SILENCE! #25

August 7th, 2012

THEY ALL FLOAT DOWN HERE…AND WHEN YOU’RE DOWN HERE WITH US, YOU’LL FLOAT TOO!

Hah hooh hah!

It’s that time of the week boys and girls, and Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die are here to bring the melonfarming ruckus! Duck and cover for SILENCE! no.25

After an Olympic Pool-sized edition of SILENCE! News, the boyce let rip with some lovingly hand-crafted comics reviews. INCLUDING: Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye no.1, Dial H from Mieville and co, Beasts of Burden from Dorkin and Thompson, Action Comics, Daredevil, Animal Man and Lactus has a diet-sized portion of Man V Comics with AVX.

There’s a special SILENT Question from Batroc Zee Leepair (with the answer including Bob of the Black Lodge and Pennywise the Dancing Clown).

Then there’s a meaty discussion of Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises aka Occupy Gotham (currently showing in magic lantern shows around the country.

Add in a vital clue in the ongoing saga to discover ‘lost’ Brit comics genius Barry M Freeman (Woodward & Bernstein get f*cked) and you have a meaty, beaty, big & bouncy edition of SILENCE!

click to download SILENCE!#25

Come! See the Barry M Freeman Appreciation Area!

Sometimes, plans change…

When I was planning this entry, it was all going to be about how this is the story in which two figures who will be important to this narrative from now on enter — Douglas Adams, whose first story this is, and who would go on to write two more and script edit the next series, and me, because I was born two days before episode two of this story aired. So from now on, the entries will be slightly more personal, as I will remember at least some of them from the time of broadcast.

But instead of being about people entering the story, it has to be about people leaving it.

SILENCE! #24

July 31st, 2012

WE ARE THE DICK MILLER APPRECIATION SOCIETY…

Firstly, apologies if you are having trouble downloading this week’s SILENCE! Gary and The Beast are currently reaching their monthly bandwidth limit with their pod lords. It should be back to normal (at least for a while) on the 4th of August. At the moment they cannot afford to upgrade our account so perhaps they’ll set up some way of letting listeners chip in a bit of financial support in the near future but what do I know? I’m just a disembodied voice which magically appears here to tell you about the contents of the podcast…

Secondly – forget about all that whiny cry-baby sh*t! Let’s get some  face time with the latest and greatest edition of SILENCE! – the show that snuggles up to you and looks awful cute, but one look into those cold black shark eyes tells you…this podcast is not your friend.

The Beast and Lactus get things up and running (then falling over) with the SILENCE! News, before taking a roll in the clover with some of this week’s very floppiest of floppies, including:

Axe Cop, Tank Girl from Martin and Mahfood, Eternity, Haunt, Prophet and JL: Dark. Lactus bites down on the belt strap and mainlines some more medicine in Man Vs Comics, taking on all sorts of unwanted AVX business in Wolverine and The X-Men, X-Men Legacy and AVX: The Avengers. There are probably more in there too. Beast also likes some of Paul Chadwick’s Concrete.

The two get  another celebrity quizzler in The Silent Question (and the answers involve Booster Gold and Jason Todd). Lactus continues his crusade to bring exposure to lost Brit comics savant Barry M Freeman, and The Beast unveils his Knightquest, as he dips into the Complete Batman: Knightfall. Oh, and Lactus unveils his headpourings on the ‘recent’ Amazing Spiderman film.

All wrapped up in an hour and a half of well proportioned comics fun. And look at the winning smile on the little blighter! So gather round and listen to Pappy as he turns up the radio on…SILENCE! no.24!

click to download SILENCE!#24

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THE NEGATIVE ZONE: Saga #1

July 30th, 2012

The ‘S’ you may have seen is silent, actually, so we’re just going to call it by its True Name, Aga.

Welcome to the Star Wars comic where every character is Jar Jar Binks.

Don’t panic! They’re not aliens.

SILENCE! #23

July 25th, 2012

THIS IS NOT AN EXIT

Of course it isn’t silly! It’s a gaping entrance! An entrance into the world of SILENCE!!!

In this episode the pair who go together like strawberries and cream, millionaires and wards, and ‘interesting’ facial hair and threats of violence get down on their knees and pray for a rain of comics…and they get it!

After a heartfelt piece of Dylan-esque balladry about Man-Thing from The Beast, and a baggy edition of the SILENCE! news, there’s a twelve car pile-up of comics foolchat, covering:

the revamped Glory, Peter Bagge’s Reset, Paul Chadwick’s Concrete (and ‘Moving A Big Rock’), Saga (both the comic and the pensioner’s holiday scheme), Hanging with DB Cooper from Brian Churillo, Mind MGMT, Hellblazer and the recent hilarious Inkstuds Biz interview, Daredevil, The Shadow, JLA and an Infernal Man-Thing freestyle… oh, and Lactus takes on all the AVX related bizzo, in Man Vs Comics.

But let’s not forget the brand new feature The Silent Question in which the pair answer a Celebrity! Question! The Beast talks up Hookjaw and Lactus takes on Chester Brown and Canadian masturbation in general…

And there’s an appreciation of lost Brit comics genius Barry M Freeman.

Dear me, I’ve just wet me knickers! It’s all too much…let’s hope your undercrackers can handle the truth! It’s all wrapped up in the brain-burp that is…SILENCE!  

click to download SILENCE!#23

And don’t forget to check below as well for the Silence Gallery

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I hope you’ll forgive me a little bit of Mindless Self Indulgence here since we’ve already covered the comic in question in some detail, but just try to imagine my surprise when after reading pages and pages full of brilliant, moving stuff about growing older in a world that is indifferent to your bewildered perspective in LoEG Century, I came face-to-face with the young Antichrist and discovered that he was me.

Of course, he was also Harry Potter and Will Stanton and Kevin the Teenager, but as he peeled his way out of the page…

…and started rambling away at our heroes in that deadened voice of his, I began to feel like I was watching myself rip my way through the comic. A spoiled young man raging against the story he’s grown up in?

Fuck! Yeah, okay – guilty as charged!

Mmmmmyesss! Click here to initiate contact with a Mindless antichrist!

This review was fuckin’ tough to write. I mean that. I don’t mean just the usual typing and re-typing a section as you try to nuance a gag or make a point, although that was certainly part of it. No, what it entailed was something of a personal whirlwind akin to the opening of Apocalypse Now, but with less booze and more crying. Sometimes I would pause to reflect on how the fuck I got myself into this state over something so simple, because, really, the actual review was a breeze to write. It was what followed that was the problem.

When Simon Furman and Andrew Wildman announced their desire to resume the story of the Marvel Transformers comic, I have to confess I was curious, but I wasn’t burning to have it with never-ending desire. It did seem odd. Bin Generation 2? That odd beast of a comic with 75% more violent death and one of the most intriguing additions to Furman’s version of the mythology? Also, I’d not long finished catching up with Furman’s IDW run. A decidedly mixed bag that almost dips a toe into becoming brutally sublime when the cancellation kicks in and the steadily increasing pace that marked each limited series suddenly sees the last two issues ramp up into a fucking furious pace. Plot points not so much nailed as roadkilled. A tenuous reminder of the energies of past. Maybe he had the old ways in him, but I for one wasn’t sure.

Click here to find out just how sure of his own regression/regenration one adult can be! In glorious technicolour!

SILENCE! #22

July 18th, 2012

I AM GODZILLA! YOU ARE JAPAN!

Hello SILENCERS, it’s your old pal the omniscient smartarse narrator, back once again to remind you to bend over, grab you r shoelaces and await the cosmic shunting that is SILENCE! no.22. Praise be to Jinkies!

In this cerebellum fondling episode, cosmic man-child Gary Lactus returns from his honeymoon to reap galactic vengence on his former partner, after last week’s anomalous high quality episode. But fear not – the Butch and Sundance of the comicopinionsphere are soon back to their merry ways, and Lactus reveals his new career as a fantasy prose writer, unveiling his meisterwork ‘Time of Crowns’ on an ill-prepared but Michael Bay-directed Beast.

The SILENCE! News has all the hottttt gozzip from this year’s San Diego Con that you can fit on the head of a pin, then it’s onwards, ever onwards into the howling maelstrom that is last  week’s comics…

AND SO….there’s talk of Sean Murphy’s Punk Rock Jesus, the final Bulletproof Coffin from serial comics abusers Shave Hike and Daky Kine, the wonderful Tales Designed to Thrizzle, forgotten British curio Gutted, Alan Davis’ Fantastic Four annual, Space: Punisher (with a nerdcore digression into Earth 616) Dinosaurs Vs Aliens from Sir Grant, Wolverine & The X-Men (fukk off crossover!), Batman and the Owl pellets, Walking Dead 100 (in which Beast inadvertently suggests some dubious things about himself) Sin City: That Yellow Bastard, the relaunched Eerie, and finally Robert Loren Fleming and Keith Giffen’s adaptation of Robert Bloch’s Hell On Earth (check the gallery for some stunning images from that) in The Beast’s Bargain Basement.

All this and not much more in the podcast that routinely fails to rise to the occasion…SILENCE!

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(Thanks to James Stokoe for the awesome SILENCE! banner)

Click below for the SILENCE! gallery…

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SILENCE! #21

July 13th, 2012

HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!!!!!

Welcome then, gentle listen-folk, to the Twilight Zone….where anything can happen. Such as Gary Lactus NOT appearing on this week’s edition of the internet’s favourite aural-comics affairs-cast SILENCE! Fear not though, stepping into his large cosmic brogues comes sprightly upstart BOBSY! He and tired old deck-hand The Beast Must Die just couldn’t bare to think of a week without pointless comics frippery, so they’ve teamed up to bring you SILENCE no.21!!

And what a fist they make of it. In a whopping two and a quarter hours they cause merry havoc discussing 2000AD, Judge Dredd, middle-class Quantam Leap, Rocketeer Adventures, Superman 3 (ie the best one), Fury MAX, Earth 2, Robert Downey Jr’s gradual transformation into David Gest, Ron Perlman (aka the Monster Don), Thief of Thieves, The Reckoning, Marvel NOW!, Ozymandias (aka Between Watchmen), AVX, Haunt, Dial H, Action Comics, Castle Waiting…plus a typically rambling digression into Steve Gerber’s wonderful Infernal Man-Thing. Oh god but that’s just the tip of the iceberg…well, actually it’s more like the main part of the iceberg, but the real cream of the iceberg (what?) is the sparkling interraction between two broken mammals who can’t think of anything better to do than talk about comics (while Rome burns)!

Phew! Just when you thought 2012 couldn’t get any HOTTTERRRR!!!!???

 

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