As I write this, it is very early morning, and the world is quiet.  The day’s caffeine long worn off, the exhilaration of the Breaking Bad marathon I’ve been in the middle off is the only thing that keeps me up this late.  Oh, and this column.  For those of you not in the know, this is the virtual campfire we comic-ingesting fangirls and boys gather round, debating and discussing, ranking and rating the best and brightest funnybooks to come out each week.  What has got you jazzed for Wednesday (the comic-nerd’s Holy day)?  Has DC’s Villain-palooza got you frothing?  Has the Marvel Event-festival torn your psyche and wallet in twain?  Have no clue what the fudgsicle even comes out this week???  Hit the jump and have all these questions answered, and more!

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Football is back.  I am excited.  If you are reading this outside the US or are one of those soccer loving people, I am talking about the smashmouth game played on the gridiron, and not the game where you run for three hours and then call it a draw.  I understand the futility of making a post about sports on a comic/video game/movie blog is counterproductive, so I promise I will make it entertaining.

A few years back, some friends and I circulated out via e-mail ultimate fantasy baseball teams using characters from movies, comics, tv shows, and books.  Well, I’m going to do that for my Opinions Vary column this week.  Why you ask?  Two reasons.  Number 1, i’ts fun, and number 2 I am doing this at the 11th hour and honestly have no better ideas.  So feel free to make your own team complete with reasons and explanations.  Also, don’t be shy about ripping into me or each other about selections.  I will be following a few rules when constructing my team.  Those is no teleportation/ phasing, flight is also off limits, brainwashing and reading minds is out, and no magic, telekinesis, or props (Mjollnir, Iron Man suit, web shooters, etc).  So hit the jump and let’s get started. Keep Reading »

One of the great things about comics is the medium’s penchant for reinterpretation and reinvention.  An endless catalogue of characters, fictitious and real, lie dormant in old books and film, waiting for another chance to tell their story.  Hit the jump and let’s discuss a few of those appearing in comics this week, and I PROMISE I won’t make another crappy Die Hard reference!

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Welcome, friends. Welcome to Monday Morning Commute. Hereon in is a column where we come together to share the various holo-films, digi-books, and post-post-caterwaulcore musics (and other assorted genres) we are enjoying during a given week. Share! Care! Be your contributions either current obsessions or happenings occurring during the next seven days. Let’s grind through the grind together.

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It’s Labor Day here in the Empire. The holiday that has been co-opted and become a celebration of the successful completion of a Summer. It also signals what is for many the Long March towards Winter. Via Autumn. Me? I fucking love the Fall. Favorite season. It’s not too cold, but it’s cool enough to snuggle up with a blanket. It heralds my favorite Opiate of the Masses: football (and my 1a: hockey). In addition, a secondary market of cool balms to draw me out of my peretual existential crisis arrives in the form of Fall Television Programming. Finally let us not forget how it drums up my favorite gauntlet of Fabricated Reasons to Celebrate, which is the stretch from Halloween through Christmas.

So yeah, I’m down with Labor Day. Cool enough. But I’m really down with what it signals.

(Oh yeah wait this is Monday Morning Commute the column where we share the various aforementioned balms and  non-literal and perhaps literal sedatives that get us through the week with minimal scarring so I’ll start by giving you a rundown of what I’m enjoying this week and then you do me the solid of letting me know what you’re totally into this week and that way we will all be a happy commune full of run-on sentences and dementia and cool arts and farts to try out okay how does that sound?)

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Lay the plastic down underneath your feet, tighten your diaper, and get ready. The end of the summer brings the longest OL podcast yet. The gang cover a variety of topics inside its rotting walls. From a summer movie wrap-up, to Bateman’s insulin pumps. Featuring audio from both Caff’s recent squatchin’ trip where he talks Batfleck, and the Toronto Fan Expo where Budrickton recounts how he got Carrie Fisher to hold up a Yubstep t-shirt.

It’s all inside.

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Something has happened to me lately, something that is causing me to feel old; dusty; a withered nut suck harping on about how the purity of gaming is becoming lost. I hate myself for it, but struggle as I might, it seems that I can’t make sense of something. I can’t explain what is going on with Bungie’s newest game –Destiny.

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Well, folks. It’s that time again: back to school for students and educators!

The excitement is palpable beyond belief. Eager children, having had a couple of glorious, sun-soaked months off from school to rejuvenate, are now primed for further enlightenment in the coming year. These little self-starters are just chomping at the bit to get back and they’re not going to let anything impede their educational development. Thanks to these ever-buoyant students, the future looks incredibly bright, indeed. Keep Reading »

Hey, kids!  So it’s Wednesday, and I assume we’ve all calmed down after flipping our collective shits from the pop-culture orgy/last-train-to-nowhere that is the VMAs.  I’m old, and pop music gets me all kinds of jaded, but the VMAs still managed to teach me a lesson:  America THRIVES on nostalgia, even nostalgia that isn’t even 20 years old (see the above pic).  I, myself, am currently gushing over an “event” book that, when boiled down to its essentials, is nothing more than a comic scientifically engineered to tickle my 12-year-old pickle.  Thanos is my Justin Timberlake.  N’Sync are my Infinity Gems.  Comic books, particularly superhero ones, are every bit as nostalgic and regressive as the boy-bands and teen vixens of pop music.  So while I scoff at the proles going batshit over 10 year old hooks sang by grown men with receding hair lines trying their damndest to recreate moves no thirtysomething should have to attempt (looking at you Fat One), I massage my own nostalgia-boner to pretty pictures of ageless Avengers saddling up for one last ride into the aether in a story not quite called Infinity Gauntlet 2:  The Soich For More Money, but may as well be.

Say my name!  “Hypocrite.”  You’re goddamned right.

So hit the jump and let’s get nostalgic, shall we?

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Hello, friends! Be you long-time wards of the Spaceship, or recent innocent bystanders gobbled up by last weekend’s Fan Expo in Toronto. This column right here is Monday Morning Commute, a weekly installment where we blather about the various things we’re indulging in during a given week. A list of the ointments we shall be applying to the burn of Existence. Too overwrought? Too grandiose? Post a fucking list of the shit you are getting down with over the course of the next seven days.

Ah, better.

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