Hey, you there! Ssshh… Not so loud — you’ll get us caught. Want to know a secret? It’s quite devilish. And isn’t it always fun to know something that others don’t? Ok, here goes…

At the time of this writing, it’s only Thursday!

Yes, I have finally succumbed to the pressures of having a full-time job and a bunch of trifling part-time responsibilities. So while I normally enjoy ending my workweek by coming home and cracking open a couple of cold ones, my hand has been forced elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to sipping on a delicious brew during the week, but there are certain reservations that I’ll have to work hard to shake off.

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[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]

Spoilers Ahead. Forreal.

Marvel Comics is ushering in a new era for its brand, a return to form dubbed The Heroic Age. Under this new banner, the Marvel universe is (hopefully) going to realign itself and enter a period in which a status quo can be relied upon. And this is a good thing, giving the reader a chance to breathe after seven years of turmoil that included team breakups, civil wars, and alien invasions.

As any avid comics enthusiast knows, every event is accompanied by a slew of one-shots and tie-ins. Often, these are transparent attempts to earn a couple extra bucks by inserting tenuous connections between the major happening and an otherwise unrelated title. I can’t help but shake my head in disgust, disapproving of the theft of nerd-dollars that could be best spent elsewhere.

But sometimes, when the planets line up just right, tie-ins can be really fucking rad. And it looks like Jupiter and Neptune are in sync, because The New Avengers Finale is the book of the week.

Bendis’ script takes the reader through the direct aftermath of Siege; Norman Osborn has been exposed, the remaining villains are on the run, and Earth’s mightiest heroes have finally reunited. The remaining superheroes have to figure out their place in this brave new world, now that the all the major threats have been averted and the Superhuman Registration Act is null and void.

This setup provides the opportunity for bridges to be built across the chasms created over the last few years. Needless to say, this comic argues on the behalf of forgiveness, second chances and teamwork as the champions of justice come together to take down The Hood, Madame Masque and her father Count Nefaria. This crisis, coming after the siege of Asgard, doesn’t seem especially critical but it serves as an excellent excuse to see the Avengers assembling for the first time in years.

Iron Man? Captain America? Thor? Friends again?! Fuck yes.

The New Avengers Finale, like many of Marvel’s notable works of late, is penciled by the always astounding Bryan Hitch. Receiving some assistance from Stuart Immonen, the artist depicts the Avengers with a detail and vibrancy of which few are capable. Hitch really goes balls-to-the-wall, giving the reader all sorts of wonderful eye-candy to slobber over. For me, the visual highlights include a two-page spread of the newest Avengers lineup as well as a full splash page of Wolverine getting read to lay down the law.

But what convinced me that this had to be OL’s top-choice of the week were the book’s last eighteen pages. Nine splashes, spread across two pages each, take us through various flashbacks of the Avengers during the recent strife. Every single one of these images is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, the stuff that nerds fantasize about when they’re not dreaming of babes. If you need more convincing, just check out the list of artists brought on board specifically for these flashbacks:

David Finch, Danny Miki, Frank D’Armata, Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines, Morry Hollowell, Olivier Coipel, John Dell, Mike Deodato Jr., Pimental, Dave Stewart, Leinil Yu, Mark Morales, Laura Martin, Bryan Hitch, Rain Beredo, Billy Tan, Matt Banning, Justin Ponsor

Holy shit.

These pages remind the reader that the comics medium is rooted in illustration. While great storytelling can compensate for lackluster art, the greatest works always have pages that please the eye. This comic book gives us nine examples of this simple fact.

I purchased The New Avengers Finale with low expectations, anticipating that it would do nothing more than help me put off work for another fifteen minutes. But what I would up with was a real treat, the perfect transition out of the Dark Reign and into the Heroic Age. After reading this book, I have no doubt that good things are on the way for Marvel readers.

Excelsior, motherfuckers!

It’s been nine years since Transatlantic’s first release and the track Stranger in Your Soul still gives me goosebumps. Maybe it’s nostaglia, the fact that progressive music helped me get out of high school without feeling like a total loser. Or maybe I’m a sucker for cheesy lyrics. In either case, I can’t help but smile when Neal Morse encourages me to “Stand up `cause this is your time.”

*sigh*

I’m going to tell you something, and you’re not going to believe me. I had faith that last night’s episode was going to be good. No, seriously. I spent all yesterday talking with friends about LOST, and I kept saying the same thing over and over again. “Yeah man, I don’t know, I just think it’s going to be good.” It’s faith though, yo. What was it based on? Just pure gut. Call me Jack Shephard. I texted my friend Tommy, I talked to Pepsibones. It was going to be good.

There’s something about being an idealist, or an optimist, or whatever you want to call it. But I always believe the best is going to happen somehow.

And sometimes! Sometimes I’m correct. Usually I’m wrong. But I wasn’t last night. What They Died For was easily one of the best episodes of the season, and it’s probably in my Top 10 of the series. Yeah, I went there. It was one of those episodes where LOST is hitting all its high notes. Ridiculous WTF moments, mythos building, and some emotional bullshit thrown into the mix.

I’ve made my ass-crush for Jacob known all season long. Perhaps it’s because I relate to his unyielding optimism. Despite the fact that he’s watched for centuries as man has let him down, he continues to believe that they have the potential for good. I mean, if he hasn’t been crushed by thousands of years of selfish behavior, how could I let Lindelof and Cuse break me in one week? Call my ass adamantium, ’cause my will is unbreakable.

Jacob sits down the remaining candidates and explains to them what they have to do, they have to kill Smokey. Does this not make sense to anyone else? I have always understood that there needed to be balance on the Island, and if MiB was dead, wouldn’t that throw off the scales just like Jacob did? Intriguing. There’s also always the chance that Jacob is using for the sort of Obi-Wan double speak that has rocked out throughout the entire show.

“What do you fucking mean he killed my father, Kenobi? You fucking liar! Don’t give me that manner of speaking bullshit! Ghostly prick!”

Last week there was a serious wrinkle thrown into the whole “The point of the Island is to prevent him from leaving” bullshit, when that Annoying Mom from Juno told the two Wonder Twins that their job was to “Protect the Light”. I just puked in my mouth a little bit. So maybe, perchance, Jack’s role is to dismiss Smokey and then protect the Honeypot Glowing Vagina at the center of the Island?

Bueller? Anyone?

If anything came out of last week’s train wreck of an episode, it was the humanizing of Jacob, and I sort of dug on that. What I took from Survivor: The Island where all the Candidates and The Lecherous Freckled One sat and spoke with Jacob is that the dude done fucked up by throwing MiB into the Honeypot. Some sort of odd corruption took place when he dinged that donkey-wheelin’ douchebag out and he floated into the light. Smokey was born, and it then became Jacob’s job to protect the light at the center of the Island, and prevent Smokey from leaving.

In a manner of speaking, I am reading the two jobs to be mutually exclusive at this point. Smokey taking off from the Island would extinguish the light, and so Jacob/Jack has the wonderful task of preventing him from leaving, and then preventing anyone from corrupting the light.

Two things:

First off, I dig the human twist to Jacob. There’s something romantically awful about his plight. The guy’s spent thousands of years trying to prevent Smokey from leaving, while living under the notion that he was eventually going to be killed. Jacob is some weird Cain from Cain and Able. A man filled with good, yet charged with killing his own brother and having to live with the consequences. That shit is heavy! Dude needs a hug.

Secondly, how exactly would anyone find the light if they weren’t deserving of it? Isn’t that the general gist of this week and last’s week episode? It seems to be what he told Jack when he totally became THE ONE.

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Yo! Welcome to Variant Covers, where I babble about the comic books coming out every week, and other fanboy opining. This week is all about the motherfuckin’ Heroic Age. Yeah, word. If you haven’t been paying attention, after last week’s culmination of Siege, Marvel is all about hearkening back to the glory days and shit. The entire gang is back together. Thor, Steve Rogers, and Tony Stark have put their shit inside just in time to have a righteous Memorial Day BBQ. There’s going to be mead, robots, and Steve Rogers not being cool with all the low-cut tops that the chicks are wearing. Oh Steve Rogers, you know you like them boobies.

Enter the Heroic Age #1
No new status quo, era, or event is complete these days without some bullshit one-off that kicks off the new beginnings or whatever. Unfortunately for Marvel readers, the Heroic Age doesn’t bring an age where you don’t have to purchase bullshit titles to know that the fuck is going on. The promo for this comic reads “THE HEROIC AGE STARTS HERE”, and I’m all like, yeah, it starts here, but what the fuck else is going on in it? Wait for it: a bunch of like three-page stories by various writers and artists.

The crisis in this comic book? Your wallet getting fucked for $4. Stay away.

If you’re looking for something to kick off your entrance into the Heroic Age, you’re better off checking out Avengers #1. Ever since Bendis snapped apart Avengers back in 2003, there hasn’t been an adjectiveless Avengers title for you to follow. There’s been a shitload of other ones though: Dark Avengers, New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Young Avengers, Erotic Avengers (featuring She-Hulk), but there hasn’t been the old school title. Shit’s droppin’ this week, and it’s probably your best bet for surveying the new Marvel Universe.

I know I’m being hyperbolic when I pretend there’s like, totally, a huge seismic shift.

—-

I have to say, now that Siege has ended, and Marvel has completed some enormous, sprawling, seven-year storyline, I have to take a step back and applaud the effort. Listen, I admit I’m a Marvel fanboy. No, I don’t troll forums and write stuff like BATMAN SUXX FUK YOU KID. And for better or worse, I’m terminally gay for Clark Kent. But as a whole, I enjoy the Marvel Universe more. I just do.

So take it with a grain of salt when I state that the entire arc of storylines from Avengers: Disassembled to the Heroic Age is impressive as fuck. For the Universe to ride one narrative for so long, to commit to such a trajectory is quite a feat. Sure, in the end they’ve reverted back to a more simplified universe. No Registration Act, Steve Rogers is back, et cetera. Comic books always return to their status quo. Jean Grey always comes back. But the fact that they took this story through so many twists and turns before finally pulling the trigger and restoring Marvel to Happy Land?

I dig it.

It’s something that DC did similarly with their Brightest Day storyline, and I appreciate their effort as well. However, as I said, I’m a Marvel fanboy. And for whatever mediocrity some of the Marvel events have been through the past couple of years, I’ve preferred them to the DC ones. I mean, Infinite Crisis was decent, but even a Grant Morrison fanboy like myself can’t defend Final Crisis, let alone figure out what the fuck it meant.

Everyone is going happy and shining brightly and being heroic and shit.

I just prefer the Marvel way.

Like I said, I get a boner for mutants.

—-

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Real Ghostbusters. Hunting real ghosts. At the New York Public Library.

This, my friends, is true inspiration.

[source]

[Search Engine Terms come from an app in the Word Press dashboard. It tells you the terms that people are using in google to lead to your site. Most of ours are ultra depraved and horrible. And amusing to sick people like me.]

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I need to finish up my final term paper. Quickly. The amount of procrasturbating I’m doing is going to be the undoing of my genitals. Stuck on a particular paragraph? Dinky time. Don’t want to find that quote? Dinky time. Yeah man, dinky time!

It’s gorgeous out, I think spring may finally have woken up fully. I don’t want to be down in my Man Cave, churning out epic tomes of stupidity and vapidity and bile-suffuse academic ramblings. It’s all bullshit. I promise you. Seriously? You know what academic papers are about? They’re about taking a woefully simple idea, mining it for minutiae, and then creating a phrase around that morsel of minutiae. Academic revels in obscurity.

I think it’s probably just the five Diet Mountain Dews and the Energy Drink talking. I think I’m seeing vapors. I literally can’t think straight. I closed my Microsoft Word, and I opened up WordPress, and here you go, pointless babbling across thousands of other words.

Jesus! Allah! Someone! Help!

Monday Morning Commute. Every Monday I’m going to detail the various things I’m either currently or will be watching, reading, playing, and listening to in the next seven days. It’s Monday. You’ve got a long week of school, work, or compulsive masturbation to get through. Tell me the arts that you’re indulging in, to stave off suicide.

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