Because we are nothing if not enthusiasts for ritual, the Mindless Ones will be at Thought Bubble 2024 in Harrogate this weekend. We’ll be at tables B3-4 in DSTLRY Hall on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th November, trading gnomic wisdom for earthy security.

A living totem of a masculinity untroubled by hate, Dan Cox has been a fixture of the Mindless Ones table for many years now. His stimulating musk and warm embrace have kept us going through some brutal hangovers over the years, and his comics might just get you through the dark of the year if you’re lucky.

We’ve interviewed Dan alongside his Hitsville UK collaborator John Riordan at least twice previously, and I’ve written at length about Hitsville at length here. If that last sentence seems familiar, that’s probably because I used a version of it while hyping up John’s work yesterday.

But enough of the past! What will Dan have with him this year?

As the author of two (excellent) Pocket Chillers it pains me to admit that “Jeff” is the best in the series, but who could argue with “Jeff” after meeting it in the street? A collaboration with the mighty Fraser Geesin, “Jeff” agitates the reader’s imagination by carefully controlling what they see, prompting them to ask why the fuck everyone else in the story is reacting like that. Geesin’s mastery of character acting makes sure that Cox’s ingenious concept feels plausible, like something that might just keep going in your own room when you put the comic down – trust me, once you read the thing, there will be no thought more horrible.

Described by Cox as “an experimental zine,” Weird Kids Like McCoy doesn’t have a lot in common with “Jeff” on first glance. “‘You’re trapped in a horrible house, a terrible relationship, an awful job. Maybe remembering the comics you liked as a kid will help” – this prompt calls to mind comics in the vein of Enigma and Flex Mentallo, and the Weird Kids itself makes good on that promise, but this is no retread of past metafictions. A close reading of the book will reveal a layer of formal play subtly in line with the techniques of “Jeff”, further marking out Cox as one of the most exciting and experimental comics makers around at the moment.

Rounding out Cox’s offerings will be some classy tote bags, and free material from “Pagans Against AI“.

On a table full of such aggrieved, conversational and idiosyncratic works, I can’t think of anything more fitting.

Thanks to our inability to arrange a piss-up in a brewery somewhere smack bang in the middle of the nation, the Mindless Ones will be at Thought Bubble 2024 in Harrogate this weekend. We’ll be at tables B3-4 in DSTLRY Hall on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th November, trading our dazzling wares for coins, card transactions and wry smiles.

An angel in a pack of foul wretches, John Riordan will be with us once again this year. Why, he’s even made his own map to show where he’ll be sitting! It’s better formatted than the one we’ve used in our other posts, but we won’t hold that against him. Unloved creatures that we are, we can all still appreciate a little taste of the light.

We’ve interviewed John alongside his Hitsville UK collaborator Dan Cox at least twice previously, and I’ve written at length about Hitsville here. John’s a charming lad, as you can tell from his efforts to elevate the discourse that follows…

1. Who are you and why are you lying to us?

I am the Spectre of John Riordan, comic artist, catastrophist and William Blake nut. You may know him from his cult collaboration with Dan Cox, Hitsville UK and his solo work ‘Oh God what is happening and is it somehow my fault?’ I am lying because that’s what Spectres do.

2. What’s the best thing you’ll be selling at Thought Bubble 2024?

In a radical break with recent tradition I have a new comic. I’ll be selling LOS, the first instalment of my long gestated, labour-of-love comic based on the life of William Blake. It’s a 32-page, full-colour combination of pencil, ink, watercolour and digital trickery, and incorporates some Blake-style prints that I did on a replica 18th century printing press. As you do.

3. What are you looking forward to picking up at the convention?

I’m looking forward to picking up new stuff from my fellow Mindless Ones Fraser Geesin, Paul Jon Milne and that weird David Allison guy (do I get to call myself an honorary Mindless One these days? Surely I’ve put in the hours). Other than that, not sure really. One of the things that I really like about Thought Bubble is that I’ll inevitably discover wonderful new comics that I had no idea existed and filly my suitcase with them. Although I expect what I’m most likely to pick up is Covid. Ah well…

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Initiation into the Mindless involves an unplugged fridge, a draft of human piss, and a shroud of uncut darkness. Whether John has committed to this ritual is knowledge only our fellow adepts may share.]

4. …

I notice there is no question 4.

‘what Demon

Hath form’d this abominable void

This soul-shudd’ring vacuum? —Some said

“It is Urizen”’

Others said it was Illogical Volume. Next!

5. What sweetens your dreams?

Music, friendship, art, weird humans unable to resist following their own fascinations and making strange new things as a result.

6. What sours your nightmares?

Climate catastrophe, fascism, financialised capitalism, narcissism masquerading as power, power masquerading as religion, peanut butter.

7. Who will star in the inevitable Disney adaptation of your work and why will it be Gary Barlow’s giant son? 

How tall is Gary Barlow’s son? I’ve not looked. Presumably all that tax avoidance went into buying him protein shakes? If you put Mark Owen on Barlow Jr’s shoulders would they be the height of two average men? Blake was relatively short, but he had a bit of a thing about giants, so Toby Jones to play Blake and Gary Barlow’s son can play ’The Giant Albion’, and erm, Dexter Fletcher to play John’s Spectre. Er, that is, me. Lies lies lies.

SILENCE! #295

June 13th, 2021

YOU’RE JUST TOO TOO OBSCURE FOR ME, YOU DON’T REALLY GET THROUGH TO ME

OVER HERE!  MAN ON!  IN THE BOX!  CROSS IT  ONTO MY HEAD MY OLD SUNSHINE! WHAT WAS THAT?!  WHERE ARE YOUR SPECS, REF?!

Ah, Footblurb.  The beautiful game.

<ITEM>WELL, THIS WAS A MASSIVE PAIN IN THE ARSE TO EDIT!

<ITEM>Having said that, it was a delight for The Beast Must Die and Gary Lactus to welcome Dan Cox and John Riordon for a reasonably informal wag of chins.

<ITEM>But it’s not entirely informal, as Danny and Johnny, the Hitsville Brothers tell us tales of their experiences of running the Hitsville UK Kickstarter.  

<ITEM>Inevitably, everything falls apart as the SILENCE!#295 experience becomes one of listening in to the rambling chat of the four men on the table next to yours.  What kind of men are these?  What drives them?  What interests them?  Well, in short:  Jeff Bezos, their children’s relationships with super heroes, cosplay families, their dream Strontium Dog TV show and the music documentaries King Rocker, The Chills: The Triumph And Tragedy Of Martin Phillips and the Tina Turner doc, Tina.  Oh, and Timmy Capello.

<ITEM>Anyone read any comics?  Well sort of.  There’s talk of Danny Hitsville’s Chris Claremont Completion Crusade, Paul Jon Milne’s Grave Horticulture, the forthcoming Pocket Chiller Speckle and Ash, Gareth Brookes’ The Dancing Plague, Gareth HopkinsGhosts In Things, LDN by Ramzee, Jim Woodring’s Jabba The Hutt and Thriller.

<ITEM>Finally there’s some reckymends, namely List Off, Three Bean Salad, The Office US, Laser Fart and, (as usual) Chart Music.

<ITEM> In long:

@frasergeesin

@thebeastmustdie



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











You can support us using Patreon if you like.

This edition of SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the greatest comics shop on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton. It’s also sponsored the greatest comics shop on the planet GOSH! Comics of London.

 

EXHIBITOR 6 – HITSVILLE UK

November 9th, 2020

What is there to say about the Hitsville boys, Dan Cox and John Riordan?  They’ve been interviewed by Smash Hits and by this very website, and they’ve handled both situations with aplomb.  A stylish pair, they can usually be caught at Thought Bubble looking a little something like this…

Ah, real humans! We don’t know about you but we’ve grown to miss them in this plague year. Here’s how they’d like to represent themselves to the listening public…

Hitsville UK

The cult musical-pop-art-soap-opera comic book collected in 240 pages of psychedelic colour.

Follow a carnival of angel-voiced grotesques, monster-hunters, imaginary robots, hip-hop agitators, faded 80s starlets, 60s throwbacks, drug-addled producers and demonic accountants as they try to hit the big time.

“Like comics and music? Then get Hitsville UK” – Stuart Maconie, BBC 6 Music

“A colourful cast of wildly imaginative, mind-bendingly bizarre and always utterly compelling characters. One of my absolute highlights, an essential piece of UK small press comics” – Andy Oliver, Broken Frontier

“A bloody great accumulation of inspired madness, musical insanity and general chaos… a pure, unadulterated hit of a comic” – Richard Bruton, Forbidden Planet International

“Cox is a gifted satirist… Riordan’s art is superb throughout. It’s full of energy, with vibrant colour and extremely creative use of panels to enhance the storytelling. Matched with the writing, the subject matter and the witty, incisive political content, Hitsville UK is exactly the kind of comic we need right now” – Pete Redrup, The Quietus

Hitsville UK

By John Riordan and Dan Cox

Paperback, 240 pages, full-colour

£20

USEFUL LINKS!

Hitsville UK is available to buy at John’s Shop, but of course pop crazed youngsters of all ages can tune into comic’s frequency at the official website.

Of course, if you feel like screaming at the Hitsville boys like the eager audience you are, modern space-invasion technologies are available that will allow you to…

…or if you’re feeling particularly ambitious…

GALLERY OF MODERN ARTS!

Target 2012

May 12th, 2020

Paul Jon Milne – Guts Power #1-6

Dan Cox and John Riordan – Hitsville UK

The gospel was told, some souls it swallowed whole
Mentally they fold and they eventually sold
Their life and times, deadly like the virus design
But too minute to dilute the scientist mind

Wu-Tang Clan – ‘A Better Tomorrow‘ 

Spacing (notice that this word speaks the articulation of space and time, the becoming-space of time and the becoming-time of space) is always the unperceived, the non-present, and the non-conscious. As such, if one can still use that expression in a non-phenomenological way; for here we pass the very limits of phenomenology.

Jacques Derrida – Of Grammatology

Two comic book series, both started before the world ended in December 2012, both completed some time after the apocalypse.  So far so standard. What makes them both remarkable is how prescient they are about all the ways the world has continued to end and about how we might continue to live regardless.

To be brief: they reek not just of knowledge but of foresight.

The sixth and final issue of Paul Jon Milne’s Guts Power spends most of its time getting ready to go out for the party.  When I last reviewed this series, only the first four issues had been published but the mood of the comic was well established, its grimly eroticised kitchen sink misery distinguished from all the other neurotic indie comics out there by virtue of Milne’s seeping imagination:

I’m stuck on Milne’s style, on the use of that old fashioned alt-comix grossness not as a mode for outrageous straight white guy funtimes, but as a way to genuinely queer the Sex-Men experience.

With its tentative dance floor adventures, “Pepto-bawbag particles” and alluringly grotesque cast, Guts Power manages the rare trick of making one man’s whims, stray thoughts and fancies seem like a genuine delight, probably because the combination feels fresh and true; would that the same could be said of all such ventures.

By the time issue #6 starts, death and romance have already happened and everyone is gearing up for some sort of revolution.  You can practically feel the wee white dots form around you in the air, feel yourself being drawn back into the radiant possibility of a blank page, right up until the moment your cat farts and you’re left sitting on your couch alone with your own misery.

Having sprinted through enough dodgy deals, guilty secrets, Beatific visions and nazi incursions to fill 23 issues of a normal comic, Hitsville UK crosses the finish line of its seventh issues with a sense of perspective that’s bound to baffle all traditional metrics.  Last time I checked in on the comic, I found myself racing to keep up with its evolution, with the way that it had left my initial concept of the series as a referential but not reverential pop fun somewhere way off in the distance:

What I will say is that the issues of Hitsville that have been published since then have had an increased sense of urgency to them.  The boys may not have set out to create a fantasy of communal resilience in an age that seems increasingly under threat by undead attitudes, shambling zombie racism, and the endless monetization of your every passing daydream, but fuck me if they didn’t do it anyway!

The conclusion of Hitsville UK gives you some sense as to who’s pulling (or should that be playing?) the strings and some idea as to why.  We still don’t know why the world ended in 2012, or why it persists in this form, why even blogs have somehow been allowed to continue, but all of this prompts a question: why did the children of The Invisibles decide to persist in their endeavours, knowing that the end would come before anyone could finish their stories?

BEATS ME FOLKS! BETTER CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!

SILENCE! #HITSVILLE SPECIAL

September 11th, 2019

 

LET’S SHAKE AND SAY, WE’LL OPERATE IN HITSVILLE UK

Welcome to a special edition of SILENCE! wherein The Beast Must Die has a jaunty, rambling conversation with the lovely Dan Cox and John Riordan (aka Dan & Johnny Hitsville) to discuss there excellent series Hitsville UK and in particular the Kickstarter to fund the collected edition (get on board True Believers). We talked about the origins of the comic, how the boys met and the inspirations behind it.

But don’t worry! It’s still a SILENCE! so you can expect variable sound quality and lengthy digressions into Deadline, Free  Tapes, Menswear, Dig!, The Specials AKA, Cate Le Bon, the UK Small Press, Thought Bubble, FJ McMahon, Barbelith and much. much more. It was a warm summer evening in a nice pub in Waterloo, with two of my very favourite people in comics, so I hope you enjoy…

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie



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











You can support us using Patreon if you like.

This edition of SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the greatest comics shop on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton. It’s also sponsored the greatest comics shop on the planet GOSH! Comics of London.

 

Last time we caught up with the Hitsville boys, they were young and reckless, caught up in that pop life and looking forward to the end of their story. That end finally came with the publication of Hitsville UK #7 last year. Dan Cox and John Riordan are broken men now, no longer a pair of jolly cartoon heroes

…but a couple of real live humans, with families and feelings:

As such, it didn’t seem right to feed them the same recycled Smash Hits interview questions we’ve used a few times over now. This time round we would do it right, with glib, insultingly stupid questions of our own.

As far as a general overview of what Hitsville is and why you should read it, I can’t much improve on what I wrote last time around:

More than any other comic about bands or music, Hitsville UK mimics the thrill and excitement of its subject.  Somewhat perversely, this comes from its overwhelming commitment to the comic book form.  Where other comics about music feel like extrapolations of zine culture or traditional adventure stories themed around pop stars, Hitsville UK actually feels like music.  By reveling in the joys of putting weird looking characters into even weirder situations, trusting that they can keep a rush of daft words and pictures coming and that they can keep it relevant, Riordan and Cox capture something of the hyped up love buzz of being into music.  A mix of wanting to keep up with the story and wanting to feel part of the moment as it happens around you.

What I will say is that the issues of Hitsville that have been published since then have had an increased sense of urgency to them. The boys may not have set out to create a fantasy of communal resilience in an age that seems increasingly under threat by undead attitudes, shambling zombie racism, and the endless monetization of your every passing daydream, but fuck me if they didn’t do it anyway!

Hitsville UK is great, kaleidoscopic fun. You should probably buy it.

But don’t just listen to me. Listen to handsome hunk Dan Cox and bedazzled urchin John Riordan, who were generous enough to give me their time while they were in the middle of preparing their lush summer survival bunker, rumoured to be located in the abandoned underwater garden of a shady octopus…

1. When the first issue of Hitsville UK was published back in 2011, David Cameron was out in the wild hugging unsuspecting hoodies and Malcolm Tucker impersonations were still just about socially acceptable.

Are you the same people you were back then? Have you switched faces? Traded names? Sold parts of your souls in return for those sweet comics dollars?

Dan Cox: Switched faces, traded names, switched back, rinsed and repeated. I’m pretty sure we’re back to being the other. It is depressing looking at our cameos as I go from this svelte long-haired snake-hipped lovely to a portly beardy man. Interestingly John hasn’t seemed to change much, I’m sure this is nothing to do with him being the artist and everything to do with healthier lifestyle choices and superior grooming regime.

John Riordan: Working on Hitsville has been like a nine-year version of Face/Off (NB. I have never seen Face/Off). My favourite review of the comic credited it to Dan Riordan and John Cox. I don’t think I bothered drawing us into the last two issues of Hitsville. Prior to the final issue coming out we both became dads and we now both resemble post-war criminal Tony Blair. I drew my baby daughter into a crowd scene in issue 7 instead. I’m fully embracing vicarious living through the next generation now.

DC: We were the DJ act opening for Gwillum!

<strong>JR</strong>: Oh yes, good point! See, my brain is crumbling as well as my looks.

SILENCE! #202

November 16th, 2016

 
 

 

IT IS TIME… IT IS TIME…  IT IS TIME FOR STORMY WEATHER

Look over here! Over here! Don’t look that way, look here! Over here! Look I’m waving my arms around! WOO-HOO! OVER HEEEEEEERE, OVER HE…
Damn. You looked. You saw it. Well don’t say I didn’t try and warn you.Well lookee here it’s a bright shiiiny new SILENCE! crawling from the wreckage. And those rubbery old puppets Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die are joined by Clarky T-Bubz, thw surprising new character find of 2016! All here to give you a hot comics injection right up the wazzoo.<ITEM> Things get off to a cracking start with a post-Thought Bubble 2016 de-brief, from the inside out. Panels, parties and somnabulistic botty-rumbles? All here true believers.

<ITEM> Some comics chat in the downhome comforts of The Reviewniverse, with exclusive talk of Motor Crush, discussion of Violent Love, Comic Book Babylon, From Under Mountains, Habitat, 8 House, Stathis’ Picnoleptic Intertia, Ulises Farinas’ Motro and Hitsville UK. And all with a smile on their lips and a flick of the heels.

<ITEM> Bit of the ol’ SILENCE! (Because My Mouth Is Full of Delicious Food), some Lady Lactus and the Galacticats, and more more more.

<ITEM> And you go out BANG! Like a candle.

 

 

@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie
@bobsymindless


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











You can support us using Patreon if you like.

This edition of SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the greatest comics shop on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton. It’s also sponsored the greatest comics shop on the planet GOSH! Comics of London.

If you’ve not read Dan Cox and John Riordan’s Hitsville UK, you’re missing out. Like Daft Punk‘s ‘Get Lucky‘, it’s the sound of the summer.  Or like…. shit, it’s hard to pick just one song at this stage in this icy death machine of a year, so let’s split the difference and say that like ‘Lazarus‘ or ‘Adore‘ its deeper magics might just see you through the colder months too.

I picked up the first issue at Thought Bubble a couple of years back, and while it took my alcohol sodden brain a couple of readings to pick up the rhythm, the  way the first few pages alternated between rows of panels introducing new bands and those wherein the seedy, behind the scenes types (haunted producers, men who made their money in sewage who now fancy a slightly more alluring expression of power) laid out the groundwork for the plot, but when I’d locked into it I realised that I now had a whole host of new favourite characters to care about.

The rest soon followed, issues #2-4 taken in one rush, flashbacks to being a kid and finally getting your hands on the album after wearing out the single you bought from Our Price down the town centre.

There’s so much in there in this soapy story about a new British indie label – a polyphonic reaction against the Toryfied despair of life in the UK 2016, the alienated teenage appetite for destruction, some saggy dadrock longing, plus a smack to the chops to your actual modern day fascists – all adding up to a baffling but somehow familiar map of British pop, complete with itchy annotations about the seedier and more desperate events going on in the background to some of your favourite magic tunes.

There are jokes here that will become fixed points in your mental landscape (“And there’s just time to make the gig!”).  There are faces you’ll find yourself seeing in the mirror in your more wretched moments (Jack Spatz or Gwillum, depending on whether you tend to slick arrogance or despair).  There are beautiful concepts and glorious colours galore:

More than any other comic about bands or music, Hitsville UK mimics the thrill and excitement of its subject.  Somewhat perversely, this comes from its overwhelming commitment to the comic book form.  Where other comics about music feel like extrapolations of zine culture or traditional adventure stories themed around pop stars, Hitsville UK actually feels like music.  By revelling in the joys of putting weird looking characters into even weirder situations, trusting that they can keep a rush of daft words and pictures coming and that they can keep it relevant, Riordan and Cox capture something of the hyped up love buzz of being into music.  A mix of wanting to keep up with the story and wanting to feel part of the moment as it happens around you.

As such, I figured the best way to look into their dark hearts was by dusting off the old Smash Hits interview questions and seeing what the handsome boys (pictured below) made of them…

1. How well mannered are you?

John: I am incredibly mannered, in the stiff and awkward manner of a 19th century drawing room drama. This is to such an extent that at school my nickname was Captain Mannering. Dan has almost no manners as he was brought up in a seaside arcade.

2. Do you ever check your hair when passing a shop window?

Dan: I avoid all reflective surfaces. I fear the hollow eyed man who stares back at me. The bloated shadow cadaver who rots all clocks. The bastard with the seaweed tangle beard who has stolen all my clothes. The one who whispers ‘You will never be this beautiful again’.

Like Medusa it is only possible to look at John via a complex system of mirrors. I normally close my eyes when we’re together.