, in one blindingly simple spiritual roundhouse to the temple, that being a racist, sexist fuckwad was a waste of everyone’s time and they either mentally re-adjusted or walked themselves smartly off the nearest cliff.

10 years since Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die won the Nobel Prize for inventing the podcast?

10 years since ‘Rob Liefield’ became an official state of mind rather than a person?

10 years of tears?

10 years of fears?

10 years without Tears for Fears?

10 years of steers, beers, tabloid smears,  grinding gears and Stephen Frears?

10 years since Bobsy, Adam/Zom, Amy Poodle, Gary Lactus, Botswana Beast and The Beast Must Die decided to risk it all on a gamble that would pay off in spades, bringing them riches and adoration beyond their wildest dreams; picking up sentient writing machines Illogical Volume and Andrew Hickey in their ideological trawler-net and adding them to the hive-mind; slotting in Mister Attack, Lord Nuneaton Savage, Maid of Nails and others whenever their weapons-specialisms were required; all in service of creating the One True Blog, a place of cultural and spiritual nourishment, a place where the greatest minds of their generation could dash themselves against the impervious face of Comics and the Almighty Neckbeard…a place where all are welcome, and no fan is left behind…unless they’re a chode. A place called Mindless Ones. A blog. An idea. A distraction. A commune. A cult. A recovery group. A house of ideas, a warehouse of broken dreams. A place with some of the best writing about comics that you’ll find on the internet. And when it comes to it, isn’t that what this big ol’ shook up mess we call life’s all about?

No? Well it’s all we’ve got.

It’s a blog eat blog world out there, with many a noble companion fallen by the wayside. Life is a hurricane of shit and sawdust, so the fact that we’re still even standing after 10 years fills like a reason to celebrate.So join us won’t you, as we present a month of relentless onanism, with new posts from us all, as well as some dredging up / curating some past forgotten gems and old favourite posts. There’s gold in them thar hills I tell you, gold!

MINDLESS ONES 4 EVER!!!!!