Mindless Ones

GUEST BLURB WRITTEN BY OUR FRENCH EXCHANGE STUDENT

My name is Gary. I am twelve years old. I live in Brighton. I have two cats. I like pop music but I love rock music. I live in a house. I hate classical music. At the weekend I play table football with my friend Jean Pierre. I enjoy swimming in the swimming pool. In my bedroom I have posters of pop musicians. I like reading comics.

SILENCE! #228 is a right old state on a plate, mate as Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die reconvene with reports on the new Pat Mills novel, Serial Killers plus ICE Brighton and MCM London, (they’re no Thought Bubble).

Then it’s time for some Sadmin as the chaps Bat-bid a fond Bat-farewell to Adam West.

There’s only one place to go from there and that’s The Reviewniverse where Bulletproof Coffin: 1000 Yard Stare, Doctor Strange, Divided States Of Hysteria, Rocket and Extremity with a couple of brief thoughts on All New Guardians Of The Galaxy, Saga and Kaijumax

@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie
@bobsymindless
@kellykanayama


si************@gm***.com

Then give me the electric chair

ITEM TFW you beam down from thespaceship (in space) feeling real, real good! If you knew the things I knew, dear participant…

ITEM Iiiiiiiit’s a bobsy week on Silence #214 but don’t worry it’s still quite good, he wrote, a little drunk and quite pass-agg.

ITEM The lads Gary and Batlow piss about for a bit before they enter the reviewniverse (where conditions are ferocious), and in the process cover the all-important Sponsorshibboleths, the Lego Batman movie, #dredducation and a perhaps too in-depth look at the bob’s feels about the recorded long player music album called BATMAN by the prince of a place called Prince.

ITEM And that goes on for a little bit too long if we’re honest, or maybe he’s edited it, (I don’t know. I’m on a train, as the boy Cobain might have said, also mentioned in this epppppisode)

ITEM But then yeah eventually we get to the reviewniverse where everybody’s talkin’ about (in no good order) Wildstorm, Cave Carson, CIABatman, Nazi Captain America, Ultimates 2, Doctor Strange, Batwoman Rebirth, Green Lanterns, Old Man Logan, Dad’s Weekend (good), and Punisherment (RIP Steve D).

@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie
@bobsymindless
@theQuietusFilm
@kellykanayama


si************@gm***.com

Hello?  Yes, speaking. Why thank you, I quite agree.  And you rang just to tell me that?  Uhuh, go on… Right… Okay… Okay, can I just stop you there.  There’s no way I’d sell them.  They might be absolute dolts but I love them.  No!  The Galcticats are not for sale, GOOD DAY!

Damp mishaps, cheek and sponsorship occupy the admin section of the edition of SILENCE! Once in the Reviewniverse we cover Monstress, Head Lopper, Doctor Strange, Hellcat!, The Infinity Entity, Ian Finity, Jim Starlian, Alian Davis and Batman Vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Once we’re out there’s a bit of talk about Cerebus and the enduring cultural tyranny of Queen.

LET’S GO!

click to download SILENCE!#180

si************@gm***.com

One of the strange blessings of the internet is its ability to serve as an external memory system.  Thoughts that would once have been lost to time if they were even lucky enough to have made it out of your head are now preserved for an indefinite eternity in places over which you have little to no control.

For example, if I want to know how I felt about Brendan McCarthy’s Doctor Strange/Spider-Man comic Fever after the first issue came out in 2010, a quick google search will turn up this flouncing defense of the book, written in response to a review by Sean Collins:

Say it Vibrational Match style: Where you see “inert physicality”, I see a Spider-Man who’s all harsh angles and elbows being squashed, flattened out, and a Doc Strange who’s at home with the harsh geometrics McCarthy conjures up.

Where you read flat pastiche, I read Spider-Man as a jerk who gets shut the hell up by the story (his words like jutting elbows –> drooping limbs), and Doc Strange as a badass who can turn exposition into information with the right gestures (verbal, physical).

Also: the mystic spider dialogue is genuinely fucking creepy, for reals, when combined with the images, yes?

In lesser hands this would be mere set-up, but this issue had a whole lot of “?something else?” working for it — that creepy wee arachnid bastard, crawling up the Vulture’s back, fr’instance!  Like something from Seven Soldiers, only (yes!) far more unsettling.

I saw the biggest, most bulbous-assed spider of the year last night, sitting on my windowsill. I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to these wee beasties, but last night, after having read Fever? I tell you, I wanted to kiss the wee fucker!

The “hey, I’m a black guy!” dialogue was a bit cringey though, pastiche or no.

Looking at the book this week, I find myself agreeing with every point but the last one.

It’s not that I don’t find the dialogue McCarthy gave to the African-American comedy character cringe-inducing anymore – I do! – but that Brendan McCarthy’s recent Facebook comments on race make me feel ashamed the structure supporting that final sentence.

Sure, I agreed with Sean Collins’ assessment of the embarrassing nature of McCarthy’s throwback characterisation, but I did so in a tossed off, casual way, after five paragraphs of flame flecked enthusiasm. The implicit message being that everyone should just chill out about this racist after taste and enjoy the “septic salsa” of the comic itself.

In 2010, the story of McCarthy was that he was that of the hero freshly returned from the wasteland, ready to save the kingdom from itself.  His new work confirmed his status as a trinity of psych-pop ghosts, the faces of Brit comics past, present and future combined.  What interest could a couple of dodgy panels hold against all that?  Solo #12 remains McCarthy’s late period masterpiece, but even in lesser books like Fever there are moments of astonishing beauty.  The scene in the second issue where Spider-Man steps through a portal and into a crunchy insect killing field still burns bright in the light of its own toxic logic:

Who could argue against that sort of artistic firepower? Not me back in 2010, apparently. Click here to see how I get on in 2013!

So we thought we’d try linkblogging… I have no idea how Graeme McMillan or Dirk Deppey did and do do this on a daily; this is about a week or so’s worth of what I remembered to put in here, seemed interesting at the time…

More after the jump