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!
(Thanks to James Stokoe for the awesome SILENCE! banner)
Click below for the SILENCE! gallery…
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!!!!???
CINDY and THE FEVER
July 11th, 2012
Andrew: Something I noticed while looking for a reference for something else — that anarchy/heart symbol we were wondering about is the symbol of the superhero flying out of the page in the blazing world section of The Black Dossier. Checking in with Nevins’ annotations of same (reading his annotations for this book before we’ve finished would be cheating, but the old books are fair game), we find that it’s the logo of Ace Hart (a British superhero, not the dog detective), which we all should have known as he appears in Zenith Phase III.
Adam: I like that I couldn’t link it back to a specific superhero, actually. I enjoyed having the space to meditate on how and why it might fit into the kind of space O’Neil and Moore were interested in constructing rather than just see it as a dry reference. So fanwank, yes, but not without purpose. Although the name ‘Ace Hart’ would probably just have added fuel to my reverie’s fire. I imagine Moore would have fun with the symbolic charge there.
Andrew: And one point I don’t think we made before, when discussing to what extent Moore is able to comment on the culture of 2009 as opposed to earlier decades, is just how few characters from 21st century fiction actually appear here. We’ve got the odd background character who doesn’t say or do anything, but in the whole book the only character with a speaking role to have been created in the decade in which the comic is supposedly set is Malcolm Tucker, who’s just a talking head on a TV. Even the Potter characters (none of whom except Potter have more than one line) were created in the mid-1990s — and other than them, there’s not a speaking character in the comic that originated post-1976.
This is a huge change from all the other League volumes, which mixed and matched eras, obviously, but showed a real in-depth knowledge of their time’s popular culture.
SILENCE! #20
July 4th, 2012
YOU HEAR SOMETHING GOING ON UP THERE BOY? LIKE…LIKE SOMEONE ON A RAMPAGE?!!
BACK FROM WEDDING! The boys aren’t stopping. They’re certainly not letting anything like a marriage get in the way…it’s Marry Lactus and the Best Beast in SILENCE! no.20!!!!!!!!! (+!!!!)
After a joyous second ode to Journey Into Mystery from The Beast they slip slide their way into the SILENCE! news discussing George Perez‘ exit from Superman, and the pressures of existing inside an ill-thought out confusing continuity (JUST LIKE OUR WORLD, RIGHT LISTENERS!!!??!!) They also talk a bit about Edgar Wright’s possibly upcoming Ant Man movie.
Next up in this comics-wedding banquet the two froth audibly in a rambling appreciation of the astounding Prophet no.26 from Brandon Graham, talk up the Taliastic Batman Inc from Sir Grant, do aural hi-5’s about Peter Bagge’s Reset, get a bit cross about the crossover strangulation of Wolverine and the X-Pants, digest some Resident Alien from Hogan and Parkhouse, mention Spaceman and get totally waylaid in a discussion of nipples in superhero comics. Fatale exists still, Scalped is appreciated, X-Men Legacy is not, FF is a thing that makes the pair discuss the actual location of made up country Wakanda. They also talk about Gilbert Hernandez’ Fatima: The Blood Spinners and Gilbert in general.
Just a bit of room for a heads up about two web comics from Warren Pleece (http://albyfiggs.wordpress.com/)and Simon Roy (http://studygroupcomics.com/main/2012/07/barfight-by-simon-roy/), and then it’s off to bed (not before a bit of aggressive listener-baiting from the tired pair). Oh yeah and the Beast begs for money to go to see Spiderman in a moment of high morality.
Yay!
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Adam: My, isn’t that lava lamp… big.
In case you hadn’t noticed that’s Dr B Coote S.M.B.D: standing for sadism, masochism, bondage, domination one imagines, which sadly loses some of the flexibility of our real world formulation, BDSM. There you’ve got bondage, domination, sadism, masochism or bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism. More… er… therapeutic options.
Amy: BDSM is considered by some people to be quite an effective form of, well not exactly therapy, but a way of containing and processing painful experiences, particularly those of a sexual nature. Mina has already engaged in mild BDSM with Allan (the infamous “Bite me” scene), probably as a response to the ultimate Dom/Sub relationship she shared with Dracula, so we know she’s the perfect patient in some ways… Saying that, though, it’s hard to imagine anyone as drugged up as Mina conclusively consenting to anything.
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Andrew: Notice the spy camera on the corner — a little incidental detail of how the world has changed since the last volume. We grow so used to these things, it’s sometimes hard to remember that in a lot of ways we’ve been in a dystopian future since at least the mid-90s.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 2009 thoughts
June 26th, 2012
Andrew: First impressions, this is a truly strange comic. I mean, it’s *good*, but it’s an attempted critique of modern pop-culture by someone who has no idea what modern pop-culture *is* (outside of the work of Armando Iannucci, anyway). I haven’t owned a TV in my adult life, and yet I have a better idea of what the pop-cultural feel of 2009 was than Moore seems to have.
And it’s a shame, because the story Moore wants to tell — of the deterioration of culture since the 1960s — is one that could be plausibly made. But to make it work, one has to criticise the 60s counterculture. Most of the problems in the world today stem, ultimately, from the utter self-obsessed infantilism of the generation that were young adults in 1969 — Moore’s generation, the generation that voted in Thatcher, the generation that made up Blair’s cabinet — but rather than admit the link, Moore has instead basically taken a line of “Weren’t the 60s great until Charles Manson and Altamont, but now the world’s full of young people with their hippity-hoppity music and their pinpods, and I wish it would all be like it used to be.”
But all that said, this is still a great comic and a great conclusion to League Volume 3.
SILENCE! #19
June 24th, 2012
I’LL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND! I’LL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Ha ha! Hello SILENCERS! Under the brand spanking new SILENCE! banner from celebrity orc-peddlar James Stokoe, you will find the latest hot shot comics rot from notorious 4-colour sex pests The Beast Must Die and Gary Lactus. Quake, then, frail ones at SILENCE! no.19…special early morning edition.
A slightly frazzled and sleepy pair take on the release of the recent Dredd trailer for SILENCE! news, then the coffee starts kicking in and they barrel into some full-blooded discussion of comics, including 2009 the third volume of Alan Moore and Kev O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century series. Also spoken of: Saga no. 4, Hellblazer (Biz + werewolves), Secret history of DB Cooper no. 4, Journey Into Mystery, AVX something or other, and Daredevil. The Beast brings back ‘You Should’ve Known Better’ with his take on Tony Daniels’ Detective Comics and then things peeter out as an over-excited Lactus realises he got up way too early.
It’s an hour and ten minutes of comics shpoonk, and it comes in a handy ear-pill sized format. So jump up, jump up and get down with the comics podcast that the world believes might change everything for everyone….SILENCE!
SILENCE! #18
June 19th, 2012
I AM AN EFF BEE AYE AYE-GENT!
That’s right Los Pollos Hermanos, it’s time to roll up your trousers and step into the shallow, but deadly waters of this week’s SILENCE!
Suddenly! The galaxy’s greatest podcasteers blunder into the hot SILENCE! news of the day covering the recent demi-knighthood of Sir Grant Morrison and Alan Moore’s recent tabloid controversy. Then it’s onwards, ever onwards with nary a thought for the safety of passers by, as they discuss Kane and Hike’s Bulletproof Coffin, AVX VS AXV no.whatever, Shade no.9, Planetoid, BatOwl, Amazing Spiderman, and finally Michel Fiffe’s terrific Suicide Squad love letter, Deathzone. Then, in an extended notcomics section Lactus talks up recent cinematic thing Prometheus, while the Beast tackles Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games books. Then it’s off to bed with the haunting sounds of The Beast’s song Aquaman: King Of The Sea.
It’s all jimmied into an hour and a half of solid bronze comics chat, all for you the beloved SILENCERS. So let’s all go down to the meadow to pray, worry about that good old way and get listening!
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