Mindless Ones

A few thoughts on Material, a prematurely cancelled comic by Will Tempest, Tom Muller, Ales Kot and Clayton Cowles that feels like it’s worth not just reading but talking about – and maybe even continuing?

!) IT’S ABOUT TIME

Like so much contemporary mass media, Material  seemed aware of its readers’ ability to act as biocapitalist broadcasting stations, trusting that they would work harder and smarter than Image comics’ marketing department – that its readers would talk about it on podcasts, write essays, send enthusiastic tweets, anything to try and share the experience of it. Its methods of going about this was somewhat obvious but effective: the comic lectured you, provided prompts for further reading, tried to link scenes in the comic to other texts, be they topical text pieces in the back of the comic or the names and references scattered in the margins.

Even while it was still being published, then, Material seemed to revel in its status as an incomplete text. The art echoed this approach, with with Will Tempest’s none-more-loose linework held together almost entirely by the carefully coded block colouring.  It looked and felt like work-in-progress, and with the action currently suspended, its characters’ lives have that feeling too.

Everything in this book is material for the reader; the question is, how much work do you want to put in?  How much do you want to let Material work with you?

As I’ve already said, by publicly engaging with the comic we become part of the marketing scheme, “self-facilitating media nodes” or some such Barley-bollocks.  Is that all there is to it though?  Value is fundamental to the idea of currency of course, and when you’re offering up cash on the promise of receiving a worthwhile experience it’s doubly hard to disentangle financial motives from your response, but that doesn’t mean that we should give in to the tautological worldview that says since everything can be sold it is best judged by its commercial worth.

Material‘s current status gives us pause to consider this question, temporarily free from questions of cash money and how to spend it.  It brings the other questions of trust – is this going anywhere?  is it just wearing the raw tragedy of the moment like a shiny new suit? – into the foreground.

All you need to spend right now is a little bit of time.

THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE, MY STYLE IS IDENTICAL TO NONE

If you want a vision for the future, imagine a podcast stamping on a babyman’s neckbeard forever! That’s right – Big Blurber is watching you…

WAR IS COMICS
COMICS ARE SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS COMICS

Your mind is not your own. All thoughts of comics are Thoughtcrimes. Not thinking about comics is a Thoughtcrime. Neckbeards are not a Thoughtcrime. Necbeards are a FACECRIME.

Welcome to the only Doublethink podcast, the podcast that gives you a nice cold comforting bellyfeel, the podcast that YOU will hear is doubleplusgood. Those who don’t thinks so will be made unpeople in almost speedful fashion.

Big Blurber is watching you. He is watching your neckbeards. So think the goodthought and come join the joycamp that is..SILENCE!

<ITEM> It’s a mega epixxxxx amazo superblast X-travaganza with special guest Bobsy, joining Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die, and this sucker clears the two-hour mark son! Expect deviations, rambling digressions and wildly speculative theorising just the way you like it!

<ITEM> Admin, sponsorship, a discussion of the Ladybird Illustration exhibition and I Can’t Believe You’re Listening to That Vol 1. Oh and the Galacticats of course, because: the internet.

<ITEM> Trip trap trip trap over the rickety rackety Einstein-Rosen Bridge..into the Reviewniverse! They cover Providence, Material, Plutona, 8 House: Kiem, Garth Ennis’ War Stories, Here, Midnighter, Jem & The Holograms, Anticon, Sole, Daredevil, Safari Honeymoon, Hip Hop Family Tree Vol 3 and a whole lot more.

<ITEM> A world weary Gary Lactus kicks the other two out of his spaceship with a roar of GET ORF MOI SPACESHIP! And the podcast is OVER! BOOM!

Click to download SILENCE!#155

Contact us:

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

@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie
@bobsymindless

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.

IT’S THE BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ IN THE DRUM OF THE EAR

Doug stepped out into the sunlight, blinking. His dressing gown lolled open, exposing his paunch. Tina’s vest top, pulled on accidentally in his rush to get outside barely covered it and the thick black hair on his belly poked out obscenely. In one hand he held a spatula; the other reached reflexively into the dressing gown pocket for the lighter he knew wasn’t there. Last night’s beer emanated from his stale mouth and he rubbed his tongue across his teeth. He wanted to belch but found he couldn’t. Taking his eyes from the sky for a moment he glanced to his left. Kathy was stood on her front lawn, gazing upward with her mouth hanging slackly open. Her two year old hung at her legs, pulling on her arm sleeve whining in a low, insistent tone. Across the road the Petersons crowded around their camper van, all staring up.

The vast alien structure that hovered high above them was still humming it’s deep bass tone and rotating slowly. The bone like growths that sprouted from it creaked as they slowly undulated. The noise was awful, too much, too loud for Sunday morning. Doug couldn’t take his eyes from it, but his brain had already started to hanker for a Bloody Mary. Just as he was trying to remember if the tomato juice was still okay to drink, a jagged split opened up in the base of the structure. And that’s when it really began.

<ITEM> There’s a fresh crop of admin, waiting to be picked, with nosey bouquets of Sponsorship and more Christopher Walken than you can shake a (Walken) stick at. It’s time for a new SILENCE! the only podcast that predates the discovery of the moon. Seasoned pod jockeys The Beast Must Die and gary Lactus are joined by new season recruit Bobsy, and the fun flows like lava,

Click to download SILENCE!#148

Contact us:

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

@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie
@bobsymindless

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.

 

SHE LOOKS LIKE EVE MARIE SAINT, IN ON THE WATERFRONT

“So like with this second album we really wanted to just totally get away all the stuff that everyone associated with that first album y’know? Like, we really wanted to strip out a lot of the poppy stuff and just really let the tracks just like find themselves y’know? We’d been listening to a lot of Can, Neu! y’know Krautrock stuff but also like a lot of Italo-disco y’know? And that just totally informed the epic, spaced out grooves we kind of ended up with. And like we were really getting pressured to come up with a hit single, like something that the label could totally pitch to, I don’t know Radio 6 or something, but we were so totally against that, because like really we felt we’d really done that whole three minute thing y’know and Gavin was trying out this weird singing style, kind of trying for that Liz Frazer ethereal stuff y’know but with this real kind of screechy falsetto y’know, and he’d totally just given up with traditional vocals and moved into some kind of impressionistic moaning and shit y’know? Really pushing the boundaries. And Tiny Darren was just totally entranced with all that Bollywood soundtrack stuff so he was really into just bringing that vibe into the rhythm section and then Kath was really intent on everyone swapping instruments on the final track cos she’d been using Eno’s Oblique Strategies and wanted to get like a sort of Tortoise jamming thing going, but much more primitive and skronky y’know. Really bold, challenging stuff.  And we were really really pleased with the way the whole album hung together, even though the label were really nervous about the fact that we sacked Terry Nuggins and ended up producing the whole thing ourselves, which I actually think really kind of brave actually, considering that Terry had just produced the Brontosaurus album, but we like knew that we’d done the right thing, the honest thing, y’know. And when the reviews came in they were mixed and kind of sometimes terrible and a lot of our fans like tuned out, like a lot, and we got fully dropped, but I still totally stand by the record. Y’know?”

“Listen mate, can I just get my burger?”

<ITEM> It’s an extra big portion of SILENCE!, the only podcast to have started in the Elizabethan era. ZOUNDS! Peppy new recruit Bobsy joins those grizzled street veterans, who are gettin’ too ol’ for this shit, The Beast Must Die & Gary Lactus.

<ITEM> Admin, get yer fresh admin! Only £50 a portion! Sponsorshizzle, Blue Peter, the Harmontown documentary and Big Hero 6? They’re all here and ready to please

<ITEM> Reviewniverse? Why yes I will, and and I’ll go large as well! Material, Providence, Necronomicon (film), Insufferable, Millar Vs Morrison, Resident Alien, Convergence, Secret Wars, Shazam!, Optic Nerve, Swamp Thing, Kitchen, Wytches and oh so much more.

<ITEM> Y’know what that sound is? the smallest violin in the world playing just for you cos the podcast’s OVER! Boo Hoo!

Click to download SILENCE!#144

Contact us:

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

@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie
@bobsymindless

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! Comicsof London.

Right:

So, this is a serious item. Material is, what’s it coming out fortnightly? I could look, sometimes it’s fun to have a conversation like you’re not a robot, too. It doesn’t look like something that belongs in comic shops, it just doesn’t.

It’s frill-less, raw, politically engaged, arch, brash, ripped from the headlines, you know?