Mindless Ones

If the plague era has taught us anything it’s that the power of raw delusion should not be underestimated.  With Future Crimes #1 we set out to prove that anything can be a holiday if you’re suitably alienated from yourself.

• In Personal Development, we explore how being grilled by your boss can be a gateway to conspiracy!
• In Your New Bookshelf: A Lover’s Guide, we explore the previously underappreciated erotic potential of mass produced domesticity!
• In Return to the Borderlands, ex examine the distances you can travel just to get a peak at the back of your own head!

If theme isn’t your thing, Future Crimes #1 also hosts a brief outbreak of poetry and a previously unseen page by Leith-based artist and spirit wrangler Shaky Ghost, who will return with a full strip in issue #2!

UK readers can buy the print edition here, and anyone who’s interested can download a free PDF copy here!

KIND WORDS FROM HANDSOME STRANGERS…

“Inventive, impressive, and surreal” – BrodyQuixote

Share on Facebook

I’M GOING TO FAST! I GOT NO BREAKS ON MY ROLLER SKATES!

Hi, come this way, that’s right, just through here.  Now, our first exhibit is this collection of bricks.  As you can see there’s five in total.  Two of them are the same and one of them is made of latex.  That’s right! It’s a stunt brick!  Then over here we have a wooden duck painted like Superman, right next to this wide-necked plastic bottle with some piss in it.  Well that’s it.  I hope you’ve enjoyed your tour of the Museum of Gary Lactus.  Oh, I almost forgot, here we have a classic blurb written by the human disappointment himself.

Two men!  One pod!  Some saucy innuendo!  Some sentences ending in exclamation marks!  After a break, Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die reacquaint themselves with a bit of chat about Douglas Noble and pal’s A Pocket Chiller series, not doing comedy and an imaginary space battle between billionaires.

Then it’s off to a bumper Reviewniverse with Simon Hanselmann’s Crisis Zone, Jack Teagle’s Collected Madness, Fight! and Teagle Comics, Cinema Purgatorio, Nick Edwards’ It Had To Be You, Doctor Tom Brent – Young Intern, Battle, Walls’ Chill, Sean Azzopardi, Orphan and the Five Beasts, Mr. Men and Battle Action Force of course.

Then it’s away but not before you are urged to buy John McRea’s stuff to help him through a pretty devastating bout of long covid.

See you next week!

@frasergeesin

@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

Share on Facebook

The cult film podcast with Mat Colegate (aka Lord Nuneaton Savage) & Dan White (aka The Beast Must Die).

The Savage Beast no.19: Bring on the Bad Guys

In this latest episode we take a look at some of our favourite filmic villains.  This time we’re taking a look at a whole heap of films, through the prism of  four character archetypes:

• The Bully
• The Pillar of Society
• The Bad Place
• The Corrupted Idealist
• The Disruptor

Share on Facebook

The cult film podcast with Mat Colegate (aka Lord Nuneaton Savage) & Dan White (aka The Beast Must Die).

The Savage Beast: Get Stuffed!

In this special overfull post-Christmas episode, we look at a selection of films we’ve been gorging on over the festive period. Films discussed include:

• 50/50 (Charles Martin Smith, 1992)
• Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967)
  
• The Harder They Fall (Jeymes Samuel, 2021)
  
• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Kevnin Reynolds, 1991)
• The Blood on Satan’s Claw (Piers Haggard, 1971)
• Black Christmas (Sophia Takal, 2019)
• The Empty Man (David Prior, 2020)
• Predator 2 (Stephen Hopkins, 1990)
• Last Train to Christmas (Julian Kemp, 2021)
• Jake Speed (Andrew Lane, 1986)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
• Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984)

Share on Facebook

IT’S HAPPENING NOW. THE CRAZED IN THE HOT-ZONE

Leaping lizards, it’s only our flipping 300th episode specktaklyar! OR IS IT? No it is. OR IS IT? You’ll have to listen to find out won’t you?

In this firm, festive and juicy edition of the world’s first, favourite and indeed only podcast SILENCE!, Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die answer listener questions. That’s right it’s primo pod-content provided by the loyal SILENCE massive and let me tell you the boys rise to the occasion, like a couple of rum happy castaways bobbing on a raft made of pure hot comic opinions.

Lots of things discussed, all of it delivered in the mighty, meaty, beaty, big and bouncy SILENCE manner. I’m not going to list it all here, that would spoil th fun and it has nothing to do with laziness.

Thanks to all who provided questions, and keep it festive, freaky during the holiday season. Be nice to each other.

END MESSAGE

@frasergeesin

@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

Share on Facebook

Presented here is a recording of SILENCE! To Astonish! form Thought Bubble 2021 with descriptive narration for the more visual elements of the original presentation. Our humble thanks and sincere apologies to Rachel Stott, Becky Cloonan, Al Ewing and Hannah Berry.

Share on Facebook

The cult film podcast with Mat Colegate (aka Lord Nuneaton Savage) & Dan White (aka The Beast Must Die).

The Savage Beast No.18: Fantasy Fusion

In this eighteenth episode, we look at a selection of films where fantasy elbows it’s way into the everyday. Films discussed include:

• The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021)
• The Fisher King (Terry Gilliam, 1991)

• Highlander (Russell Mulcahy, 1986)

• Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (Kimiyosha Yasuda, 1968)

Share on Facebook

If you’re in Harrogate for Thought Bubble this weekend, why not stop by to say hello to Mindless Men at tables 27b-28, Comixology Originals Hall?

THIS IS A TEST!  Those who are in attendance but who do not want to stop by our table must submit their answer as to why in the form of an essay.  2000 words on the button.  Those who fail will be subject to sanctions so foul they would make Darkseid wince.

This goes double for SILENCE! to Astonish Live, which will be held from 15:30-16:15 at ROOM 2 on Saturday 13th November, and will feature special guests Al Ewing, Becky Cloonan, Hannah Berry and Rachel Stott alongside your usual hosts Al Kennedy, Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die.

Anyway, if you want to stop by our table, here’s who’ll be lurking there and what they’ll have in store for you…

DAN WHITE AKA THE BEAST MUST DIE

You read it here first, but from tomorrow onward you can carry it around with you like an unusually lush grudge.  We’re talking words, we’re talking pictures, we’re talking a series of gag comics that might curdle the very milk in your eye – that’s right people, we’re talking about the new hardcover collection of Terminus.

As discussed on SILENCE!: Inside the Wanker’s Studio, Dan’s reworked some of these old strips to tighten up early episodes, which have been bound in a beautiful package by the legendary Comic Printing UK.

Dan’s also returned to comics’ favourite double act with Cindy and Biscuit: Year One, a newspaper format comic detailing the early days of our heroes in a series of neat, Bill Watterson-inflected adventures.

Here’s what Broken Fontier’s Andy Oliver, who you still worship as a god despite prior warnings, had to say about it:

With previous Cindy and Biscuit editions all available digitally, Cindy and Biscuit: Year One is a perfect print edition entry point into their world and is entirely accessible for new readers. This time White has adopted a Sunday Comics broadsheet format to take us back to an earlier point in Cindy’s life when she was not much older than a toddler and her relationship with Biscuit was just beginning. As such, these six stories are mostly far more light-hearted in approach, stripped of much of the ever lurking melancholy to be found in her (chronologically) later misadventures and paced more to build up to punchline endings (small excerpts of strips only here!). For those more versed the Cindy and Biscuit universe, though, the foundations for what is to come are very much in evidence in a one-shot that both parodies and celebrates the whole “Year One” comics publishing stunt.

One day the whole world will want to hold this comic.  You can do so tomorrow – what a treat!

FRASER GEESIN AKA GARY LACTUS 

In his top secret alter-ego of Big Massive Genius Fraser Geesin, Gary Lactus has created Purple Hate Balloon in collaboration with Laurie Rowan.

Since I am still obliged to crawl to Andy Oliver as the whole town of Bedford Falls was obliged to crawl to Potter, I will once again quote from his Broken Frontier review:

Purple Hate Balloon is the story of Roger and his pet Susan, the first of a breed of new genetically engineered floating animals known as Labralloons who feed on anger. Given this, Roger has had a valve fitted to his head to let off the excess pressure of being in a state of perpetual rage to satiate Susan’s hunger. Susan’s soothing flatulence on digesting anger though is manifested in the comforting aromas of fabric conditioners, freshly baked bread, and satsumas at Christmas, providing a sense of catharsis for those around her…

You can certainly look for social commentary in Geesin and Rowan’s story, or even project some on it if you want. I’m sure there are parallels and analogies to be drawn. Or you could just absorb it at face value as a self-contained tale with a darkly comedic appeal that is both sublime and delicious in its delivery. This is also some of Geesin’s very best cartooning to date with often cramped panels and slightly distorted characters adding to that skewed sense of a world like ours that has gone off-kilter.

Fraser’s art has been getting better and better over the past few years, and this looks to continue that trend in a suitably ludicrous style.

Best to find out about the fuss and ruckus before it finds out about you!

ANDREW HICKEY AKA ANDRE WHICKEY 

Fresh from his appearance on BBC’s Top Gear, Andrew will be in town to podcast live into the faces of friends and enemies alike.

Know him.  Love him.  Fear him.  Support him on Patreon.

In an effort to avoid becoming so bland that he stopped registering on the average taste bud during lockdown, Illogical Volume (stop writing about yourself in the third person! – ed)  has kept himself busy making comics and zines.  The following three projects will be making their Thought Bubble debut this weekend…

Not Because of the People 

Four stories about abandoned places and the people who live there.  Walk around a series of landscapes that may or may not seem familiar, maybe even real.  You are not alone.

Previews available here, here, here and here.

Future Crimes #1

If the plague era has taught us anything, it’s that the power of raw delusion should not be underestimated. Future Crimes #1 proves that anything can be a holiday from yourself. Building a new bookshelf can be an erotic adventure.  Being grilled by your boss can be a gateway to conspiracy.  Actually going on holiday can be a dull day staring at yourself in the bathroom mirror.  Believe.

Bad Poetry

Like good poetry, bad poetry knows no boundaries. Unlike good poetry, bad poetry doesn’t really have any sense of what it’s doing.

One for the true aesthetes in the audience, we’re sure.

DAN COX AND JOHN RIORDAN AKA THE HITSVILLE BOYS

Fresh from their adventures through heaven and hell, Dan and John are back in the building to flog Hitsville UK, the cult musical-pop-art-soap-opera comic book collected in 240 pages of psychedelic colour.

Follow a carnival of angel-voiced grotesques, monster-hunters, imaginary robots, hip-hop agitators, faded 80s starlets, 60s throwbacks, drug-addled producers and demonic accountants as they try to hit the big time.

“Like comics and music? Then get Hitsville UK” – Stuart Maconie, BBC 6 Music

John will also have copies of his gorgeous illustrated guide to Music’s Cult Artists on sale if you really feel like treating yourself this weekend.

Share on Facebook

Welcome to a very special SILENCE! in which two masters of the craft sit down in conversation with each other. Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die have somehow managed to secure Dan White and Fraser Geesin for an in-depth chat about their latest comics.

Terminus is White’s collection of his acclaimed weekly cartoon for Mindless Ones in glorious hardback form.

Purple Hate Balloon floats into view as Geesin collaborates successfully with animator Laurie Rowan.

Cindy and Biscuit: Year One takes us back in time to Cindy’s first battles with all things monstrous in a beautiful, un-dislikeable tabloid newspaper format.

The two legendary geniuses will be debuting these life-changing, earth-shattering, germ-killing comics at Thought Bubble on the 13th and 14th of November 2021, on tables 27B-28   Mindless Ones And SILENCE! And Pals in the Comixology Originals Hall.  Their comics will be available from their websites once this crazy weekend is over.

Share on Facebook