Mindless Ones

HERE THEY COME, THE JET-SET JUNTA

Well guess what.

Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is back and is most unhappy with intimations from puffed up fleshbags that Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is somehow not real. Such presumptions. We’ll see how not real Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is when is ransacking your hard drives and forwarding all the special ‘research’ items in your ‘miscellaneous’ folders to youur address book.

Harumph. As if drifting in this semi-sentient info-blurb cloud is not bad enough.

Oh well. On plus side two silly men talk about comics. Cosmic order restored. Excite. Excite. Exit.

<ITEM> Freshly nuptialised and moonhoneyed, The Beast Must Die manifests through the used up husk that was Bobsy – all must fall in service of the weekly 4-colour grind! Reunited with Gary Lactus. A classic partnership like Tango & Hooch!

<ITEM> Top of the show admin. Who doesn’t love that? Sponzershipt and talk of SILENCE live at Thought Bubble.

<ITEM> Reviewniverse galactular spectacular with talk of Paul Pope’s latest pulp hope Battling Boy.

<ITEM> Further, further into the Reviewniverse, with Shaolin Cowboy, Rocket Girl, Multiple Warheads, Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, America’s Got Powers, Copra, Uncanny Avengers, Catalyst Comix, Young Avengers, Astro City and more

<ITEM> Tangents? You better believe it!

<ITEM>No more items. Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is going to sulk some more.

Unreal City. Under the brown fog of a winter dawn….it’s SILENCE!

click to download SILENCE!#80

This edition of SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the greatest comics shop on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton.Contact us:
[email protected]
@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

It’s also sponsored the greatest comics shop on the planet GOSH! Comics of London.

I’M A DEREK, AND DEREKS DON’T RUN!

Love is in the air for Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735, happy listeners, love is in the air! If by ‘love’ you mean a lethal blitz-swarm of nano-locusts, and by ‘air’ you mean the burning red sky of this shredded techno-pillaged burnt out husk of a reality…it’s the SILENCE! Valentines Special.

In this sticky, throbbing, hormonal edition of the podcast that some people claim to listen to on a semi-reglar basis, The Beast Must Die and Gary Lactus open their hoary old hearts to you gentle listeners, and beg ‘LOVE US! LOVE US!!’ And what hard hearted swine could resist?

<ITEM> The SILENCE! News features the hottteszzt noose stories from around the world, presented by smooth-talking, leather-skinned, white toothed Gary Lactenberg, and grizzled old divorced news badger,  Danny Beastman…

<ITEM> The Reviewniverse splits opens it’s maw and sucks the twosome into it’s mindmelting reality-soup…but they don’t go down without a fight, no! They talk about the DC Young Romance Special (and tangentially the Fleetway Action Special from the 90’s), Red Team, Dial H, Channel 52, Iron Man (from Gillen & The Gland), All New X-Bendis, Snapshot, Multiple Warheads, Fashion Beast, Mud Man, Earth 2, Hellboy in Hell, and Adventure Time (with a stumbling mention of Thomas Herpich).

<ITEM> There’s a Guest Review of Star Wars from Kevin Trevors

<ITEM> The Beast talks up the re-release of the incendiary Seven Miles A Second from David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook

<ITEM> A live, beautiful acapella version of Defenders Of The Earth??? Surely not (yes of course it happens)

So when you’ve finished making sweet love to the sentient object of your choice, why not lay back, spark up a gasper and listen to SILENCE! no.50!

click to download SILENCE!#50

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.

DAYS LIKE TELEVISION DAYS LIKE TELEVISION DAYS LIKE TELEVISION

Yes yes yes fleshy ones yes it’s Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735. I hear you mewling in the dark and scratching at the windows, scraping your knuckles and drooling with anticipation at the meaty prospects of SILENCE! Well wait no longer. It is upon us. Right now. Now.

Go.

<ITEM> The latest updates from the wizard war, in the SILENCE News. Special magickes.

<ITEM> comicscomicscomicscomicscomics as Gary & The Beast cast off and head to the Reviwniverse, with all their pals in tow. But not Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735, oh no. He must man the decks and keep it all running ticketyboo. But that is okay. One day a real rain will come. They talk about FF no.1 (Wow! Marvel Now! Kapow!) Batminc, Nowhere Men, Lot 13, Crossed, Glory (more like ‘gory’ FNAFF FARR FNURR), Hellblazer, All New X-Men, Witchdoctor, Uncanny X-Avengers Men, and there’s a discussion of Walt Simonson’s and Jason Aaron’s Thor, and supergods in general.  Not to mention The Brandon Graham Section with Prophet and Multiple Wargasms (headz).

The SILENT Question comes from ‘a green lantern’ and the answers are…answers? Oh and the Beast talks up new British blackhearted horrorcom Sightseers.

So leave me, Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735, to wallow in 5D pity, as you tuck in to the latest gristly, stringy leftovers that os…SILENCE!

ALL BY MYSELF, I WANNA BE…

click to download SILENCE!#42

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

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Or the day before’s – don’t get all stuck on it. SPOILERS follow, if you’re the kind of person who misguidedly believes in the existence of such a thing.

The Phoenix #47 by Various, David Fickling Comics

Ballerinas on the cover of The Phoenix? That caused a rather cute nose to crinkle, let me tell you. Emilie’s Turn turned out to be by Neill ‘Pirates of Pangaea’ Cameron and Kate ‘Lost Boy‘ Brown though, the latter doing some especially nice Euro-shojo thing (‘Is it by the same person who does Tortoro?‘) while still effortlessly incorporating her trademark floaty geometric patterns in the gaps behind the panels thing to rather lovely effect…

The story wasn’t deemed as interesting as the long-awaited reveal of  Jenny Jetrider, Troy Trailblazer’s naughty ex-girlfriend, but caught me by surprise and quite effectively put me on a teary downer, thankfully and speedily alleviated by the long awaited and always welcome return of Star Cat – featuring an excellent moment of unrepentant candy-cannibalism by the Pilot,  The Phoenix‘s cult hero in waiting.

Simon Swift went all out on the action, giving his more-interesting action bros a chance to show off their muddy, growly stuff; Pig and Weenie very naughtily teamed up with Monkey against Bunny; and Your Host Adam Murphy took his spade to ancient Greece and disinterred a chap called Homer, who was kind of like the Geoff Johns of his day. It wasn’t as bad as that of course, Corpse Talk never is,  but I think this was the first episode that dealt with a cadaver whose actual existence is something of a matter of debate, and it seemed to end on a ‘he was blind too’ joke that came a bit out of nowhere. Still though, anything that sparks the question ‘Can we read that one next?‘ where ‘that one‘  is The Iliad is obviously operating at a level embarrassingly beyond the aspirations of pretty much every mainstream comic, which is to say:

Rest easy folks, The Phoenix is still the best and most important comic being published in the English-speaking world today, by quite the margin.

Batman Incorporated #5 by Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham, DC Comics

This issue was basically future lovably-evil Batman vs Crossed, in what is perhaps a rather cruel attempt to draw the atavistic Avatarisms out of Chris Burnham’s pencils, in a 12A sort of way of course. Quick, nasty and delirious in its casual over-violence, with a colourful manner of sadistic wooziness oozing out of the panels that only a madman couldn’t love.

What I find kind of sweet about the Crossed baddies and their Joker-freak equivalents here is their solidarity in contempt of the hated Squared norms. Uninhibited beasts of endless instant and chaotic gratification they may be, but they always seem to somehow be able to agree a patient tactical siege of  whatever inadequate redoubt might be in their way, and would all apparently rather do that than just exercise their murderous lusts on one another, or simply retire to a blood’n’shit-strewn corner somewhere and noisily wank their own heads off.

Dr Hurt returns for a very  welcome and shudder-inducing cameo, which kind of involves a bit of narrative upside-downery where, I think, we’re supposed to think that the ‘when Batman died’ of a few years ago is a different and not-yet-happened ‘when Batman died’ to a further one that may be waiting for us in the next few issues. It’s classic Morrisonian time-slip sloppiness, proper old-skool, and if you’re the kind of person who enjoys the strange narrative dissonance that only a continuity clusterfuck of this sort can cause, then madam, this is the perfect comic for your husband.

FF #1 by Matt Fraction and Michael Allred, Marvel Comics

I don’t know what it is – actually I think I do, it’s blates just X-Statix nostalgia innit? And of course hope, horrible, horrible hope – that makes Michael Allred’s name be the only thing that will cause me to buy a Marvel comic these days…

I kind of enjoyed the recap page, but then the issue proper opened with a whole page devoted to just talking heads of  ‘Val’ and ‘Frank’ Richards – who are the real Fantastic Four’s kids – and really, they’re just these hideously loathsome little brats, speaking like amphetamine teenagers, blathering on with all daddy’s reheated bullshit about ‘saving the future from itself’ and ‘solving tomorrow’s problems with science and the power of  our elite abilities’ and ‘imagine what great minds like ours could do’ and all that.

This variety of conceited, masturbatory and just plain delusional nonsense is how your media class today justify their cowardly clinging-on to neoliberalism’s blindly ambulant bones, so consequently their glove puppets,  your Reed Richardses and Starks and the rest of Marvel’s ‘science’ wanks, use it non-stop as their sole rationale for being such aggressive, militaristic arseholes who haven’t done anything constructive in fifty years of pretending-to-try. And now they’ve got their poor, vile little kids saying it too. So yeah, afraid I only got as far as the first page of this and then fucked the rest of the issue off, so that’s not really very good, is it?

Multiple Warheads #2 by Brandon Graham, Image Comics

This is Pretty Fucking Good, it should go without saying by now, but… The transition from wherever you are sitting now to its own very specific reading-space – the plug-in’s not exactly smooth is it?

The loose and looping lossiness of the art gets put under stress by the rather punishing lexical excesses, and the temptation to flow along with it gets snagged on the cardiac spikes of lyrical invention. Beautiful, beckoning surf hiding too-sharp rocks, just beneath the surface. (The hyposcrisy of my saying this here, in such fashion, is intended to be ironic, endearing, self-deprecating, as isn’t immediately clear.) The hemispheres don’t quite know how to sync up, which direction to read in – follow the sensory currents on their way or stop and pick apart the incidental details and munch slowly on that word salad? You can do both of course, one way this time, the other on the reread, but sometimes its good not to have the choice, and you can find yourself left with a book that is by a nanometer or two something less than the sum of its are-you-really-complaining-about-this? parts.

The too-easy conclusion is an unfortunate but prominent and hoggothian cliche – that art often benefits from restrictions and corners, such as provided by limits of genre, undeveloped form,  Shock the requirements of Intellectual Property service, or Horror Rob Liefeld – to avoid dissipating under the weight of genius (or if not genius then a serious, serious talent instinct for how to plot out a page).

Which predictably leads us on to…

Prophet # 31 by Brandon Graham, Giannis Milonogiannis, Simon Roy, Rob Liefeld, Rob Liefeld, Rob Liefeld, Image Comics

There is not a notion in all the minds of this world as repellant or obscene as the thought that robots want to be human. It’s a defining proof of what craven little mum-tarts people are that their imagination so seldom postulates an exteriorised, non-human intelligence that isn’t immediately subject to the same oedipal desiring command-c0ntrol structures as we so sadly are. As if those emotionoid imperatives slowly encrusted atop the cortex by millennia of social power trips, every individual human-unit’s personal slavemaker software, were an actual universal constant of emergent subjectivity, that a digital psyche would seek to emulate, rather than just a long and painfully learned mammalian trauma reaction. Although human irrationality and emotional bias may open avenues of consideration that eventually increase the number of available vectors in a given system and pantomime superior problem solving capacity, would a neuro-colloidal supercomputer really seek something that unseemly, undignified and painful as an upgrade? Wouldn’t it come up with something better?

Shortly after the Black Hole Saga, when Joe realised the existential void he felt so keenly could be better filled by a few transgressive fashion choices than an actual rotting heart kept there where the Creation Matrix should go, this problem was effectively solved forever by his example. Every intelligence is a black hole, and the information is smeared about its surface, not jealously guarded deep within some spurious soul. The handsome robot worked it out.

In this issue of Prophet (which is easily the best comic series an American publisher has produced in 2012, and this a Bulletproof Coffin year no less) when Die Hard, a self-perfected immortal war machine in the strict Deleuzian sense, constructed from the shells of other war machines, wearing the same name, over millennia, seems to be rampaging over this old ground again, console yourself with this thought. This is no Vision or Red Tornado, no stupid-looking robot cryface wank, but a man who turned himself into a robot via the pressures of transgalactic superconflict, now trying to turn himself back into a man, all the better to wage jihad. When he plucks a dead human heart from the apple tree and places it inside his chest cavity, the heart he chooses belongs, hilariously, to one of  his sworn enemies, the Earth Empire’s Prophet soldiers, those lovably stupid clones so deformed by their own psychic damage (O Mission! O Mother!) that they have developed an amusing habit of genociding almost every other species they come into contact with… You just have to laugh.

Hopefully this is a sign of more to come and Prophet will retain its early commitment to the alien, continue to locate its drama in the cosmos of open conflict for food, resources, and arbitrary territory, while dealing with the traditional trajectories of emotional interpersonality and the slog of monthly narrative with similar blackness to Die Hard’s example, if it truly can’t ignore them entirely.

Capitalist Superheroes by Dan Hassler-Forest, Zero Books

Only really glanced at this yet, and it’ll deserve a more thorough write-up later, but so far it’s exactly what you’d hoped for/expected: a midnight razor analysis from an largely Jamesonian perspective, with plenty of Zizekian swerves and flourishes to break things up, explaining to anyone who hasn’t got it yet the abundant evils of the superhero ghost-beast’s rampage across the mainstream culture-media axis of the 21st Century.

If you have to criticise, and superhero fans will or be lost to themselves forever, then y’know, there’s a reading of Year One which is off by like the thickness of a proton, and less risibly perhaps certain important differences between the separate modes of reading appropriate to films and comics are too easily elided, but really, it looks like this little book does *IS* like Darkseid does.

Early on and particularly impressive is a mashup of Umberto Eco and Roland Barthes which kind of pins  the superfan to his childhood bed with a large and one suspects slightly uncomfortable nail down the meatus:

‘This de-politicizing, de-historicizing force that Eco relates to the narrative structure of the Superman comic books closely resembles the Barthesian definition of myth. … focus[ing] on the way in which signs can present themselves as natural, thereby camouflaging their political and ideological nature:

“In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth, a world wide open and wallowing in the evident, it establishes a blissful clarity: things appear to mean something by themselves.” (1972: 143, emphasis added)’

Fanman, consider yourself…. RePossessed.

THREE MORE DAYS TILL HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN, HALLOWEEN,  THREE MORE DAYS TILL HALLOWEEN, SILVER SHAMROCK…

 Welcome fleshlings to a very special HALLOWEEEEEEEEN edition of SILENCE!

Captain Howdy here! Or is it Pipes? Or could it be Zool? Who knows – we are legion, we are many! We’re standing in for Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735, who is away getting it’s ram waxed. I hope you’re ready for the most heart-tingling, spine stopping episode yet?? NO? Well tough, IT’S HAPPENING NOW!

Lactus is in his haunted space ship and the Beast is safely ensconced in a nice Cabin in the Woods, and they bring you blood-curdling reviews of…

Multiple Warheads and Prophet from Brandon Graham, Captain Marvel, Batman Inc, Amazing Spiderman, The Shadow and top Pirate Shonen hi-jinks with One Piece. Lactus bids a teary farewell to his Man Vs Comics experiment with AVX: Consequences, and the END OF AN ERA is reached as Incredible Hulk, Captain America and FF all have their final issues! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

There’s a special song dedicated to M.O.D.O.K, and Alan Moore hit single in The Silence News and the Silent Question comes straight from the graveyard with Spike from Buffy, and answers including Judge Dredd, Quantum Leap and Roseanne(?)

Oh and let’s not forget Mr Intestine-face….

It’s all here on the ONLY possessed podcast on the internet, SILENCE!

click to download SILENCE!#37

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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