Mindless Ones

IT’S LIKE A WHIRLPOOL AND IT NEVER ENDS

At last! It’s time for The Big Pivot! Welcome to the SILENCE! Sportscast! All the Action! All the balls! More kicks and hits than you could reasonably kick or hit! Who’s winning? YOU!

Unfortunately the sports chat gets somewhat derailed by talk about gigs and the 90s before Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die get sucked into The Reviewniverse where they find Joe Wilkinson: My Autobiography, Elf Quest, Cerebus, Viz (Gary’s got a strip in it!) and Proustian comics in general.

Following that, there’s a lovely bit of SILENCE! (Because The Film’s Started) in which The Beast Must Die has seen The Flash.

All sport is finally forgotten as the hosts reckymend Comfort Blanket, Allan Quartermain and the Spear of Destiny (Jesus fucking Christ), Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson and Gary just won’t stop going on about his Patreon. At this point in the blurb we usually say, “AND MORE!”.

@frasergeesin

@thebeastmustdie

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You can support us using Patreon if you like.

SILENCE! has not been sponsored by the greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH! Comics of London for years but we still love them.

Andrew Hickey aka Andre Whickey is a demon.  We say this with love but also out of a deep, almost spiritual sense of terror.  Many times we have conversed with Andre in these very halls, only to discover that he has somehow managed to write 10,000 words outlining a previously unconsidered connection between Charles Mingus and Jack Kirby in between fistfuls of sugared almond. 

Andrew Hickey is a demon, but when he wears his human face he looks a bit like this:

Don’t let our dire warnings or Mr Hickey’s tendency for self-deprecation put you off, though.  All of Andrew’s books are worthwhile, and you can find out what he has to say about them by scanning past his lovely face and reading on! 

I’m Andrew Hickey, and if you’ve visited our table at non-virtual Thought Bubble, I’m the one with the biggest beard, who sits there nearly all the time while the others go about doing stuff and talking to people and so on.

Unlike the others, I have not created any comics you can buy, though I am now on my tenth year in a row of saying “I really need to get my own comic made for this year’s Thought Bubble” and then remembering I can’t draw even a little bit. I do have other stuff you can buy, though — mostly books. I’ve written novels, short stories, and books on pop culture like music, TV, and comics. If you’re looking for my books about comics, they can be found, along with my other self-published books, right here — the ones you want are An Incomprehensible Condition and Welcome to the Multiverse, both of which are about Grant Morrison comics, and maybe Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!, which is about all sorts of other things as well as comics.

(Please note, the books about Morrison were written before their recent coming out as non-binary, and so use the wrong pronouns for them.)

While you’re there, you can also find my books on music, on Doctor Who, and other such things.

Another place you can find my writing is at Obverse Books, where you can find my first novel, Head of State, which is part of the Doctor Who spinoff series Faction Paradox, plus books I’ve written on the Doctor Who story “The Mind Robber” and the 1960 TV series The Strange World of Gurney Slade. I also contributed short stories to a few other books from Obverse.

But like every white man with a beard, I am legally obliged to have a podcast as well. Mine is called A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, and does what it says — goes through five hundred songs, starting in 1938 and ending in 2000, to tell the story of rock and roll. So farI’m up to episode 103, and 1962. The podcast, unlike the books, is free, and people seem to like it.

I also used to make music myself, in a band called The National Pep. We’re hoping to make more music next year, but the old music can be found at thenationalpep.bandcamp.com/releases if you like that sort of thing

And finally, it’s been far too long since I’ve done any comic blogging, but I’ve written a lot of stuff for this very site over the years, and plan to start up again soon. You can find what I’ve written (including two big projects I started but left abandoned in 2018 when a few things went horribly wrong in my life, and which I plan to start up again one day) by clicking here.

YOU’RE GONNA BE REMEMBERED FOR THE THINGS THAT YOU SAY AND DO

If you only knew the existential dread with which I approach the writing of these blurbs. The loaded Colt 45 is sat on the table in front of me. Could this be the week? Come on. It’s easy. Just … just write something witty. Or pithy. Or surreal. Cold, dead lump of metal in my hand. It’s easy. Just write it. Find that concept. Something to hang your hat on. Something. Just. Write. Squeezing the trigger now. Just that sprung lever gently…gently…

Oh wait! I’ve got it!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

<ITEM> Welcome to the latest weekly edition of the internet’s most regular podcast, SILENCE! The podcast equivalent of All-Bran we are! Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die, ah-coming on like a seventh sense!

<ITEM> God knows – look this bastard was recorded across different times, locations and dimensions. It’s got everything in it and nothing. All life is contained here. The answer to the ultimate question could be in here. What’s definitely in here though is…

Neighbours, Gary Lactus experiments with being right wing,  TBMD explains comics gate to stupid old Gary Lactus,  Redundant chat about the upcoming Thought Bubble which has by this point been and gone, Komisk,  Sticky Ribs,  The Beast has seen Infinity War,  Gary and Little Barry Lactus on the park with a little bit of talk about Fantastic Four #2 and The March Hare,  TBMD talking Knights of Pendragon,  Recording of Ben Mitchell talking about The Storm Cloud Story from Thought Bubble,  Silence To Astonish! with guests John McRea, Sam Humphries, Matthew Rosenberg and Babs Tarr, Post Tbubz chat, Doctor Who, Comedy and Errors written by Nick Bryan, Dead Rabbit and on and on and on.

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

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WE’RE SO SORRY, UNCLE ALBERT

Hadrian-like, The Beast returns erecting a psychic wall between the listeners and their memories of the recent Scottish invasion. That’s right, it’s a  ‘Classic’ SILENCE! with those stodgy old pros Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die.

<ITEM> Fake pleasantries, artfully inserted Sponsorship and a bit more discussion about Small Press Day 2017. A ‘classic’ meat and potatoes intro.

<ITEM> A bit of proper Sadmin as The Beast eulogises recently departed horror auteur George A Romero.

<ITEM> Hot topix section alert! There’s a new Doctor Who in town. HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS INCREDIBLE SECRET?? Hot-takes like hot-cakes – ALL HERE!

<ITEM> Finally – finally – the Reviewniverse is breached. Thar she blows! Al Ewing’s Rocket is discussed and then there’s a nice long digressionary ramble about autobio comics, taking in King Cat Comics, Joe Matt, Billy, Me & You, Robert Crumb, James Kochalka and The Cleaner.

A few audio fumbles and then it’s a hop, skip and a jump off to la-lal-land. Did I mention how CLASSIC (classic) this all is??

Ta-ta!

@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie
@bobsymindless
@kellykanayama
[email protected]

While widely reviled as one of the worst things Doctor Who ever broadcast, Timelash is in fact a masterpiece of postmodern avant-garde art…

OK…OK…clearly given that it’s now a week since I said these essays would be going up one a day for a week, and this is only the fifth essay, I may have overestimated my own ability. If only I could go back and talk to my past self and warn him of this…

Before we start, a quick apology – I didn’t get to write a piece yesterday as I had planned. I tried to go to sleep on Thursday night, but just couldn’t – I ended up finally sleeping from about 9:30AM on Friday, and that for only three or four hours. Almost as if someone had extracted the chemical that promotes sleep from my brain…

This is a difficult one to write about, in two different ways.

Doctor Who season twenty-two is not, as we saw in the previous essay, a particularly loved season, and its opener is no exception. It’s one of the most reviled Doctor Who stories ever, and in my opinion unfairly so.