It’s with a tearful eye and a hyper-extended thumbs-up that I bid farewell to 2012.

The last twelve months have been some of the finest of my entire life. And I’m not exaggerating. Unlike those saccharine slobs who always clamor about the present hour being their finest and the preceding moments nothing more than the bliss-steps to their existence plateaus, I have no illusions about the fact that I’ve chalked up some miserable years. I’ve anguished through entire calendars, burnin’ `em up with fuel of the most incendiary sort.

Self-doubt! Resentment! Apathy! Vitriol! Cynicism! Sally forth towards the mire!

But 2012 was a whole different beast. Sure, there definitely some moments when my nostrils were assailed by the wispy vapors of the aforementioned propellants. But repugnance was ultimately cast aside, overpowered by the surfeit of wonder! It’s almost as though entertainment and art and love formed a giant sword-wieldin’, monster-destroyin’ mech, and I got to pilot the son-of-a-bitch!

If only!

Anyways, it looks as though every crew member of Spaceship OL is delivering their year-end highlights, so I’m going to join the party. But since I’ve garnered a reputation as being the erratic, currently-undiagnosed-but-we’re-working-on-it, hack-writin’ resident of the crew, I’m going to switch things up a bit. Each of my highlights will be paired with an Ultra-Dimensional Portal! By clicking on any UDP, a hole will be punched in space-time, and your consciousness will be projected astrally.

Got it? Okay, here’s one last look at 2012!

Keep Reading »

Step right up, folks! This is the end of 2012!

What an adventurous year it’s been. There’ve been thrills and chills, screams and dreams, and hoots to boot! In case you missed any of the excitement, the OL Squadron has been doing flybys of all of the year’s highlights. And if you haven’t taken the time to personally enjoy 2012, well, you’ve got one last crack at it. New Year’s Eve, the night of champagne sparkles and ethanol-gropings and cocktail shrimp catastrophes.

It’s the stuff of beauty.

Anyways, today is also Monday, and as such I present the Monday Morning Commute! During regularly-scheduled programming, this is the spot where I show you various ways I’ll be enjoying myself over the course of the week. However, with today being New Year’s, I’m going to run you through some of the bits of entertainment I’ll be chomping on in celebration of 2013’s arrival. If you’re really rowdy enough, hit up the comments section and show the OL faithful what you’ll be using for party lubricant.

C’mon, you pack of auld lang sinners!

Keep Reading »

It’s Christmas Eve, and you’d damn well better hope that you’ve been good this year.

Why is that? Well, I just got off the phone with Santa Claus. He’s doing well. He’s busy, of course, but things are goin’ his way. His stocks’re on the rise. He left that frumpy wife of his and snagged a lover more to his liking. And he’s decided to finally stop being so damn soft on those perennial  residents of the Naughty List. Given what St. Nick has in store for this year’s crop of bad boys and girls, coal in the stocking is going to look like a walk in the park.

If you haven’t been good for goodness’ sake, Santa Claus is going to rock you with an atomic leg-drop.

There’s no way to know  ahead of time whether you’ll be gettin’ a Furby or a beatdown from Santa. You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow morning — either you’ll wake up to open presents in your pajamas, or you’ll wake up with missing teeth and cracked ribs. But why don’t we share some ways to pass the time until then? Hell, this is the Monday Morning Commute, the very spot where we meet to discuss the various ways we’ll be entertaining ourselves.

After all, it’s easy to get bested by the ennui-daemons and work-overlords. If we don’t take the time to enjoy ourselves, we’ll die as nothing more than the miserable, boring wretches that the Man wants us to be. So let’s rebel! Our bosses don’t own our souls, and Santa may break our backs, but he can’t break our spirits!

C’mon, let’s do this!

Keep Reading »

[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]

We are post-apocalyptic.

The Mayan Doomsday has come and gone, and we’re all still here. Don’t give me any guff about the prophecy actually being a misunderstanding of white colonials or a co-opting at the hands of New Age dolts or the exploitation of profiteers. Last night was the end of the world and we did our best to survive.

My woman and I braced for the end by eating sushi, drinking, and watching movies.

And it would’ve been a find end. But here I am, still breathin’ and shit-talkin’ on the afternoon after the Last Night on Earth. Looking out the bay window of my third floor apartment, there’re no zombies to stave off, asteroid fragments to avoid, or swirling plague winds to justify wearing my hazmat suit. The robots haven’t raped our dogs and the aliens’re finding a better species to share omnidimensional enlightenment with. The bogeymen that knocked on our doors last night have already hopped back on the bus to return to Doomsville.

The Mayan idiot-scholars were wrong. Roland Emmerich was wrong. Hell, even the X-Files was wrong.

We’ve all survived an apocalypse. Not the first, and certainly not the last. And it feels great! But it’d be a goddamn shame to let this conflagration of hope dwindle down to the last embers. Let’s make the most of it, let’s take this sense of opportunity – even if we don’t really deserve it – and do something with it.

What’re you going to do now that you’ve survived the apocalypse?

We should all aspire to be a bit more like Indiana Jones.

What’s that? You say you don’t approve of Indy? You think he’s a poor choice for a role model? Well then, why could that be? Is it the fact that he makes murder hilarious? Or do you have some serious qualms about his freewheeling sexual ways? Oh, let me guess – you’re going to give me some malarkey about child endangerment? These’re all arguments that’ve been presented to me before, and as such I have no hesitation in brushing `em off with a Donkey Kongian nonchalance.

`Cause at the end of the day, Indiana Jones is a Nazi-battlin’ scholar who hunts down ancient artifacts.

It’s by conjuring this spirited admiration for the Jones-lifework that I approach the prospect of reviewing tonight’s featured beer. Although I’m not a philanderin’, bull-whippin’, gorgeous-as-man-can-be archaeologist like Indiana Jones, I certainly share his love of the arcane. Y’know, the stuff that’s too elusive or frightening or challenging for mass consumption. Like the Star Wars Holiday Special. As such, my reverence for the hidden truths of antiquity and inebriation and maybe even existence itself have led me to sip upon the splendor that is Verloren.

Keep Reading »

“I shouldn’t’ve done this. She’s not safe by herself. We gotta go back.”

“Dammit Greg, we haven’t had a date-nite in thirteen weeks.”

“You’ve been keeping track?”

“Of course I’ve been keeping track. Date-nite is a sacred event, a testament to the wonder that is our relationship. There’s compromise – you choose the movie, I choose the restaurant. There’s chivalry – you hold every door and pay for everything, even when I protest. And there’s sex – we always end the evening by rolling around in bed, expressing our physical attraction by playing with each other’s ballsacks. We need this.”

Greg paused. He wanted to feel okay about leaving his mom at home, but he couldn’t. Dale saw this, and continued making his argument.

“Listen, your mother’s going to be fine. She’s just old, and sometimes that means she gets a little confused-”

“A little confused? Yesterday I poured myself a glass of a milk and she said that she never knew Martians could handle Earth-dairy.”

“I’m sure she was just joking around.”

“Oh yeah? Then why did she part the curtains, point out the window, and exclaim, ‘Looks like, we’ll be touching down on Ganymede in no time! Quick! Put on your spacesuit! If the admiral catches you out of it, he’ll stick you with kitchen-duty!’?”

Dale knew his boyfriend had a point. But couldn’t give up. Selfishly, he wanted dinner and a movie, followed by sex. More altruistically, he honestly didn’t think Greg’s mother was in any jeopardy.

“Greg, if I thought there a serious risk that Rhonda would hurt herself, I wouldn’t be in the car with you right now. But she’s fine — you put her to bed and watched her fall asleep. You know where she’s going to be when we get back? In bed, sleeping! Probably dreaming about traveling the solar system in a rocketship, but in bed nonetheless. We’ll check in to see her peacefully sleeping, sneak into the kitchen for a piece of that rum cake you spent all afternoon baking, and then hit the bedroom.”

Dale kissed Greg on the cheek, and all was well. Greg had been mollified. Date-nite was still ready for lift-off.

And then the panic-gazelles stampeded across the Great Plains of Greg’s face.

“Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Fuck, we have to go back right now! Dale, turn the fucking car around!”

“Greg, calm down! What’s wrong?”

“I’m so stupid! I was so fucking caught up in putting Mom to bed that I forgot take the cake out! I forget to turn off the goddamn oven! D’ya know how much alcohol I put in that cake? The fucking house is going explode!”

[][][]

Rhonda Bilkes crossed the threshold, excited for the mission at hand. She’d been to Ganymede to Mars and even Pluto. But never had she been tasked with surveying the Sun.

Oh, she could already feel the wonderful solar heat penetrating her spacesuit!

—-

Welcome to the Monday Morning Commute!

This is the spot I drop a whole bunch of nonsense, and then show off the various ways I’ll be entertaining myself during the course of the workweek. Hey man, don’t blame me! I’m a hack-writer and I’ve got duties to fulfill! Anyways, your job is to hit up the comments section and share the methods of life-improvement you’ll be employing.

It’s show-and-tell for pop-culture addicts, basement-dwelling-nerds, aspiring artists, and all others who count themselves amongst the OL faithful.

Let’s rock!

Keep Reading »

Oh snap! Looks like OMEGA-`LECTION DAY is upon us! I can’t believe we’ve made it to another one, but since we’re here we might as well celebrate! Hit the jump to check out all of our totally legitimate coverage!

Keep Reading »

[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]

Presidents suck.

Maybe there’s something in the White House water. Or maybe it’s the fact that it takes an elevated level of egotism and self-righteousness and disregard for human life to serve as Commander-in-Chief. But the fact of the matter is that any individual who’s ever been President of the United States of America has sucked.

JFK. Reagan. Lincoln. Washington. FDR. Hayes. Clinton. Fillmore. Boneheads, the lot of `em!

Tuesday is Election Day, and as such the people of the United States will head to the polls to decide which miscreant is going to have a place in the Oval Office. There’ll be television coverage and petty spats between friends who don’t understand why they’re voting for their respective candidates and it’ll be the abysmal illusion it always is. Don’t resist, just revel.

With that being said, let’s take the time to engage in a much more important discussion. Something that matters to us. A topic that has actually affected our daily lives.

WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE FICTIONAL PRESIDENT?

Keep Reading »

Hello there! If you’re reading this it means that Frankenstorm hasn’t totally rocked you. Not yet, anyways. Or, if you took the proper precautions as I did, you’re safe in a bunker, leisurely tapping away on a hard-shelled laptop produced in 1995 and powered by a Soviet-surplus generator.

Mother Nature is a powerful woman of antiquity, but I’m a crafty miscreant in the digital age.

Anyways, welcome to the Monday Morning Commute, the weekly meeting at which we confess our darkest entertainment secrets. Can’t tell your boyfriend about that comic book you bought? Come to the MMC! None of your coworkers will appreciate the Japanese import you just got in the mail? Come to the MMC! Pretty sure your wife doesn’t give two buttery squirrel shits about the fact that you’re going to beat Super Mario Bros. 3 without the use of a single warp or whistle? Come to the MMC!

I’m going to get things started. But then it’s up to you to share what you’ll be doing this week. C’mon, it’s electronic show and tell!

Keep Reading »

When I interviewed writer Steven Walters back in June, he told us that an 8-page AKA prequel was in the works. I immediately began foaming at the mouth and had to seek medical attention. Unfortunately, my brother had me committed to a macabre asylum. It was a truly trying time, with the only silver lining being that my roommate was a loon-bag named Renfield who liked to eat birds.

Fortunately, my case of spontaneous mad-dog has subsided just in time for me to tell you about AKA: One in the Chamber!

Not only is this comic going to give readers some back-story to the crime’n’blood, babes’n’bullets wonder that is AKA, it’s also going to help creators Steven Walters and Rob Reilly spread the word to retailers. In their words:

THE MISSION:

Being an independent comic creator and publisher is difficult. In this market projects like our’s, despite having a previous successful Kickstarter campaign to pay our colorist and letterer, tend to get buried under the popularity of mainstream & established superhero books.

It is our hope to raise the necessary funds to produce 10,000 FREE promotional comics with a story that predates our graphic novel, AKA, in order to increase our readership.

The plan is to have this 8 page prequel, along with an advert for the trade, be distributed to indie-friendly retailers and given out to potential comic readers.

However, we are offering (among other things) exclusive variant covers for our backers by such great talents as Mike Hawthorne, Mike Oeming and Taki Soma.

Do you like comic books? Awesome action scenes? 1970s exploitation flicks? Supporting the underdog? Unless you’re a total butthead, you’ve answered “Yes” at least once, so there’s only one thing to do. That’s right, head over to Kickstarter and help get AKA: One in the Chamber made! I know money’s tight for everyone these days, but I promise you that you’ll enjoy AKA: One in the Chamber much more than thatRed She-Hulk vs. Fathom variant cover you were planning on buying.

Seriously.

—-

KICKSTARTER / STEVEN WALTERS / ROB REILLY