SILENCE! #30
September 10th, 2012
“TELL THEM ABOUT THE TWINKIE…”
“WHAT ABOUT THE TWINKIE?”
YO HO HO and a bottle of meths – it’s time for SILENCE!, the rough podcast, its hour come round at last, that slouches towards Bethlehem! Yaaay! I knew that English Degree would come in useful…
The Beast and Gary Lactus bring you all the usual half-baked treats straight from the dutch oven…treats such as: The SILENCE! News (featuring insight!), and Lactus pathetically pleads with Dear Listener to look at his stupid film. Then there’s full and hearty discussions of such 4-colour wonders like Fraction and A-Ha’s Hawkeye no.2, Action no.0, Dial H no.0, Animal Man no.0, Dan the Unharmable, Fashion Beast (with a brief detour into McLaren’s Ghosts of Oxford Street and Grant Morrison’s Sick Buildings), Sweet Tooth, and Amazing Spiderman. Grand!
The SILENT Question comes from robotic miseryguts The Vision, and the answer involves Lockjaw, Aquaman and tangentially the absolutely wonderful Batman: Brave & The Bold cartoon.
Then Lactus takes us to the movies (and tries to fondle us in the back seat) and reviews DREDD! 3D!
Finally The Beast directs us to the great blog Suggested For Mature Readers, and recalls Miracleman: The Golden Age, Gaiman’s finest hour. Oh and tells you to pick up the Prophet and Glory trades, quick smart!
Uptown, top ranking!
Cartoon County interview #12: Karrie Fransman and Ian Hague
September 10th, 2012
Way back in March, Cartoon County played host to two speakers. They were nice and good. There names were Karrie Fransman and Ian Hague.
Karrie Fransman has created comics for The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The New Statesman and Psychologies Magazine and published a graphic novel The House That Groaned with Random House’s Square Peg. This is what it sounds like when she speaks:
[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Karrie-Fransman.mp3]
Click to download Karrie Fransman
Ian Hague is the director of Comics Foruma website and annual event which aims to increase the visibility and accessibility of comics scholarship. When he opens his mouth, this happens:
[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Ian-Hague.mp3]
Cartoon County is an association of over 100 cartoonists and comic artists in the Sussex area. Our regular meetings are usually on the last Monday of every month at The Cricketers, Black Lion St, Brighton, from 6 til late. If you’re a cartoonist or a comic artist, or use those particular styles of drawing in your work as an illustrator, animator or storyboard artist, you are very welcome to join us.
SILENCE! #29
September 4th, 2012
I LIKE LOU REED SHE SAID, STICKING HER TONGUE IN MY EAR!
Well now, if it isn’t those meddling kids…I thought I told you to stay away from this here haunted podcast! Welcome gentle listenoids to SILENCE! no.29, the podcast that, like Michael Bolton, is asking to touch you there. Join Gary Lactus and the Virtual 3D Godhead The Beast Must Die as they lead you skipping through The SILENCE News (with kittens and trolls), before immersing themselves into the depths of…comics.
They have a sobering time with Steve Gerber’s comics swansong Infernal Man-Thing no.3, a West country wade through Mudman no.5, and the usual fun with Prophet and Axe Cop. Then Lactus pulls up his britches and smashes headfirst into Man Vs Comics, covering Wolverine & The X-Men, FF, Avenging Spiderman, Justice League, AVX Vs, National Comics: Looker, The JLI Annual (with a digression into Tromaville). He also has nice things to say about The New Deadwardians.
The Beast’s Bargain Basment takes in Eddie Campbell’s Alec, in particular the King Canute Crowd which involves a fair amount of wistful musings from the Beast. There’s a special Silent Question from that cosmic beatnik The Silver Surfer, and the answers involve The Shadow, Cosmic Boy, Goliath, The Question and Dr Fate.
Then there’s a brief discussion of the new series of Dr Who, and then it’s into the home stretch and off to bed. That’s some good eatin’ (listening) for ya. That’s SILENCE!
Click below for a picture of the Vision in a turtleneck…
Doctor Who: Asylum Of The Daleks
September 3rd, 2012
Does Steven Moffat not want to be writing for the Daleks?
It would make sense that he doesn’t — the Daleks are fundamentally uninteresting antagonists from a story point of view. They’re an incredible visual and aural design, of course, but as far as stories go, there aren’t really very many that you can do with them.
SILENCE! #28
August 28th, 2012
DO NOT FEED THIS PODCAST AFTER MIDNIGHT!
What so never feed it at all?
It’s always after midnight!
Who feeds podcasts anyway you chump?
WELL???
Hi there, and welcome to the sole justification for electricity, SILENCE no.28! And what a time you chose to stop by. It’s a veritable cornucopia of comics bull$hit! A very poorly Beast and Lactus drag themselves from their sickbeds to deliver a particularly rambling SILENCE! News, covering super-smoochies and the return of Dr Who. Then it’s a hop, skip and jump into the weekly comics, includifying Batman Inc no.3, Dan The Unharmable (with a stomach churning digression into The Walking Dead 100 in which the pair compare injuries like that scene in Jaws – no, not the one with Roy Scheider and the kid you moron!), Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom from Waid ‘n’ Samnee, the sad end of the line for Dave Sim’s Glamourpuss, AVX: Uncanny X-Men, and the 50th anniversary of Amazing Spiderman. Booyah.
There’s a SILENT question from no-one’s favourite Robin, Tim Drake, and the answers include Power Pack and Hobbes (and the Beast manages to criticise charity comics, the mean-spirited, heartless bastard) Then he takes us wading into the recesses of the Beast’s Bargain Basement with a retrospective of lost 1970’s horror publishers Skywald. Add in a recommendation to check out Joe Dante’s wonderful Trailers From Hell website for notcomics and you have a plucky edition of SILENCE! that manages to overcome adversity and become a champion in it’s field. Go SILENCE! Don’t forget to check below for some lovely Skywald images in the SILENCE Gallery….
(As always, thanks to James Stokoe for his wonderful SILENCE! banner)
Tygers and Lambs #2 – Wild Children
August 25th, 2012
What a joy it is to dance and sing…
…or so I seem to remember anyway. This bloggy vessel has now entered the fourth decade of its journey towards oblivion, so you can look forward to it trying out its new “all whinging, all the time” persona as its mechanics starts to fail and its withered captain feels the need to overcompensate in a tragic bid for immortality.
From New X-Men: Riot at Xaviers, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
But before I lose myself to that delightful journey, there’s Ales Kot and Riley Rossmo‘s Wild Children, a comic book that couldn’t feel more like a jolt from the nineties if it had come wrapped in a pair of novelty Spice Girls underpants and been delivered by a reformed Lee and Herring. Except that it’s actually a lot more specific than that, because what Wild Chilren feels like is a a jolt from my nineties – if you can imagine a version of Grant Morrison and Philip Bond’s Kill Yr Boyfriend that tries to encompass all of The Invisibles, you’ll probably be imagining something quite like Wild Children. Like The Invisibles, Wild Children is clearly built to be read in a circle, and if the first line of dialogue – “I still don’t understand” – doesn’t get this point across, there’s another line on the third page to make the design even harder to ignore: “Some of you may think we’re evil, but I don’t think you’ll miss the point this time.”
From The Invisibles #1, ‘Dead Beatles’, by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell
All of which is typical of Wild Children’s approach. Part story, part lecture, Wild Children is a swaggering, talky comic that positions its readers as adult hostages, drugged and held at gunpoint by the titular teens. Weapons are brandished that may or may not be weapons, speeches about the nature of reality are given, tragedy ensues.
Some people might object to being positioned this way – former wild children with fluff-encrusted blank badges in their sock drawers might find themselves wanting to be the ones giving the lecture, for example – but while I would have probably have got more out of the comic if Riley Rossmo had been given more action to draw, the loose, unfinished quality of his line was enough to get me through a couple of reading cycles. And like I said, there’s plenty of swagger in Wild Children’s design. From its carefully combusted cover on in, this is clearly the work of a couple of people who want to start something.
The only question is, what is it that they want to start, exactly?
SILENCE! #27
August 21st, 2012
I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here someday burns down, and I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away and I never come back to this town again…
OH CHEER UP CHARLIE CHUCKLES!
Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s SILENCE! no.27. That’s right it’s been 27 years since SILENCE! started. The internet was sepia and comics were carved on the side of cave walls!
So grab your best gal pal or guy puy, and let’s burrow snout first into a big ol’ pile of comics hoo-hah. After a fist-pumping ballad in honor of gas-mask steroid commie Bane, and a healthy dollop of SILENCE! News (covering Bob Burden’s Pussy Riot solidarity), Gary Lactus brings us a dramatic undercover expose into Comics Vs Cocaine! the Beast and Lactus get busy with the fizzy with Butcher Baker from Casey and Huddlestone, Saga no.6, and Shade no.11. Then it;s a walloping great chunk of Man V Comics covering AVX, AVX: Avengers, Daredevil, Walking Dead, Fatale, Saucer County, Hellblazer, Everybody Loves Tank Girl, and Wonder Woman. Phew. Rather him than us, right readers??????????
But it doesn’t end there. Then he takes on ALL of the Before Watchmen comics, in Who Reads The Watchmen?
Then it’s a quick swim in the mildewey waters of the Beast’s Bargain Basement with Doc Frankenstein and more hot Barry M Freeman nuggets uncovered. Plus an interview with Barney Farmer! Finish it off with a quick big-up of Joe Dante’s underrated love letter to 1950’s monster movies Matinee, and you have an hour and a half of delicious comics tapioca for all the family. That’s right it’s SILENCE!
Check below for the amazing Barry M Freeman appreciation area:
Doctor Who: Fifty Stories For Fifty Years – 1979
August 20th, 2012
Before we get going with this, a quick question — I’ve been thinking of releasing this series of posts, when finished (some time next year), as a book. Would anyone actually buy and read such a thing, or is it a bad idea?
I’m asking now, because here is where we head into a totally different realm of Doctor Who. I’ve done sixteen of these posts so far, and there are thirty-three after this. But fourteen of the sixteen previous ones have been about TV shows, with only two (Dr Who And The Daleks and Doctor Who And The Cave Monsters) dealing with non-TV stories. Of the thirty-four stories from 1979 to 2012 I’m dealing with, only fourteen of those essays will be talking about stuff that was actually on TV in those years. Four of them won’t even be about Doctor Who.
Because much of the 23,717 words I’ve done in this series so far has been setup. It’s only now, as we get to the close of the 1970s, that I can really start talking about what I want to talk to. From now on, these essays will be getting much longer, and much less in the “this happened, then this happened” vein. I have things to say. You have been warned…
Everything about Doctor Who changed in 1979, because Doctor Who Weekly started.
SILENCE! #26
August 14th, 2012
ICHT BIN EIN PODCASTER!
Welcome web-worms to the one and only, the humble magnificent…SILENCE! This latest episode starts off over in the SILENCE NY offices, with our US correspondents Gary Lactenberg and Danny Beastman ushering in the latest hot chat and gossip* from the wonderful** world of comics!
*there’s no gossip
**it’s not always wonderful
After the SILENCE! news it’s straight onto sexytimescomicstalk, with discussions of Godzilla: The Half Century War from top SILENCE! bannersmith, James Stokoe. Then there’ a side order of Batman and Hulk chat, before a rather large, throbbing portion of Black Kiss 2. Close your ears younglings… Lactus lowers the tone further with talk of Space: Punisher, AVX: Avengers , Frankenstein, and the Alan Davis Daredevil annual in Man Vs Comics, plus there’s a digression into the ‘recent’ Punisher War Zone movie. On the pulse!
The Silent Question is posed by hot wheelie dicso chick Dazzler, and the answers involve Cliff Steele and Box.
Beast fills us in on how his Knightquest is progressing (BROKEN BAT!) and Lactus updates the hunt for Barry M Freeman. There’s some Drunken Baker chat there too.
Beast finishes up with a bit of Pim & Francie from Al Columbia, and directs you all to an interview with Columbia and one with animation godhead, John Kricfalusi.
So Lactus is chillin, Beast is chillin, what more can I say? (answers on a postcard please). It’s all waiting for you beyond the sundered veil in…SILENCE! no.26!!
Check below for an expanded Barry M Freeman appreciation zone:
![](https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/500songs-1.jpg")