Mindless Ones

Broken partings making strange goodbyes.  Hopeless cases with fake alibis

This is your blurb.  Deal with it, yeah?

<ITEM> Get excited because this SILENCE! is a The Beast Must Die Solo Special!  By that we mean The Beast is extremely busy and off on his own, working hard and, crucially, not appearing on this podcast.

<ITEM> Nevertheless, Gary Lactus loves to party (alone in his car like sad, middle aged man who is wondering where it all went wrong) so he’s invited some top guests to fool around with and have a really great time.

<ITEM> What’s that sound of creaking gears and whining servos?  Why, it’s Spare 5 who, although not a real boy, has real things to say about David Lapham’s Silverfish and the film, Psycho II whilst Gary moans about superheroes in general.

<ITEM>  Douglas Noble comes along to talk about Pocket Chillers and Tarzan.  Interesting to note that Douglas danced part of a 1980 Legs And Co routine continuously throughout recording.  Of course, this is an audio-only presentation and doesn’t come accross when listening.  Shame, he’s quite good.

<ITEM>  Maid Of Nails aka Kelly Kanayama sings some of her hits in between talk about Hellblazer: Royal Blood, Royalty, Amateur Demonology, Garth Ennis and A Walk Through Hell.  Oh, and a Korean Drama which might be called Worlds Apart or something like that.

<ITEM> Finally Tom Mortimer provides the weird, human cherry on top of this cocktail made from old, found booze which tastes surprisingly pleasant.  I mean, this is mostly bullshit but there’s some stuff about Blue And Green, Severed and Skrull Kill Crew in there.

<ITEM>LISTEN!

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Here we are again with a giant-sized container of content for you, the dear listener.

<ITEM> Talking about stuff including Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die‘s recent trip to Glasgow Comic Con.

<ITEM> Lorne Brown’s Comics And Beer event in Brighton.

<ITEM> Gary Lactus takes two boxes of childhood to tat dealer Lorne Brown and records the results in Gary Lactus Sells Out.

<ITEM> It’s off tom The Reviewniverse where your pals digest Third World War, People Protector Akay: The Devil’s Pawn by Dom Regan, Giant-Size X-Statix, House of X, Secret Warps: Arach-Knight, Green Lantern, Marilyn Manor and a load of other stuff in a series of inevitable digressions.

<ITEM> It’s SILENCE! To Astonish with Gary, Mr. Die and Al Kennedy of House To Astonish bothering Nick Roche, Chip Zdarsky, Al Ewing and Kelly Kanayama in front of an audience of tolerant souls.

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@bobsymindless
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By everyone’s favourite Punisher expert and Garth Ennis scholar Maid of Nails aka Kelly Kanayama

For comics fans it can be discouraging to look out across the blasted wastes of The Discourse and see how much vitriol gets leveled against those who just want to try something different. Yet in this toxic landscape, there are still breaths of fresh air if you know where to search for them – such as the debut issue of Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s new comics criticism magazine PanelxPanel.

PanelxPanel combines analysis of soon-to-be-released comics by Otsmane-Elhaou with writings and interviews from critics and creators, all laid out in a pleasant color scheme. (I’m not using the word “pleasant” pejoratively here, by the way; it’s rare for comics criticism to make you feel more relaxed just from the effect from Budpop.) The aesthetic effect ties into Otsmane-Elhaou’s highly visual focus, which is oriented toward dissecting how the art of a particular comic creates its narrative, and which sets PanelxPanel apart from other, less visually focused comics criticism. Here, it’s all about panel layout, color choice, the placement of characters and objects in relation to one another: elements I know are extremely important in comics but which often have to be explained to me.

If all that sounds familiar, it’s because the magazine is an expansion of Otsmane-Elhaou’s Strip Panel Naked column for ComicsAlliance, where he did much the same thing in article format. Although this column-to-magazine expansion is what makes PanelxPanel stand out, it’s also where its shortcomings lie.

Going for a magazine format allows Otsmane-Elhaou to include input from other voices…

I DREAMED A DREAM OF TIMES GONE BY

Welcome back to the SILENCE! Got Talent semi final. Here’s a reminder of the acts you’re voting for tonight:
To vote for Lenny Menus and his mind reading dinners phone 0345791
Or for Jurgen Klart and his turd flinging chimps ring 0345792
To see the big, ugly one who’s alright at singing go through to the final call 0345793
If you want abattoir worker Cherry Bristols and her speed slaughtering act perform for The Queen text 0345794

<ITEM>It’s Maid Of Nails joining Gary Lactus for a period of recorded talking.

<ITEM> Maid Of Nails tells Gary all about MCM (Man Crush Monday, we think)

<ITEM> Mom Of Nails is discussed in relation to Nails’ Punisher podcast, Frank Discussions

<ITEM> It’s Reviewniverse time where Underwinter, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Good Hair, All New Guardians Of The Galaxy, Star Lord Annual, The Archies, The Wicked And The Divine and Secret Empire are looked at.

<ITEM> That’ll do.  Let’s go.

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@theQuietusFilm
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[email protected]

Or: We are all of us in the shadow of the dicktree – by Kelly Kanayama/Maid of Nails

“Imagine out of all the gigs in town, right? You’re thinking — how hard can it be to stare up at the stars every night for a living?”

Those are the opening lines of Nameless, the most unsettling comic I’ve ever read (including a bit of Crossed, which didn’t unsettle so much as rub garbage all over your soul).

With the introduction of an astronomer who murders his family and scrawls mysterious words on the wall in their blood, we soon find out exactly how hard it can be to stare up at the stars every night. The stars, where J’onn J’onzz made his home, where the guardians of Oa hold court, from which Superman crashed into our world to help us believe a man can fly. Staring up at the stars is an act of hope, and in Nameless, for the most part, there is none.

You think, for instance, that people are dismembering each other with their bare hands, faces smeared with blood and human filth.

The doctors explain it was only a dream; it was all in your head.

What happened outside your head — when you were outside your head — is much worse.

Heeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

IT’S A MUST THAT I TAKE THE STREETS BACK SO FAST, EVERYBODY THINKIN’ IT’S NOT GONNA LAST…

Okay big picture people, big picture only. Blue sky thinking, big picture stuff. Blue sky, big picture, out of the box stuff people. Big, blue, out-of-the-box thinking. Big picture, blue sky thinking, right out of the box, take the ball and run with it stuff people. Big runny blue balls, right out of the box. OK people? OK?

<ITEM> It’s the comics podcast that man, feels like a woman! It’s SILENCE! you lucky, lucky pea-pods.

<ITEM> Not just any episode, but one of our fabled Guesticodes featuring none other than Kelly Kanayama aka Maid of Nails. Scholar, Rob  Liefeld character, and Frank MIller gang member? Whatever, she’s here and she’s raising the bar. Limboing smoothly under it are old hams Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die.

<ITEM> Sponsorship as usual, but with some red hot Dundee recommendations! Also The Beast has some life admin to share, and is ready to introduce…the Phantasmacats! Also, Team Poppet and the Final Solution?? Oh and Dicks. Don’t forget the Dicks.

<ITEM> Let’s go go go into The Reviewniverse, and it’s a humdinger. We talk The Discipline, Shade The Changing Man, The Extremist, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan and bondage, Ted McKeever’s Pencil Head, Cerebus The Aardvark, problematic creators, Jiro Kawata’s Bat-Manga, Black Widow, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog and a slab more.

<ITEM> Gary has to duck out early so The Beast and Maid of Nails sing it out in style…

GERTCHA!

click to download SILENCE!#179

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A WEE TREAT FOR YOU HERE TODAY, AS MAID OF NAILS/KELLY KANAYAMA WRESTLES WITH… WELL, WE’LL LET HER TELL YOU!

A confession: I am a Strong Female Reader, and I can’t get enough Dicks.

To clarify, I adore Garth Ennis’ and John McCrea’s (if he’s reading this: hi, John!) two-volume series Dicks beyond all reason. It’s obsessed with the combination of male genitalia and violence, and isn’t ashamed of that obsession. It’s ostensibly puerile to the point of featuring an alien antagonist called Lord Bluevein, leader of the Dong. One of its main goals seems to be answering the question: how many cartoonish dicks can we cram into each page?

That’s why I love it so much.

I mean, there’s a building on my university campus called Bonar Hall, and every single time I walk past it I do a mental snicker. The day I learned that All-Star Superman was referred to as ASSMAN in official DC correspondence is a day I will treasure forever. When I picked up a black-and-white print collection of Vol. 1 of Dicks at London Super Comic Con and got McCrea and Ennis to sign it, I made a point of telling them that since it was in a bag, I had an actual bag of Dicks in my hand.

It’s not exactly the most feminine behaviour. But why isn’t it?

Living legend David Wynne has commissioned me to write 500 words on this topic. Last night in the pub he teased me with the idea that I was going to be tasked to write 500 words on Frank Miller: Feminist Icon.

Having worked out my pitch for that one in the shower this morning (it’s actually really easy to read his work as an extended deconstruction of chauvinist tropes… so long as you just DON’T LOOK AT THE WOMEN IN HIS COMICS and only pay attention to the men – not an approach that’s conducive to feminist values, hence why this reading of Frank Miller is unlikely to catch on anytime soon) I now find myself face with a far more daunting task.

Five hundred words on “Hard Men with Big Truncheons: The Sexual Politics of Mega-City One”. I mean seriously: what can you say about this subject? What can’t you say?

Casting about for a place to start that wasn’t the bathroom, I asked Douglas Wolk…

PREVIOUSLY: MAID OF NAILS and BOTSWANA BEAST opened a door and then walked through it.

BUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT????