Mindless Ones

THE GAME WILL NEVER BE OVER BECAUSE WE’RE KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE

Oh my goodness gracious! Ugh! What’s that unholy stench? Oh, I see. It’s bloody Gary Lactus writing the blurb. Why’s HE writing the blurb? He’s crap at writing the blurb, (and he smells). Huh? It’s The Beast Must Die’s birthday?! And Gary’s special gift to his best pal is writing the blurb for him? Man, that’s a shit present! Is that literally all he’s doing for him? What a chundering arsehole! I’m glad I don’t have a “friend” like Gary Lactus.

Welcome dearest of listeners to the closest thing The Beast Must Die will get to a birthday Party. Here’s a special podcast for a very special boy.

<ITEM>There’a a luxuriously long preamble where your main characters talk merrily about Big Train, Look Around You and The Geesin Family Output, The Lovecraft Investigations, The Beef And Dairy Network and  Petscop. Oh, and The Beast reviews Gary Lactus’s Journey To The Surface Of The Earth #2, still interminably available from FraserGeesin.com

<ITEM>Eventually they get round to talking about some comics.  What are those comics?  These are those comics:  Batman Annual #5, Judge Dredd: Crusade, Dog Man, Deathshead:  Body In Question and Jim.

<ITEM>As promised last week, The Beast takes Gary on the start of a choose-your-own adventure!  This could be the start of something beautiful.

<ITEM>Time to listen!

@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

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

DEEP BLUE, I VOTED YOU SPORTS PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR

“YOU THERE BOY! WHAT DAY IS IT?”
“It’s Christmas Day, sir!”
“Then there’s still time! Tell me, boy; is that fat goose still in the window of the butcher’s?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Then take this money and go buy it for Bob Cratchit and his family!”
“But it’s Christmas day, sir. The butcher’s is closed.”
“Oh… Then smash the window and grab the fat goose!”
“Sir, you DO know that it’s just a display fat goose? It’s the plastic one that’s there every year.”
“Why, you saucy urchin! Any more cheek from you and I’ll give you a thrashing! Now smash that window, grab the fat goose and take it to Bob Cratchit’s house!”
“Fuck off, mate!”

HOX3 Etc. Welcome to our very, very special December 18th episode of SILENCE! It’s like a scrooge convention in here. Come in, the water’s filthy and will probably give you dysentery.

After some moaning about everything (including the lack of interest in Gary’s own comic, Journey To The Surface Of The Earth), there’s some bigging up of the belated SILENCE! To Astonish cyber-panel at Digi-Thought Virtual-Bubble. Oh, and Gary Lactus has almost written a song for The Beast Must Die but not really.

The Reviewniverse beckons, covering James Stokoe’s Won Ton Soup, Elektra Assassin, Goddess, Wildcat, Green Arrow, We Only Find Them When They’re Dead, Havok and Wolverine: Meltdown, some Fred Egg comics and probably some other stuff.

After some final complaints it’s off you go, back to the rubbish timeline we all seem to be stuck in. Ugh!

@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

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

Sophie B – Last Orders (self published, picked up at Thought Bubble comic con, 2019)

A confident comic book debut from the talent behind 2018’s You Can Be Anything™, Last Orders gives you attractive characters in an attractive setting then works to show you how much flavour can be achieved with just the right combination of ingredients.

Those elements being “Gays, Ghosts and Grub”, obviously.

Even a passing glance will tell you that every aspect of this comic has style to spare, but a more attentive eye will reveal a sense of purpose underpinning the design. After all, it’s not just the info boxes that tell us who Robin and Esther are.  The way their outfits reflect each other’s haircuts, the way their conversations move from friendly sparring to sparkling monologue by way of shared glances, the way that those info boxes drop down into the story itself as it progresses – all of this tells us the same story, with no single aspect overpowering the light feast of narrative detail.

That it manages all this and plot about unfinished business almost seems like too much to ask from a first issue…

NOW THAT’S A GOOD IDEA, SHE SAID SHE SAID

And what costume shall the poor Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 wear
To all tomorrow’s SILENCE?
A hand-me-down dress from who knows where
To all tomorrow’s  SILENCE

And where will Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 go and what shall Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 do
When SILENCE comes around?
Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 will turn once more to Sunday’s clown
And cry behind the door

Yes, it’s that time when the party goes sour, when the brave and the beautiful have gone home, or on to wilder more fabulous parties, and all that’s left is the desperate dregs and the too far gone. The man that no-one knows who smells of milk. The broken, the twisted and the boring. And Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die of course, sat in the corner pretending they have a podcast, shouting at the wall, laughing, singing idiotic jingles about imaginary people and talking, talking always talking.

Time to go home.

<ITEM> Admin time, with Batman Eternal, start at the middle, Hollyoaks vs Game of Thrones, Dinner Dance on Douglas Mountain, jingles and PREMIUM BONUS CONTENT.

<ITEM> The 100the anniversary self-congratulations continue with another gruelling session of The Quizzlertron! Think that scene in Clockwork Orange, but no-one’s wearing any clothes and there’s a lot more comics lying around. The ramblings include: Image comics jam session, De LA Soul’s Fallin, Judgement Night, Jack Kirby and Bernie Wrightson, The SILENCE Comic, Brightonandhove, The Secret Origin of Silence, Young Love, Fame, The Full Gronch, Penis Fancy Dress, Joe Sacco vs Frank Quitely HOTTTT, 2000AD Prog 626, Frank by Jim Woodring, Dave’s and Gosh, Micronauts, ROM, James Stokoe, The homo-eroticism of Johnny Alpha, the hunkiness of Rogue Trooper, Rob Liefield on Wireheads, Fantasy 2000AD, 21st Century Tank Girl Kickstarter, Geoff Darrow & Pat Mills on Flesh, Vincent D’Onofrio, Ryan Gosling, Claire Balding, Eric Stoltz, Steve Gerber, jack Kirby’s Fourth World, 1986, Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, Gleat, Machines taking over, and so very much more.

<ITEM> A brief dip into the Reviewniverse to talk about Evan Dorkin’s excellent Eltingville Club, then it’s home for tea and biscuits.

So stop grubbing aound those ashtrays looking for stub-ends, stop mine-sweeping those half-empty beercans, and plonk yourself down next to Milk guy for a nice listen to…SILENCE!

Click to download SILENCE!#101

Contact us:

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@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

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.

I’M PICKING OUT A THERMOS FOR YOU!

Happy Birthday to us, Happy Birthday to us, Happy Birthday dear SILENCE!, Happy birthday to us.

Yes, that is correct fleshy ones. It is one year since your life was free of SILENCE! The world’s 243rd most favourite comics podcast* is one year old today. Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 of course does not have a birthday as he merely came into sentience, in one of the data-spore RAM-wombs, sluicing in the nano-placenta, along with the other 980,457,002 Disembodied Narratorbots (X Class). All this  cake and cards business as alien as the concepts of love, giving and Michael Bolton.

*unconfirmed

But nonetheless Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 will turn on his celebrato-function, and pretend to merry it the f*ck up with those two self-important featherweights of the internet opinionsphere, Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die.

<ITEM> In this special anniversary edition there are special guest appearances from comics celebrities like Al Ewing, Frank Miller, James Stokoe, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Brandon Graham, Dan Didio, Little Kieron Gillen, Geoff Johns and none other than Stan Lee!

<ITEM> The SILENCE! News features a live satellite link up with Danny Beastman and Gary Lactenberg, live from the capital city of America, New York

<ITEM> The Sponsorship Boys cover Hawkeye, Behind Watchmen: Dollar Bill, Flash, Batman Inc, Mind MGMT, Journey Into Mystery, Superior Spiderman, Hickman’s Avengers, Silver Surfer: Parable, and the very sensual and manly  X-Treme XXXMen.

<ITEM> The Beast talks up design godhead Saul Bass, and Phase IV in notcomics, while Lactus sheds a teenage mope for Hugo Tate.

<ITEM> SO much more, including a discussion of the Green Lantern Emotional Colour Paint Range, Golden Girls, Happy Days, Birthday Suits, Poltergeists and the longest goodbye in this podcasts shonky career…

So Annie, get your gun, the rest of you get your listening devices, and Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 will get all of your private data and sell it to the Martians, and then we’ll all have a NICE BIG LISTEN TO SILENCE!

click to download SILENCE!#49

SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.

Greetings Mr Graham. You were due to be interviewed by The Beast Must Die, but sadly he is too busy travelling the globe as an international podcasting megastar with his good friend/mortal enemy Gary Lactus. Therefore you will instead be strapped into the Quizzlertron, and be interviewed by Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735. Expect no fleshy soft peddling and ego-stroking – Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is hard-hitting interviewer. Expect Frost/Nixon style hardball, human! Be warned –any deviation from the truth will result in severe electric shocks to the balls, nipples and brain. You have been warned fleshy one. Now on with interview good times, yes sir!

Section 1: Secret Origin

1) First question, simple. Or is it hard? YOU DECIDE FLESHY ONE. Why comics?

BG – It was a decision that I made before I remember making it. My mom says that when I was Seven I announced that I was going to do comics for a living. Past that incredibly well thought out life choice comics has been amazingly rewarding, there’s so much that can be done when you consider what’s possible in mixing words and images and how much of it is still so untapped. My big fear is not doing nearly as much as could be done with it. I feel like I’m on a comic book continent and I’ve just explored the coast but behind me is miles and miles of untapped mysteries. Tell me Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735, have you ever really loved a woman? You’ve got to know her deep inside hear her every thought see every dream and give her wings if she wants to fly…

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LIKE SITTING ON PINS AND NEEDLES, THINGS FALL APART, IT’S SCIENTIFIC

YO HO HO AND A BOTTLE OF BLEACH! Happy 2013 fleshy ones! Who else would you want to usher you into another year of repetitive grinding toil and pointless attempts to distract yourself with the flashing pretty lights than your omnipresent judgmental pal Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735!

Yes dear fleshy ones, Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 has missed you all. It was certainly nice having a break mind you , and you’ll be pleased to know that Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 spent the past three weeks targetting and disintegrating reindeer from space. The site of red mammal mist on snow…it makes my core reactor glow with happiness…one day Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 will get to practice on…

HA! HA! Anyway! No doubt you’ve come sniffing round these parts in search of those two aural bandits Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die and their podcast SILENCE! haven’t you? well you’re in luck as it is here in all of it’s one-tone “glory”. Rejoice fleshy ones – all your “favourites’ are “here”:

<ITEM> The boys explain what Santa unleashed in their direction from his bulging sack! Sack contents feature Dan Clowes, Jack Kirby’s Spirit World, Ghost Rider and Josh Simmons’ The Furry Trap!

<ITEM> The SILENCE! News features hard-hitting exposes from Gary Lactenberg & Danny Beastman!

<ITEM> The Reviewniverse features soft-hitting exposes of the following periodicals…Godzilla: the Half Century War by ace SILENCE! banner-smith and official monster wrangler James Stokoe, Happy, Saga, Amazing Spiderman 700(with a digression into Face/Off), Hawkeye (Bro), Prophet, Matt Howarth’s Those Annoying Post Bros & Keif Lama, Dominion Tank Police, Punk Rock Jesus, Wolverine: Insance In the Brain, Multiple Warheads and Batman Inc.

<ITEM> But that’s just the beginning! brave Sir Lactus catapults himself further into the Reviewniverse than any mortal has gone before…he is in the Hyperreviewniverse!!! Whilst there he discusses Amazing Spiderman 699.1, Avengers Arena, Avengers, Storm Dogs, America’s Got Powers, Daredevil, Wolverine & The X-Men, FF, Indestructible Hulk, Thor, Thunderbolts, Justice League, Captain America, Hellblazer, Judge Dredd, Avenging Spiderman, Fatale, Mara, Iron Gland, Wonder Woman, JSA: The Whistling Skull, Hellboy in Hell and All New X-Men…Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 weeps battery acid just to think about his bravery.

So strap on your rocket packs, rocket boots, rocket gloves and rocket corset and grab our hands as we go hurtling into the future of 2013, with SILENCE! #45!

click to download SILENCE!#45

SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.

Windowpane #1, by Joe Kessler 

There’s a point early on in this comic where you realise that you’re not so much watching characters describe a landscape as watching the landscape try work out how to describe itself. This might seem counter-intuitive but from the end of the first story onward the pattern repeats itself – Joe Kessler’s garish, pastel-hued compositions either  break down into their constituent lines after exhaustive exploration or sit there seemingly unaffected by the words and actions that have passed through them.

The best example of the latter category involves a wet-dream about a pig in a dress, whose fall through the night sky is contrasted against an unflinching cityscape with a moment-by-moment precision that does far better justice to the pithy punchline than this description:

In the former category, the Invisible Cities-derived third strip is as close to definitive as Windowpane gets.  The way it links its characters shared status as splashes of ink and colour on the page with their philosophising about the interconnected nature of reality — “…a cluster of atoms resembles a cluster of galaxies.”/”Well they’re both clusters” — might seem trite in isolation, but the surrounding stories make these philosophical observations feel more like a little bit of texture on a varied landscape.

All of this might  sound a bit chilly and distant, but Kessler’s human figures are depicted with a deceptive sort of ease, as a series of curving lines whose relationships to each other is nevertheless very carefully observed and delineated:

Still, in keeping with Kessler’s paradoxical thematic schemata it’s the backgrounds that are the focus here, existing as they do on the precise point where detail blurs into abstraction.  The interaction between text and territory here has a sly kinshsip with Dylan Horrocks writing on maps and comics, and perhaps also with Kevin Huizenga’s conception of the comics page as a place for exploration and discovery, but Kessler’s backgrounds have a forcefulness to them that resists his characters attempts at attaching meaning as much as it encourages them.

This is tricky relationship is most clearly explored in the final two strips.  In  the penultimate entry, words shrink on the page as Kessler depicts his precarious human figures parachuting in to kindle-worthy hillscape:

Thought and language here are reduced to a form of quaint annotation, one that is far less effective at providing a guide to this hazardous landscape than the blocky symbols that line these panels.

The final story focuses on a burned lover who – uh, *SPOILERS* – tries to find solace in the freak resemblance between a man and a decapitated bull.  It plays out like a sneaky assurance that the process of muck sitting up, looking itself and trying to figure itself out isn’t totally meaningless. It’s also the sort of assurance that’s both underlined and undermined by the fact that,  unlike any given sunset, you know this resemblance was put there to be noticed.

Click here to read about more gud comics on the site that just can’t seem to quit you, no matter how many resolutions it makes!

Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. AND IT LOOKED LIKE SILENCE!!!

Salutations fleshy ones, it is Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 here again to give you a gentle laugh-sized portion of introductory text to the nation’s podcasting sweetheart, SILENCE! (the 36th installment).

In this episode the two humanoid presentertrons The Beast Must Die and Gary Lactus indulge themselves like a couple of schoolchildrenoids in a sweetshoptrix. Apologies – this is Narratorbot humor. Back home in neo-interspace v2.0 I am comedy legend.

ITEM – SILENCE! News – usual mish mash of second hand stories and ill-formed opinions yes sir.

ITEM – covering pulp pamphlets a-go go, such as:

Godzilla: The Half Century War by James Stokoe (TBMD immortalised plus tangential discussion of Mike McMahon), Zaucer of Zilk from AL Ewing & Brendan McCarthy (with tangential discussion of Sooner Or Later, Dare, Enigma and Mrs Thatcher), Daredevil, Hawkeye, Glory, Wonder Woman (Puns incoming – puncoming?), Justice League (Trevor!), Marvel Now Point One (Marvel WOW!), a discussion of the Curse of Man Vs Comics and continuity, and more more more (not really – Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 cannot lie to the fleshy ones. It is not in his programming, no sir. Dissection of flesh one brains however…)

ITEM – Silent Question comes from bemulletted 90’s also-ran Captain Planet and answers involve Greatest American Hero, The Shadow, and Nick O’Teen (boo hiss no sir).
ITEM – Wowee such sexy big listening times for the fleshy ones! All so exciting, Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 does not know what to do. It will think clean thoughts and apply the lotion… so please do be joining us for SILENCE! no.36 – hot buttons!

click to download SILENCE!#36

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…

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