SILENCE! #173

January 26th, 2016

 

 

I’VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN SO THE RAIN WON’T GET IN

It’s a new life, it’s a new day, it’s a new SILENCE!…and now no-one’s feeling good. Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die coming on like a Seventh sense to bring you a juicy slab of comics punditry. More CLASSIC BANTS than a carful of Clarksons smashing into a real ale festival.

<ITEM> It all starts with champagne. How like life, ha ha ha!!!  Sponsorship, star-spotting, headcannons and all the shiznay you could shake a shizztick at. What lies within the Dunce Tank? Oh and the Galacticats. Of course.

<ITEM> Just the tiniest smidgin of technical bamboozlment, no deliveries and then we’re off at a steady canter towards…

<ITEM> The Reviewniverse shimmers, flexes and allows entry to it’s 4 colour wonders. Under the megascope: Ted McKeever’s Pencilhead, Phonogram, Patsy Walker Hellcat, Mark Millar’s Huck, Injection, Blackball Comics, Blast Furnace, American Monster, Batman and a crank load more.

<ITEM> It’s the Beast’s Birthday!

And that, in a very real sense, is all folks.

click to download SILENCE!#173

 

[email protected]

@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.

SILENCE! #168

December 9th, 2015

 

 

YOUR THIN PAPER WINGS, IN THE WIND, DANGLING

Roll the dice – move forward 4 steps. You find yourself at the clearing of a large empty podcast. To your right are some dense opinion shrubs. To the left a bubbling pool of judgments. Roll the dice – you decide to ignore both and move forward 8 paces towards the giant floating skull in the centre of the clearing. Roll the dice – you ask it a question: “Where am I?” The skull opens it’s mouth and with a terrifying ear-splitting screech it tells you…”SILENCE!”

<ITEM> And the guest-train keeps on rolling – not content with shattering senses with our senses-shattering Brandon Graham special last week, Gary Lactus, The Beast Must Die and Bobsy are joined by megatronic comics leg-end and all round superchap KIERON GILLEN on this latest pre-festive edition of the internet’s most beloved podcast

<ITEM> Sponsorship, admin, STAR WARS day at Gosh Comics on 12th December, the whole shebang. Meat ‘n’ two veg just the way you like it.

<ITEM> There’s a special exciting celebrity segment as Bobsy’s daughter Junior Bobzone asks Kieron some questions about his Darth Vader comic and Star Wars in general. Have we mentioned Star Wars yet? STAR WARS STAR WARS STAR WARS STAR WARS STAR WARS MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU STAR WAAAAAAAAAARGH

<ITEM> The Reviewniverse once again struggles to contain the multitude of opinions and jibber-jabber, and despite some…interesting technical issues the boys talk up Matt Boyce, Unfollow, The Vision, Paul John Milne, Vertigo, Phonogram, Plutonia, Dr Strange, Daredevil, ET, Paper Girls, Daft Punk, Pretty Deadly, Scott Pilgrim,  Dark Empire, Robots With These Guys and so much more…

<ITEM> The Beast ducks out early and the others shimmy off into the sunset…a mess? By god yes, but what a glorious mess.
<ITEM> *drops mic*

click to download SILENCE!#168

PLUS

SECRET CONVERGENCE OF INFINITE PODCASTS

 

Contact us:

[email protected]

@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.

SILENCE! #166

November 23rd, 2015

 

 

YOU CAN RUN WITH US, WE’VE GOT EVERYTHING YOU NEED

Roll up, roll up, roll up – getcherself a noice fresh bunch of opinions, a beeeyootiful selection of the foinest snap judgements and finish it orf wiv abag o’ the juiciest reviews… fresh terday, ot off the flippin’ press and once it’s gone it’s gone! Goin’ once, goin’ twice to the man in the ill-fittin’ Aquaman T-shirt…it’s only annuver bloomin’ SILENCE!

<ITEM> Hark! What light from yonder window breaks? It’s The Beast Must Die and Gary Lactus, shining their phone torches around trying to find the keys to this week’s podcast.

<ITEM> A very special admin as the boys reminisce about the recent hi-jinx celebrating Gary’s 90th birthday…more rambling than ever!

<ITEM> The Beast waxes lyrical about the recent Jessica Jones TV show. Just like the rest of the internet.

<ITEM> Hut one, hut two, hut three, hut hut…The Reviewniverse opens up and then it shuts! Hear The Beast’s epic rant about Mark Millar’s Huck, then more restrained views of Secret Wars Too, Martian Manhunter, Blast Furnace, Paper Girls, Astonishing Ant Man, Phonogram, Red Thorn, The Clean Room and oh so so so so so so much more (some of those ‘so’s’  might be superfluous. The so-and-sos!

<ITEM> THE END!

click to download SILENCE!#166

PLUS

SECRET CONVERGENCE OF INFINITE PODCASTS

 

Contact us:

[email protected]

@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.

SILENCE! #156

September 15th, 2015

 

 

I SEE LONDON, I SEE FRANCE, WHERE’D YOU GET YOURSELF THOSE PANTS?

<amusing> BLURB </amusing>

Welcome to SILENCE! the internet’s answer to breathing. YOU NEED THIS. Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die will hold your hands all the way. Trust us. YOU NEED THIS!

<ITEM> You’re looking down the business end of two barrels of admin son, so you’d best get your stuff together and get ready for some Sponsorship, a bit of Mike McMahon, some Thought Bubble 2015 promo and the whole fandango

<ITEM> The Reviewniverse is it? Is it? Well? Is it? Well okay then. So be it. Included: These periodicals: Headlopper, Batman, Deadly Class, Over The Garden Wall, All Star Section 8, Sammy Harkham’s Crickets, Rick & Morty, Siege, Ms Marvel, Mercury Heat and Phonogram.

And that’s your SILENCE! Now choke on it!

SILENCE!#156

Contact us:

[email protected]

@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.

Aww, fuck. Might as well start off with a quote from Millar, the Instigator:

“But I love that Kapow! is sold out. I want people to turn up, find that out and think: ‘Damn, I’m definitely going to get my ticket next year.’ There is something cool about that.”

(Kapow! Superheroes come to Britian – man, this even willingly leans in to those Zap! Pow! punches, eh?)

Ok so one of the weird things about Mark Millar, as a figure in popular culture, is that I’m predisposed to disbelieve almost everything he says in interviews. He’s like Tony Blair that way for me, only, you know, Millar’s not actually irredeemably evil.

He is the king of the obvious idea, apparently, and as such the first person to write a comic where a supervillain is the main character. The book in question? Nemesis (Icon Comics, 2010), except… that’s not quite right.  You see, the weird thing about this particular boast is that Millar actually beat himself to the punch on this one, with Wanted (Top Cow, 2003). Or maybe the pluralisation invalidates that example, in which case all I have to say is: Zodiac (Marvel, 2009). Or maybe: Irredeemable (Boom Studios, 2009). If plural supervillains count then maybe I’d be saying Empire (Gorilla Comics, 2000)  instead, but the point is that it’s a silly boast, one that’s easily proved to be untrue.

Still, at least it’s still a relatively new idea, eh?

Well... there were probably no gay incestous womb-bombs in this comic, but maybe that's because it's a shit idea?

Oh. Okay. Maybe not. Well… there probably weren’t any gay incestuous womb-bombs in those old Joker comics, but maybe that’s just because it’s a shit idea?

More fear and self loathing at the comics convention after the cut!!

  • Phonogram Book Two: The Singles Club #7. By Keiron Gillen, Jamie Mckelvie, and Matt Wilson.

pg7

  • Getting this post done is probably the only New Year’s Resolution I will stick to. Shame then that I haven’t, crucially you might think, thought of anything good to say or interesting to add* to the established critical consensus, let alone a structured, witty overview, analysis and pithy summation of Phonogram. (Which was a great, perfectly imperfect comic that lived in the zeroes and died in 2010, and whose passing should be marked.)
  • In the absence of trifling little entities like Form and Content, we will therefore be going with the randomish bulletpoints format again, fire up a few bad jokes, misapplied anecdotes, predictable gimmicks, attic junk, and creepy sextalk, and see if anyone makes it to the end.
  • There’s not a prize or anything.
  • *Like really I haven’t, this comic’s been out for so long, it’s pathetic I haven’t thought of anything good to say about it by now. But we proceed – Singer’s Law be hanged bedad!
  • Oh but, I’ve just read it back to myself and by god this is probably the most annoying, which is to say @@nnnnyyoyyyeeeeiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnng, review of a sweet, innocent little comic book that you will have ever read, so if you’ve the guts to go on, be warned – it gets a little unreadable out there.

But will I get it done by Xmas Eve, Eve?

Being: the first of two short posts building up to a third, hopefully more substantial one.

This series of posts is supposed to be all about mirrors and vanity, so what better way to start than by quoting something I said in the comments to this Phonogram review?  Cast your mind all the way back… to December 2009!

I like The Phonogram – it shows me something I like to recognise, namely, me!

I hate The Phonogram – it shows me how stupid that bit of me really is.

Which is why it’s good, and why I love it, and why this review gets to the core of The Singles Club better than any other (though Nina’s review was also very good, if far harsher). I’ll be happy to see more issues, and sorry to see it end.

Still, it’s a bit of a prick at times, The Phonogram.

Sometimes, I don’t think it likes me as much as I like it…

How does the song go? Oh yeah: “I taught myself the only way to vaguely get along in love/ Is to like the other slightly less than you get in return/ I keep feeling like I’m being undercut…

Of course, much as I admire these tricky qualities in Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen‘s Phonogram, and much as I’ll always be grateful to them for dedicating an issue of their fanzine-as-fantasy-comic to a defiantly minor group like The Long Blondes, I’ve always known where to find the best example of this trick in all of comics.

I'm not going to have time to properly get into it here, but Jamie McKelvie's art was just so perfect for Phonogram, with its cast of fragile characters trying so damned hard to pose their thoughts into reality. Suffice it to say, if you got McKelvie to draw a working diagram of the universe I'd expect it to be boys who like

Indeed, even back in December 2009, when I was young and naive and actually pretty cowardly about these things, I was still careful to give tribute to The King:

But then I thought of Alec – The King Canute Crowd: “yeah, all these books were written about you!” That Eddie Campbell’s a clever bastard, you know – I don’t think there’s a better laid trap in all of comics than that page.

And yeah, I’ll stand by that statement!

Wanna find out what’s through the looking glass? Click here and all will become clear! Well, mostly!

& babble on & on & on & on

December 24th, 2009

Articles of the Shame of a Common Man ~ #1 ~ Things I’m Glad No-one Knows About

A long time ago Laura, who I mentioned in the review of Phonogram 2.1 a year ago and is in no way like the character who once reminded me of her so,  set me a challenge to which I was too weak to rise. She said: ‘If you love Dexys Midnight Runners so fucking much, come into our trendy metropolitan university one morning dressed as one of them circa Come On Eileen. Dungarees, kerchief, hat, the lot. And I will give you fifty English pounds.’ Scared stupid, and unwilling to give her the satisfaction of pissing herself laughing at me while I got stabbed by less tolerant fellow students, I declined, without so much as a too-rye-aye.

phonogram_cov061

Smirking lke a Cheshire cat, she christens me. ‘Your Phonogram name will be, ‘ she says (except she didn’t of course, it’s just how this could have played out if you were writing the scene like that now… The bit about the bet’s true though, and the name:)

<i>Princess Dexy</i>

In response to this slice of post ironic pop-cheesecake she says to me she says, ‘Just because they’re not superheroes, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be ashamed.’

phonogram_cov5

Loook readers, you can see her knickers! Le Fwoar!