Source: 5Rob / Gamefreaks

Oh, outer space. Your enormity is staggering. Today’s latest example is god damn impressive. As is much of what is out there in the cosmos. Today we’re looking at a six-trillion mile wide circle of gas, encircling a supernova.

via io9:

A 6-trillion-mile-wide ring of gas encircles a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, Supernova 1987A, and the explosions from the supernova are lighting it up like a candle, creating what will become a glowing ring.

According to the Hubble Space Telescope’s news site:

An international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope reports a significant brightening of the emissions from Supernova 1987A. The results, which appear in this week’s Science magazine, are consistent with theoretical predictions about how supernovae interact with their immediate galactic environment.

God damn. Even fiery apocalypse burn death time is gorgeous in this galaxy. That shit is so beautiful. Why is it when I finally shed this mortal coil, I’m just going to be a bag of varicose veins and crappy diaper? I call shenanigans, universe. Ain’t fair.

[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

I’ve spent the last ten minutes gazing into this goddamn word processor. It’s white and bright and winning this staring contest with ease. Fugger! It’s not fair – he’s got pixels and electricity and all I’ve got is the soft gelatin of these dull cow eyes. My retinas will burn out before I think of a clever way to convey my message, so I might as well just lay it out there.

Paul Pope is a master comics creator. And he’s grossly underappreciated.

Those curious about Pope should refer to THB: Comics from Mars #2.

This comic, released by AdHouse Books as a Baltimore Comicon exclusive, is essentially a crash course in the artist’s work. While it’s branded as being a part the THB universe, the issue consists of six stand-alone shorts. By reading through all six, a reader glimpses some of the different styles and tones the artist can produce. However, each of the stories is also connected by a sense of otherworldiness, as though what’s happening is plausible – just not under normal conditions.

Well, normal Earth conditions. Which, when you think about it, don’t seem too normal at all.

So, what’re some highlights of THB: Comics from Mars#2? Well, one of them is most certainly The Masked Karimbah. This story chronicles the battle between the titular hero and El Pollo Diablo. In the course of eight pages, a chicken and what looks like a masked rodent throw fists, feet, elbows and even furniture at one another. The reason? Karimbah has come on the behalf of the T-City Death Club, who are repossessing El Pollo Diablo’s membership skull-ring for dereliction of duties.

Yeah, it’s insane.

Executed just as well, if not more coherently, is Max Maximus, Wildman of the Martian Wasteland. With no more than seven panels Pope envisions a Mars that resembles the Wild West. When Mad Maximus enters the Cantina steaming mad that somebody painted his spaceship pink, he gets some definitive answers. Hilarious answers.

But the best tale is 1977, a comic with more heart in four pages than others can achieve with entire volumes. In what I’m guessing is a semi-autobiographical yarn, a small boy is awed by the sounds of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The child finds the album astonishing, listening to it until his mother has to pull him away. He then asks his mother if Ziggy Stardust is actually a Martian; she informs him that Ziggy Stardust is actually David Bowie (is actually David Jones). The boy understands, but can’t help stop himself from looking to the stars with a sense of wonder.

And that is the very purpose of art. We conjure up fictions not for the purpose of distracting, but for instilling. Planting ideas in the hopes that seeds will take root. Maybe, just maybe, what we have to imagine today we can experience tomorrow.

Is there a greater power than being able to making a person step back and think What if?

I wouldn’t try to tell you that THB: Comics from Mars #2 is the greatest comic of all time. Hell, it’s not even (close to) the best Paul Pope comic. But for the uninitiated, it’s a tasty sampler platter. For those of us who already believe in Pulphope, it’s something to hold us over until the release of more highly-anticipated projects.

If you find this comic in your local store, do not hesitate to purchase it. Otherwise, you’ll have to purchase online (as I did) or hunt it down once it sells out.

I just looked out my window. Above the suburbs. Past the atmosphere. Beyond the satellites. To the stars. I’m wondering, as did Bradbury and Bowie and Pope, if there is life on Mars. I’m inclined to say no.

Not yet.

[Desktop Thursdays is a weekly column where I show you my worlds, both real and virtual. It's way to share the insanity that is my world. Click images to enlarge.]

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Hell fuckin’ yeah, I’m looking forward to Arkham City. I dug the fuggin fug out of the original. Even if it lost steam and seemed to shoot its load far before the finale. Eh, what can you do? Seems to be a common problem with video games in the past year or so – I’m looking at you, Uncharted 2, and God of War III.

Today, these screens dropped, and they’re god damn gorgeous.

I’ve come to realize that Arkham Asylum/City is a haven for latex erotica. Every screen seems to be filled with some sort of rubber suiting, and gratuitous shots of tits. Must be why all of us damn perverts love it so much. Hit the jump to check out the screens. Lube up, party down!

Source: D4N13L via Gamefreaks

Source: Jerrod Maruyama via Super Punch

While I thought the movie Watchmen was a turd that seared my soul and crushed my dreams regarding an adaptation of one of my favorite comic books of all time, it did have one perk: blue dongs. Or specifically, Dr. Manhattan’s blue schlong.

Slashfilm:

Reddit does it again, using a screencapture of Google Trends to show the extreme rise in user searches for the term “blue dong” in the begining of 2009, around the time that Watchmen was released in theaters.

Naturally, people’s eyes were opened to the glory of blue dicks. Not blue as in priapatic, the blood flow cut-off. No elastic bands and cock rings. Legit blue cocks. What followed was a Blue Dick Search Term Explosion.

There’s a god damn heatwave afoot here in New England. The sun scorching us nerds, casting us back into the dungeons from whence we came. What the fuck is a fanboy supposed to do in the face of such unrelenting Sun Hate? Easy, yo. Check out Variant Covers! Shameless plug, ahoy. Welcome to the weekly column where I give the weekly rundown of what I’m looking forward to in the world of comic books. Or more than likely, watch as I grouse like a bitch about the same five things I dislike in the comic book world.

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Scarlet #2
Scarlet’s subtitle should be “See motherfucker, Brian Michael Bendis can still write.” The first issue came out a couple of months ago, and the combined effort of Bendis and Maleev was nothing short of a boner-inducing wunderkind. There was a stretch of time when Brian Michael Bendis owned my nerd soul. Between Goldfish, his bullshit on Sam & Twitch, Daredevil, Powers, and Ultimate Spidey, I would fawn over him with unreserved enthusiasm. Eventually though, his strongest assest, his god damn writing ability, became (to me, alright?) his undoing. Some straight up Oedipal shit.

Why?

‘Cause the dude got something barely short of thrown into control of the entire Marvel Universe. That’s probably a wildly inaccurate claim. Whatever. And all that talent got diluted across ninety titles, and like his talent, my love for him was slowly diluted until it faded away.

Scarlet reminds me of why I love the guy.
And when he’s on his game, he’s better than roughly 95% of us wannabe writers.

Synergy. The retardedly cool concept that something can come together to become better than the sum of its parts. That’s fucking Scarlet. The story itself is cool, though perhaps a bit rote. The world’s fucked up, only one hot alt-chick can save it. The art itself is fucking gorgeous. The dialogue is beyond what feels like the Stock Campy Bullshit that Bendis pumps into the thirty-three Avengers titles he writes. You mash the Hot Chick With Guns and the Gorgeous Artwork and the Witty But Not Pressing Dialogue together, and you have a comic that I am genuinely, genuinely excited to read.

Even if you’re super-duper dissatisfied with Bendis, if you ever loved the dude at all, this is going to be an express trip in the wayback machine.

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Shadowland #3
Speaking of Bendis, one of the characters he used to lull my weeping fanboy heart into his clutches was Daredevil. I know I’ve rode Matty Murdock’s bedeviled jock throughout many a column here, but I can’t help it. Who doesn’t love watching someone as they’ve swooned into terminal descent? We’re all standing near the point of impact, hoping to get some existential guts splattered across that.

You can’t do better than Murdock’s crushed-soul.

I have to say this though, I prefer mainland Daredevil way over Shadowland. And while I dig on Shadowland, it loses a bit of the interpersonal edge that I’ve dug about Daredevil. It’s an action movie, not a detective story. And that’s cool, freal. It’s a preference thing.

But kick it over to Shadowland to watch as a man who has been pushed over the railing and into his own darkness finally combusts. The only sadness I feel is that I know whatever sort of fate Murdock meets will ultimately be mitigated by the engines of the industry. Someday he’ll be reformed, back, ready to rock. Push that out of mind and watch as shit gets real, if you can.

It’s an action movie starring one of the best characters Marvel has had to offer. Unblemished by what I would argue are editorial mandates to fit into movies, and other bullshit, a list of All-Star writers have orchestrated the collapse of the Man Without Fear.

Here’s our chance to watch him splat.

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Choker #4
Have you been readin’ Choker? What the fuck man/woman! I’ve been recommending this shit every week that it’s dropped. For people who haven’t been following this comic of mindfuckery, it’s a a futuristic noir set in a world that is something along the lines of Blade Runner meets Your Nightmares. From testicles hanging as ornaments in cars to alien hand syndrome, the comic is one bizarre set of circumstances after another.

It doesn’t hurt that the artwork is by one Ben Templesmith, hero to all of us nerds for 30 Days of Night, and generally ball of odd awesomeness.

The comic may be enough to send the more pious of us into arrhythmic arrest. There’s a level of depravity and ultra-violence throughout that is enough to make Soccer Moms crap their pants. No, seriously. Show it to the audience members of say, Dr. Phil, and you’re going to have a drooling, semi-catatonic woman asking why God has abandoned her.

In other words, this shit is custom tailored for me.

It’s odd, it’s bizarre, it’s profane to the point of hyperbole. Give it a roll.

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The Rest of the Universe(s)
Unlike myself, some people have been fortunate enough to have been reading Sweet Tooth since the beginning of its run. And while I haven’t finished the first TPB, it has garnered enough buzz to the point where I should point out Sweet Tooth #13 is dropping tomorrow. As well, the second issue of Baltimore: The Plague Ships drops from Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. It’s a fresh look at an alt-history where WWI was interrupted by a plague of death and disease. Oh, and vampires and shit. And in the land of Capes, Shields, and Repulsor Rays, I’m pretty stoked on the first issue of Thor: For Asgard.

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What are you guys diggin’ on this week? Hollaback, I’m interested.

Enlarge.

Listen man! When I hit puberty while playing Star Fox 64, you know what the first thing I did was? I put the rumble pack right on my little barely-pubescent testicles and I felt the roar of stimulation. It just seemed so natural, you know? And keeping that in mind, I’ve been wondering where the fuck the Wiimote sex toys have been! Well god dammit, they’re finally here.

The world has become a better, more orgasmic place today.

Destructoid:

“The device is attached to the accessory port on a Nintendo Wii remote control,” explains manufacturer Mojowijo. “The control is then connected to a bluetooth enabled PC running Mojowijo software.

“Using Mojowijo’s patent pending Motion2Vibration technology, the device is able to transform the varying motions of the control into appropriate vibration signals and send them to another selected device – in the same room or over the internet. (Wii gaming console NOT required). Essentially turning your Wii remotes into shared, remote controlled vibrators (aka wii vibrator or wiibrator!).”

The central gimmick here is that you get to control another person’s vibrator as opposed to your own, which makes them masturbation devices for people who should just be having actual sex. Unless they’re miles apart, in which case these things work over Skype.

A good god damn! You don’t even need the Wii! Hell yeah! Welcome to the world of robotic-claw-testicle-genital-stimulation! In the future this is going to be so passe, but right now I want to you know, manipulate genitals over the internet using a Wiimote. You don’t?