SWTOR is kicking ass. Taking names. Force chokin’ bitches. Electronic Arts is touting it as the fastest-growing MMO in history, and the Star Wars geek in me giggle in glee.

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The drug game is hard to break into, ya know? Can’t just roll up into somebody’s turf, let alone establish yourself as a reputable source. How did one dude do it? Started dressing up as the fucking Incredible Hulk. It brought ++ attention, which unfortunately (unfortunately?) led to +++ prison time.
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Variant Covers. The comics I’m interested in this week. I have poor taste, help it out by recommending titles from your own brown paper bag.

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DMZ #72.
The final issue of DMZ drops today, and I’m not caught up in time to check it out. There’s a greasy sadness lining my armpits where there should be anticipatory precipitation. DMZ’s a bit of a special comic book of mine, having followed it for the better part of five years through curious denials and momentary binges. Last week I finished up yet another semester of graduate school, and the first time I did was crack open the latest TPB, Collective Punishment. Wood and Burchielli have guided the reader through a gorgeous journey into the perpetually not-too-hard-to-believe second American Civil War. From allusions of the Iraqi War, to a stark fucking knife into the post-Obama disillusionment, the comic has been a guide post on our cheesy poof-covered culture and political descent into Oblivion. I’m going to miss the warmth of the comic. The warmth of finding a creator who can make sense of the nonsense in a way that I wish I could, if I only had the inclination or talent. Not only that, but finding solace in knowing someone else is feeling the same as you do, in these Bananas Times.

I’ll miss this fucking comic book.

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Secret Avengers #20.
Speaking of final issues, tomorrow is also the final Warren Ellis-fueled Secret Avengers. I’ve dug on his stand-alone blasts of typical Ellisian madness filtered through Marvel’s Rogue Avengers team. Not to be confused with the variety of other Rogue Teams the publisher has, such as Uncanny X-Force. What do these motherfuckers do when they run into one another during mutual covert operations? Especially since it seems like Beast, if not Wolverine, is on all of them.

Ellis is joined by Alex Maleev for this final installment, and that doubles my pleasure. Watch as I writhe in his pencil-powered-glory. Cramming crayons and pastel finger paints into my pants, trying to slather myself in the powers that grant him such utility. Yes, Maleev! Yes!

As I was saying, I’ll miss Ellis and his one-offs.

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Spaceman #3.
Boom! Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso are brining the crackling science-fiction glory in this mini-series. Of nine issues. Does that make it a maxi-series? Maxiseries? Quasi-maxi-post-mini-series. Something of that such. We got ourselves here a failed Mars program, Dystopian nightmares, riffage on the depravity of our Empty Celebrity Syndrome culture and more. All in a series you would have snagged the initial issue of for one measly dollar. Jump aboard this pig before she’s blowing up in a glorious tits-science-American-Nightmare fireworks display high in the atmosphere of our Organic Spaceship. You’ll be happy you did. Or you’ll be unhappy you did and keep it yourself. Thereby ensuring my much needed ignorance.

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Ultimate Comics Ultimate Avengers Ultimate Time! #5.
Jonathan Hickman. Esad Ribic. The Ultimate Universe. Short choppy sentences. Yo I have to be honest I just watched this video and I can’t get it out of my head while I’m trying to type. It’s difficult. Anyways yeah if you can survive that I love you. The Force is strong in your loins. Perhaps you were birthed up by the Force itself in some shitty sand-scarred planet to Shmi and now you have to podrace all day? Sand storms are very dangerous! Shit we’re off the tracks. Way off the tracks, and it don’t matter! Why? ‘Cause I got carte blanche! Just like Hickman. Just like Hickman does when it comes to the Ultimate Universe. [Phew.] It’s glorious to see the dude unchained from the typical bureaucratic nonsense that everything in the Mainland Marvel Monstrosity has to be funneled through. “Oh yeah, Hickman! You wanted to have Rachel Grey join FF? Well uh yeah here’s the thing she’s in the Avengers X-Cepted storyline this year, and next year she’s going to be in Fright Night: Vampire’s Children Crusade and then…and then…and then…” and so on.

Dude gets to play for keeps in the Little Universe On The Side, and it shows. Destroy Valhalla? Sure. Bring back Reed Richards from his heinous Jeph Loeb penned death? Double sure. Tweak everything out in a quasi-Authority vibe and give Caffeine Powered a raging dork-on? Filling in the applicable circle with violent pencil-on-paper force.

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Those are the titles I’m most interested in this week. I’m sure I’ll arrive at home with a panache of other fillings to faithfully frak my wallet’s chasms. What are interested in this week? Hit me.

SOMETIMES I JUST TYPE HEADLINES AND MAKE THEM WORK. Or not work. I got nothing. Hit the jump for some gorgeous FemShep cosplay by Anais Roberts.

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A few days ago, Phil Plait wrote a pretty righteous post about the scale of Saturn. It was swag as all Cosmic get out, but a reader of Bad Astronomy took it a step further and showed how North America would compare size-wise.

Hit the jump to behold.

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GoDaddy was one of a pantheon of corporations that have been riding the SOPA bill like gangbusters, until recently. Peoples of the Internets got word of it, and a boycott was beginning to mount. The thundering thunders grew and now GoDaddy is dropping support.

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Check out the Dumbbell Nebula, and peer into a look at what shall become of our Sun. Discovered through Science! and uh, Intrepitude! That’s a word. It’s a word.

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Unless you live on the Moon or if you have a DVR you’ve heard of Terra Nova.   You know what, scratch that, I think Fox put a few ads on the Moon, in caves, and even under rocks.   You could smell the desperation.   They wanted it to succeed.

The premise is a cool idea, if just a little bit lifted from Sliders (make sure to pronounce in a hushed whisper).   There is a dimensional portal that goes from the year 2148 to 65 million BC.   Instantly your geek bullshit detector should around Roland Emerich levels.   The question is, if they go into the past, won’t they change the future?   It’s the classic Grandpa Paradox.   If you leap into the past to kill your grandfather before your father is born, how can you be born to go into the past to kill your own grandfather?   They handle this with one line of forced dialogue.   It appears that they are not going directly into the past; they are going into the past of an alternate dimension.   Like I said, cheesy fix.   They might as well have said a wizard did it.

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Hulloh there, folks!

How was your Christmas? How is your Chanukah? Pumped for Kwanzaa? Find someone to smooch on New Year’s Eve? No matter how you get down, chances’re that you’re in midst of celebration. And hell, what’s not to celebrate? We just passed the winter solstice, which means that the days of darkness are going to be coming to an end. While winter is sure to bludgeon us with icy blows, we can rest assured knowing that more and more sunlight will be headed our way.

Unless, of course, you’re a dweller of of the Southern Hemisphere — if that’s the case, you’re still rocking barbeques at the beach. But then again, you’re probably getting into fistfights with joeys and hunting down the dingos that stole your babies. Damn Aussies.

Kiwis are good folk, though.

Anyways, welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! This is the nerd-friendly show-and-tell jump-off! I’m going to sift through the entertainment debris that’ll be occupying my time in the following week, giving you the highlights along the way. After you check out `em out, it’s your duty to hit up the comments section and share your own recreational wreckage.

OL-5, standing by!

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Astronauts can lose a lot of mass due to muscles atrophying and shit in space. What a conundrum! How do take measurements of their bodies to ensure they stay fit? Why, activate HAL!…or the Kinect. It will scan them. Track them. Play chess with them.

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