SILENCE! #33
October 1st, 2012
OODLES AND OODLES OF O’S, YOU KNOW, YOU GET ‘EM FROM MY SISTER, YOU GET ‘EM FROM MY BRO!
In this veeeeeeerrrrrry special edition of the People’s Choice Award-winning Podcast, Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die are broadcasting LIVE! from the inaugural and exclusive SILENCECON 2012! Live! from the exclusive ‘micro-suite’ of the Hard Rock Hotel in the Younited Staytes of Ameryka’s very own Las Vegas!!! Get ready for EXCLUSIVITY you lucky, lucky insects.
I really shouldn’t have to say more than that to get you listening, but since I get paid by the word, I’m going to soldier on. The SILENCE! NEWS features an exclusive mini-interview from roving reporter Lactus with Nao of Brown’s Glyn Dillon, and some other EXTREMELY EXXXCLUSIVE stuff too.
Then it’s on to a bumper stuffed edition of comics shenanigafoolery and let me tell you the boys are so excited, and they just can’t hide it. They’re about to shit their pants and they think they like it!
So let’s get our hands dirty:
ITEMS! Ultra-grime from notorious pantomime villain Grant Morrison with Happy! Awesome Doopism in Wolverine & The X-Men; Doombots a-go-go in the Incredible Hulk; Facial traumas a-plenty in Fury: Max; NY Punk vs UK Punk and shit magic in general in JL: Dark; Rucka-isms abound in Stumptown; The real Avengers return with Steed & Mrs Peel; Dalrymple, missile farms and Captain Quest in Prophet; The Batmen of many colours in Batman Inc; Dead Edwardians in the New Deadwardians; Pretty pointlessness in Ozymandias, Beto-pulp in Fatima & The Bloodspinners and finally Space: Punisher which somehow sparks a discussion about Krull, Spacehunter and The Golden Child.
The drug-themed SILENT Question comes from lovable old ex-Venom addict Bane, and the answers include Nuke, Robocop 2, Umpty candy, Foo Goo, David Lloyd, Wasteland, Miraclo, and Spin.
Finally The Beast unleashes his new section (and the girls squeal) in The Smallest Press, covering self-publishing treats such as the grindcore love letter Death Trap from Lane Milburn, and the creepy/saucy treat Too Dark To See from Julia Gfrörer.
It’s all here along with a guest appearance from Robbity-Bobbity and non-stop SILENCECON EXCLUSIVITY and SPECIALNESS, in the barrel of hot monkey-shit that is….SILENCE!
SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.
Click below for the SILENCE! Gallery…
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:
Rogue’s Review #4: Bane
January 25th, 2011
Running this oldie again in the wake the Morrison making reference to it at SDC
Right, offline in the real world, I occasionally enjoy a pint with Bulk Meat. The Meat, incidentally, hates his name and to be honest we never call him it to his face anymore – the man’s a father, a successful careerist (tho’ no-one understands exactly what it is that he does, except for Zac Goldsmith), fiercely intelligent and handsome, etc., etc., blah – and to continue to do so would be churlish at best. But in my heart of hearts, I still understand him as one of those massive slabs of pig bashed around by sound effects artists in the 70’s and Scott Walker in the recording studio. For he is, amongst my scrawnier-than-a-Face-model-in-the-nineties but slightly pot-bellied friends, absurdly stacked.
Alphabetical villain thing: B is for…
June 28th, 2010
And so we continue.
All the As can be found here, along with an explanation of what the billy-o I’m doing
Bane
Amy’s already done this one and it can’t be bettered. All that’s left to be said is that Amygdala and the rest of those muscle men live permanently in Bane’s liefeldian shadow. If Bane is leader of the cult of bulk then they can only ever be his disciples; Sweaty, raging, flesh machines lost in the stink of his meat locker come gymnasium.
Black Mask
Dirty. Nasty. Fucker.
Start with the mask: you’ve got dehumanisation and the death of identity. This guy’s face isn’t just a black skull, these days it’s a black skull with red eyes – that’s demonic evil straight outta the 80s. There’s also something specifically horrific about a skull wearing a suit, it brings to mind the triumph of the material, modern monsters like the denizens of Hostel, and Patrick Bateman, terms like slasher and torture porn.
The character’s origin is begging to be jeuged up into a full blown Giallo nightmare. After murdering his parents for interfering with his love life, Roman Sionis takes control of their business and markets a cosmetic that hideously scars thousands of women. You’ve got brutality, misogyny, matricide and patricide, operatic vileness. Dirty. Dirty. Dirty. People who care about boring shit will be quick to point out here that Roman didn’t know what the product would do, but I like to think of Sionis spending his nights “market testing”, and fucking his lover, Circe, over the same desk where he makes the phone calls, has the meetings, and deliberately and methodically works to ensure that his facial treatment will do the maximum damage possible.
While we’re feeling gratuitous, perhaps it would be good to work an oedipal subtext into his background: maybe his mother, a woman who wore a disturbing amount of make-up, loved him just a bit too much, maybe his Father hated him for it, maybe that’s why they tried to destroy Roman and Circe’s burgeoning romance.
As a paid up member of the misogyny can fuck off club, and someone who isn’t particularly interested in seeing the Bat-franchise rub more grime n grit into its spandex I’m not very keen on Black Mask’s torture happy ways. I could do without a villain who lives to stuff women into refrigerators, but I’m happy to concede that he readily gives himself to the kind of voyeuristic violence and horror so popular with today’s audiences. So I say go with it, have him be all that stuff that the crime lord incarnation of the Penguin couldn’t hope to be. Have him be one hell of a nasty bastard.
Play up the monstrous verging on supernatural slasher angle by having his masked henchmen simply be an extension of him – think you’ve killed the fucker? Guess again, kid – and forget all that cultist stuff. The false-face gang aren’t his minions, they’re his claw. Have him kill and kill and kill, give him an ebony room with an operating table, and casino where the patrons can bet against the lives of their enemies’ children. Have him make Catwoman’s sister watch while her husband is tortured to death and then force her to eat him.
Hang on, he’s already done that…
Or maybe just bin the horrible git.
Blockbuster
There’s two sorts of Blockbuster and they’re both more than a little yawn inducing.
1. The chap who drank the science potion and got strong and dumb and was exploited by his criminal brother. He’s a bit like the green Hulk.
2. The chap who got strong and then did a deal with the devil so that he could also be clever. He’s a bit like the grey Hulk but with a bigger head.
The first has the whole tragic monster thing going, which certainly fits with the kind of story that some people like to tell with Batman but I couldn’t give a monkey’s about, mainly because it’s been done to death in Batman and elsewhere (the Hulk, Frankenstein, why am I bothering to list these?, etc…). The second is just… well… it isn’t really anything. Big strong criminal = so what? I suppose you could do something with the hackneyed Faustian bargain bit but I wouldn’t want to.
Whatever, see the Bane entry.