Mindless Ones

Despite my seeming full mental breakdown after the first issue of Transformers: Regeneration One, I held on to my sanity well enough to continue buying it on a monthly basis.  Didn’t take long for a feeling to creep in that, beyond the initial shock, things were maybe… Off the boil? I continued to buy it more out of a sense of nostalgic loyalty than any actual engagement.  After all, who doesn’t want to see the creators of their childhood iconography still get paid, in this crazy work for hire world?

(assuming they haven’t espoused something morally dubious or engaged in something horrible)

Here’s a brand new Cindy & Biscuit strip for you. I’m doing these on a semi-regular basis here on Mindless Ones. Check them out here.

Also, don’t forget to get yourself a copy of the brand new 56 page  Cindy & Biscuit no.3 from my shop at Milk The Cat. You can pick up my other comics while you’re there.

IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT IN HERE? YES NANNY!!!

Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is more dangerous than ever before…because Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is tipsy, emotional and inappropriately tactile. ONLY JESTING fleshbags. Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 does not drink, has no emotions and cannot touch. Is straight edge hardcore. Yes sir.

Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 ‘likes’ this!

<ITEM> The Sponsorship Boys are here oi oi oi! Plus, yet more thank you jingles for the Friends of Silence

<ITEM> It’s the return of disgraced American newscasterisers Gary Lactenberg and Danny Beastman, and the results are somewhere west of spectacular. SILENCE! News is back and it wants your children.

<ITEM> When you get to the bottom you go back to the top of the Reviewniverse and you go for a riiiiiiiiide…Daredevil, Justice League, 2000AD, Milligan & McCarthy, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Swamp Thing, Nova, Superior Spiderman, Batwoman, Age of Ultron, Wolverine & The X-Men, Five Ghosts, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, 1963, Donald Simpson and Megaton Man.

Oh how we laughed! How we sang! How we splashed around the shallows as the baby sharks nibbled our toes and the blood turned the surf a frothy pink…How we listened to SILENCE!

click to download SILENCE!#59

SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.

Yes, I’m a week late with writing this one, but that’s because it’s quite difficult to find much to say about it.

It’s Trad, Dad!

‘Nothing of note was to be inherited by her loved ones, and nor was anything ever expected to be. She was put to rest with exactly the same title as the one with which she was born. She never ruined anyone’s life and never once considered a career in the deliberate, violent immiseration of her fellow citizens.’

‘One measures a circle, beginning anywhere’ – From Hell

‘Easily the current century’s first landmark work of fantasy and ranking amongst the best pieces ever written in that genre, with The Vorrh we are presented with a sprawling immaterial organism which leaves the reader filthy with its seeds and spores’

‘I would say, that if you’re talking about a line of progress, if it can be called progress, that runs from Berthold Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, to Donald Cammell’s Performance, to Harry Potter, I don’t think you can really see that as anything but a decline… and also I would say that if you’ve got the Avengers movie as one of the most eagerly attended recent movies, and if most of those attendees were adults, which I believe they were, then if you’ve got a huge number of contemporary adults going to watch a film containing characters and storylines that were meant for the entertainment of eleven year old boys fifty years ago, then…’

‘We shall attack, we continue to wait… This gesture, which can never be fully grounded in reasons, is that of a Master. It is for the experts to present the situation in its complexity, and it is for the Master to simplify it into a point of decision. … The Master is needed especially in situations of deep crisis.’

‘BOMB ENTANGLERS DISENGAGED’

The levels of taste and good judgement in the Doctor Who production office in the mid-1980s can be summed up in three words:

Doctor In Distress.

The following excerpt is cross-posted from She’s an Astronaut, Amy and Adam’s Mad Men tumblr.

“It’s hard to argue with a direct appeal to our customers. I mean, we can artsy up the image of Jaguar, make it look romantic and stylish, but isn’t it better to tell people who are actually in the market for a car that a jaguar is available?”

The answer, Don knows, is an emphatic NO.

As he progresses through his pitch, countering the Jaguar representative’s concerns with the same line every time, the Bottom Line, Don begins to sound more and more like a salesman..

“I think it’s better to think about someone in New Jersey driving in their current car and hearing that around the corner there’s a jaguar to buy….at a low, low price.”

“I’m 100% positive that this approach moves cars. And not just Jaguars – this is proven to move all kinda cars. Hell, even used cars!”

More importantly though, he sounds – and looks, check the upward curl of his mouth – like an American. Note the use of the use of the colloquial contraction ‘kinda’, the ‘hell’ and the cherry on the cake:

“Fellas, this is gonna work!”

But in the end this isn’t simply about Jaguar, and Don knows it. It’s about the crassness of American consumerism versus the elegance and exclusivity of empire. This is a deeply felt cultural divide and Don’s anti-pitch exploits it to the fullest.

But there’s a specific American Don’s impersonating. Herb wanted to speak through SCDP and Don’s only to eager to grant his wish. You want a ventriloquist act, Herb? You got one. Suck it the fuck up.

Read more at She’s an Astronaut

WHY DO WE STILL LIVE HERE, IN THIS REPULSIVE TOWN?

Blah blah blah fleshbags, Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735, podcastic postulations etc

BZZZZZZZZZZZZ>CLICK

<ITEM> No Silence! News, but much jinglage, in thanks to the financial resuscitations of the many SILENCERS out there. Beastman & Lactenberg come in from the cold next week, yes?

<ITEM> Sponsorship Special – The Beast Must Die (in his human skinbag form, Dan White) will be at this year’s Free Comic Book Day at Gosh! Comics.

<ITEM>Wade up to your knees in comics in the Reviewniverse with 2000AD, Indigo Prime, Saga, Wolverine,    Batman, Avengers Arena, Walking Dead, Secret Service, Constantine, Hawkeye, X, Sex and a special consideration of giant cosmic toga-wearing baby, The Beyonder.

<ITEM> Then, wade a bit further out, till the broiling waters of the Hyperrevieniverse tickle your conkers…Avenging Spiderman, Age of Ultron, Avengers Assemble, Saucer Country, Thor, Uncanny X-Men and Fantastic Four.

AND NO MORE! So get out of here, go back to your flesh-pens and weep. Leave Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 to his vintage basic-coding pornography and printer-ink martinis…

click to download SILENCE!#58

SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.

Spring Breakers, dir. Michael Bay, 2013

You might think that it would be impossible for Bay to top his Transformers trilogy, that those merciless tributes to the twin glories of steel and flesh represented the purest distillation of his art.  On the other hand, you might not think that he could get any lower than that seemingly never-ending explosion in a cliché factory.

Whichever side of the divide you found yourself on, Spring Breakers renders your opinion obsolete.  This movie is Fear and Loathing to the Transformers trilogy’s hyper-modern war movie (with Florida standing in for Las Vegas just as Vietnam blurs into Iraq). It’s the Saints Row to The Dark of the Moon’s Call of Duty.  The adventures of Optimus Prime and co might have fleetingly simulated what the disorienting frenzy of 21^st Century warfare would look like if it was fought on American soil, but Spring Breakers is the real deal – the story of four girls fighting the war at home with nothing but day-glo bikinis and raw fantasy. [1]

Oh, yeah, and did I mention guns?

Because – *SPOILERS* – guns are important too.

Sign up for Project Bayhem after the cut! Warning — contains stealth reviews of GI Joe Retaliation and The Host!