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On the first Good Friday, Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross. He went down. Epic-style.

But he’s spent the last one thousand, nine hundred and eighty years training. Rebuilding himself. Fashioning himself into a Eucharist-shootin’, rocket-boot flyin’ bad ass. He’s ready for a rematch.

I’ve got my money on Robo-Jesus.

[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.

The second issue of Choker has hit stands and my nerd-tummy is churning and bubbling… With excitement! The first issue pushed the reader right into Shotgun City, the neo-slum that makes Blade Runner’s Los Angeles step back and say, “Hrm…Maybe I’m not so ugly. Let’s go buy jeans so the boys notice our butts!” Alongside, Detective Johnny Jackson, the reader is thrust into a search for Hunt Cassidy, the sociopathic drug dealer referred to as a prince among bastards.

As one would expect, the narrative continue to develop in this new installment. Jackson is still down on his luck, the bad guy is still at large, and Shotgun City is still a shithole. But we’re starting to get glimpses into the reality of the terror at hand, realizing just how worse for the wear the cast of characters are.

For instance…the black glove on Jackson’s left hand? It slips off while he’s sleeping to reveal a mangled, disgusting mess. A mangled, disgusting mess that grabs a gun and tries to shoot the hero until he can stab it with a sedative. Shit’s bizarre/I fucking loves it.

This second issue of the McCool/Templesmith collaboration also introduces a saucy female partner for Johnny Jackson. Her name is Kara Thrace. Whoops, my bad! I mean to say that her name is Walker. But really, if you’re familiar with BSG’s resident lady-badass, then you certainly know Walker. When we first meet Starbuck, she’s drinking space-booze and trading insults with the boys. When we meet Walker, she’s smoking a butt and telling another officer that she’d “rather be molested by clowns” than sleep with him. Starbuck asserts herself, punching Tigh in the mouth and proving that a man can’t keep her down. In place of fuzzy dice, Walker hangs her ex-husband’s nutsack from her rearview mirror. Oh, and they both have short blond hair, personality-defying good looks, and a sick jacket.

But don’t think I’m complaining. Because the fact is that sometimes using tried-and-true archetypes works. Walker is the tough-as-nails woman that Johnny Jackson is going to have to deal with. And, in a not uncommon twist, Walker is working for the slimeball that hired Jackson back in the first place. So we have to spend some time trying to figure out who exactly this femme fatale is going to play — her new partner, her corrupt boss, both of them? Again, standard crime story fare, but it’s working!

Once again, Templesmith’s art is the absolute fucking balls. His line art is top-notch, but it’s his work with tones and colors that elevate Choker to the plateau of visual ecstasy. As I read the comic, I find myself feeling as though I’m lost in some sort of bleak neon nightmare. There is a general gloominess afoot, and the occasional splashes of light are only used to sparingly highlight an impending horror. Take, as an example, the first splash, in which a pack of hillbilly cannibals reveal themselves from the shadows — only their ravenous, drooling faces receive full color.

In terms of visual structure, it’s worth noting that dark gray ink clouds often stretch themselves across the page. Effectively, this helps to blur the otherwise rigid divisions between panels. So while the paneled sequence remains clear to the reader, a subtle sense of narrative obfuscation is presented. Which is useful, considering that Choker is a crime-mystery, slowly revealing itself over the course of six issues.

I’m not exactly sure where Choker is leading. But I’m going to follow.

PS,

Warren Ellis — I want you to read this shit and look at the sexy art. And then I want you to take your beautiful, fish’n’chips snatching fingers and put them to a keyboard. And then, I want you to finish Fell.

After last week’s episode, anything was going to be The Great Comedown. That’s scientific fact. Half the people I’ve come across have considered the Dicky Alpert as Spanish Jesus episode one of the best episodes ever, and I’m in agreement. So yeah, I was expecting this week’s to be a bit of a drag.

Man, was I right.

Let me pose a question to you: What is the only thing more boring than Jin and Sun? Jin and Sun in LAX. Jin and Sun eating up an episode of LOST during its final season. This episode aggravated me to the point where I said “Fuck this” in the middle of some weepy, strained LAX moment and went upstairs to grab a Diet Dew and a string cheese. I was beginning to go insane with anger. I went upstairs from my nerd cave, grabbed the caffeinated bliss, and returned downstairs. Do you know what I missed? Absolutely nothing.

I can’t be the only one who is utterly apathetic towards Jin and Sun’s storyline, can I? I’ve never gave a fuck about them. I wrote about LOST for an entire month, and I never touched on them. And while my disregard for them may be more than most peoples’, I can’t imagine why I should care about them. As my friend Tommy Rock pointed out at the beginning of the season, Sun’s main purpose is to ask questions. Pay attention next time she’s on screen. The writers have used her as a mechanism for shitty exposition since I he dropped this knowledge on me.

How? Why? Blah blah blah.

And Jin? Jin’s a hot Asian dude in a tight white t-shirt.

So no, I don’t care about them on the Island, or in LAX. Sorry! They’re both candidates, but they’ve barely spent time on screen together. I mean, I’m a sucker for a good romance, but even I can’t rouse any emotions over whether or not they’ll wind up together.

But let’s get down into it.

On LAX, Jin and Sun ain’t married. But the dudebro is still working for her father. Sun’s gone from an annoying plot device on the Island to an annoying prissy chick in LAX. The two of them land in LAX under the notion that Jin has to deliver some money to Keamy (who is still awesome) in some sort of deal. Right. This is totally cool. Snore.

Across shitty LAX, Jin and Sun pine for one another. They roll around in bed and say sweet nothings and I resist the desire to barf and scream. Maybe scream while I’m projectile barfing.

At one point hunky Jin rolls out of bed after it is implied that he just got done making the sex. Let me ask you a question? Who puts their boxers on after sex? Usually I’m half-dead, laying there puffing, grasping at life. I’m a pathetic man. But even if I had the ability to move, I wouldn’t put on my dumb boxers. That’s the best way to get the human equivalent of Elmer’s Glue all over   the inside of the boxers. Not buyin’ it, yo! But it’s ABC, so yeah, I understand why. I’m just complaining.

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EddieKim does it again. Picking up where he left off last week, this YouTube user takes a Billboard chart-topper and reworks it…into a demonic anthem of the undead!

While Rihanna’s Rude Boy was pretty brutal, this week’s reimagining of Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now is fucking catastrophic. This is the type of shit that plays while the Orcs come to pillage’n’rape.

Maybe it’s the fact that the lyrics lend themselves to doom-grunts. An excerpt;

It’s a quarter after one, I’m a little drunk and I need you now
Said I wouldn’t call but I lost all control and I need you now
And I don’t know how I can do without
I just need you now

Guess I’d rather hurt than feel nothin at all.

Once again, kudos to EddieKim! Keep up the good work!

One gets orgasms and backrubs for life on a throne of hundred dollar bills, the other is thrown into a pit of daggers and malice.

Discuss.

[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.]

People are searching for Pepsibones Krueger. And while I’m proud of this, since he’s my brother, I’m also sort of worried. Would it surprise you to know that his name really isn’t Pepsibones Krueger? You’re not surprised? Yeah, me either.

Pepsibones though? He’s pretty certain it is his name. To the point where now even our mother calls him by it. I’m worried by the fact that people are beginning to validate this delusion of his. I mean, Jesus Christ, three searches for Pepsibones Krueger brought them here yesterday? It’s only going to get worse.

In my younger years, I was all about brutal metal. Seven string guitars, double bass drums, growling like Satan – what’s not to love? Well, I suppose the appeal of mosh pits has always escaped me. Nevertheless, I digress.

Lately I’ve succumbed to the charm of shitty pop music. It’ll never replace my metal heritage, but it’s nice to mindlessly bob my head from time to time. A dude can only listen to Hammer Smashed Face so many times.

The video above features YouTube user EddieKim attempting to meld these two diametrically opposed universes. Apparently, every week he is going to post a new entry into a series he has coined Billboard Death Metal. The premise? He’s going to take a chart-topper and turn it into something that’ll scare the church-goers. Essentially, he’s attempting to do for pop what Anchorhead has done for the music of the Star Wars Trilogy.

This week, Eddie Kim presents Rihanna’s Rude Boy.

There are moments on LOST that are so utterly epic, you want to shit your pants. Or do laps around your room. Or perhaps, jump up off your couch after shitting your pants, and do laps around your room. Tonight’s LOST brought all of that funk into my soul. I’m excited at a cellular level. I am tweaking out on pure undiluted awesomeness, not to mention an entire fucking bag of Starburst jellybeans. Oh sweet Christ, if this isn’t one of the best episodes of all time, I don’t know what will be. Buckle the fuck up, there are going to be fanboy fluids flung everywhere. Open your mouth and say a novena.

Where to start? Where the fuck to start? There’s too much enormity! My god damn skull plate is about to break off, spin around the room, before breaking through my ceiling and flying off into the stratosphere.

Let’s get down to the essentials. The storyline for Ab Aeterno is framed through the tale of our boyfriend Richard Alpert, and how he came to be on the Island. While there are ridiculously important developments on some sort of macro level, it’s all tied down through the most beautiful of bindings, the heart strings. I thought it was a dope way to intertwine the two.

Did you swoon for Richard before? Yeah, me too. I couldn’t believe how thunderous the clit-boners and butt-crushes were for Dicky. I mean, I know that I love him, but the LOST community seemed centered on this episode tonight with especial fervor. RICHARD, we all screamed, OPEN YOURSELF UP TO US. And he did, oh boy did he did.

Our boy Richard rocks the most touching of archetypes, the lover who wants to be with their deceased wife. Seriously, ladies and gentlemen. If that doesn’t melt your heart, you don’t have one. The episode opens up with Dicky galloping upon his horse to his beloved Isabella. And she’s obviously on her way to rocking the rigor mortis. I don’t know much about the medicines of 1847, but when your wife is barfing blood, she’s probably fucked.

One deep-dicking by the Catholic church later, and Ricardo is on his way to the New World via some serious slave trading bullshit. I mean, how can you imprison this guy? He’s utterly gorgeous! I mean, sequester him in your house and rub him with salves? Try and quiet his disturbed heart? Sure. I can understand that. But slavery?

Before we get overly intellectual and begin to rocket philosophical loads, let’s just be honest. We freaked the fuck out in geek esctascy for a solid five moments. The moment you see the Statue through the Black Rock during the maelstrom, you shit your pants. And then when it’s launched into the air, you begin hyperventilating. And when you realize that the Black Rock is responsible for demolishing said Statue? Geektacular Euphoria.

And before you can clean your pants, Smokey attacks the Black Rock. Dudes getting flung and mashed and mushed into Cream O’ Human. I can’t help it, but every fucking time he attacks, I find it absolutely chilling. Even though his methodology is still the same, even though they’re always the same sounds, it never gets old to me. Richard’s petrified pleadings to God as Smokey hovers near him was amazing.

And then? Then Richard meets himself in the middle of the chess game between the Devil and God. Can we call it that now?

Our boy Richard is freed by the Man in Black, and sent to kill Jacob. The conversation eerily echoes that of the one between Dogen and Sayid earlier in the season; everything from not letting them speak, to the sword given to kill him. If anything, it’s got to be clear that both Smokey and Jacob are master manipulators, and to let either of them talk to you is to allow them to rock out some hardcore guile on your ass.

Smokey’s manipulation of Richard was reminiscent of his manipulation of Ben back at the end of season five. Seriously, this guy has a velvet tongue. What does the Devil do, if not cajole you into biting apples and doing other dumb shit under the guise of some grand reward, or some grand slight you have received?

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