We all know it’s coming. It is the dark, depressing underbelly of Christopher Nolan finishing off his bonerfying Batman trilogy. We all know that the moment he wraps on the son of a bitch, and the moment we gaze upon its guaranteed (GUARANTEED) resplendent glory, we’ve seen the last of the Nolanverse’s take on Bruce Wayne.

This week in the LA Times, the new WB Guru Leader Hivemind commented on this inevitable change.

Batman will be reinvented, but!, with Nolan producing.

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Jonathan Hickman is a resident god amongst the Brothers Omega these days. It may not be forever. For much as it occurs on the Mountains of Olympus, Gods can fall. Just ask us about Mark Millar. But right now he’s spitting prose-gold, and he’s teaming up with Nick Pitarra to bring us ‘The Red Wing.”

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The Monday Morning Commute is usually the spot where I tell you what bits of entertainment I’ll be distracting myself with in the upcoming days. Unfortunately, right now it’s looking like I’ve got more work than hours in the day. So while I could pretend to have a whole bunch of cool swag lined up, it’d be dishonest.

In place of the regularly scheduled programming, I present The Body Bag – a short piece from my archives of miscellaneous debris. Feel free to hit up the comments section, either sharing what you’ll be doing this week or taking a stab at some fiction of your own.

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[The body bag wouldn’t stop dripping.]
[And this drove me damn insane.]

It reminded me of being home during summer vacation. In the morning, Mom would take steaks out of the freezer and leave them on the kitchen counter to defrost. She’d go about her day, smoking cigarettes and vacuuming. Watching television and drinking. By three in the afternoon she’d be stuck to the couch. Passed out. Sweating profusely.

I don’t blame her for sweating. The summers were unbearable. And inescapable. Hot. Muggy. And my father refused to buy an air conditioner. Mom would plead for one and my father would just laugh in her face, “I already pay for heat in the winter and now you want cold air in the summer? You’re all backwards! Why don’t I just fly your ass to another hemisphere?!”

Of course, he spent the hottest hours of the day at the office. The air conditioned office. Fucking bastard.

Anyways, afternoons in the summer saw Mom imprisoned by the couch. She just couldn’t get up. Occasionally a few syllables would be spat out of her florid face and she would make a half-hearted attempt to rise. But she was always defeated, either by the humidity or her blood alcohol concentration. Sometimes she would even throw up on herself. Not often.

But often enough.

When she passed out I’d walk to the kitchen counter. At that point, the steak laid out in the morning would be hours beyond the point of defrosting. Beaten down by the sun, the sirloin would be bleeding everywhere. The white paper from the butcher shop giving its best impression of a sanitary napkin.

The countertop would end up resembling the Red Sea. Parting it in half with napkins, I was a seven-year-old Moses. I never seemed to be able to clean all of it, and this became a source of genuine frustration.

After all, maybe the day my father came home to a clean countertop would be the same day Mom didn’t get slapped.

“Is this bovine blood on the counter?”

“Oh, honey, don’t worry. It’s just a little juice.”

“Juice? JUICE?! Juice is what you get when you squeeze something that once grew on a tree! This is fucking blood! These are blood stains!”

Somehow it made sense to my father to express his aversion to blood stains by making more of them.

[The body bag wouldn’t stop dripping.]
[The steaks never stopped bleeding.]
[Mom never stopped drinking.]
[And my father never stopped slapping.]

[And this drove me damn insane.]

After four years of struggling with the worm, Paramount’s rights to option the novel “Dune” have run out. Seasoned producer Richard P. Rubinstein, who owns the rights to the novel, stated that he could not reach an agreement with Paramount and he would now be deciding whether to move forward with the project or not.

Since it was optioned by Paramount four years ago, some interesting names have been attached to the project including Peter Berg and Taken director Pierre Morel – who supposedly came into a production meeting clutching his personal, weathered copy of “Dune.” Morel and collaborator Chase Palmer penned a compact script that “cut the mammoth subject matter down to a compelling story that could be told at feature length.” I call bullshit.

Before David Lynch’s 1984 Dune adaptation, several directors tried to bring Frank Herbert’s tremendous feat of sci-fi literature to the big screen. Throughout the ’70s visionaries like Ridley Scott, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and producer Arthur P. Jacobs all tried to get their own adaptations off the desert floor to no avail. Jodorowsky’s (Holy Mountain) ambitious ideas for Dune involved Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, H.R. Giger, and Pink Floyd. Slow down, you kook. Lynch himself once stated that to in order to attempt a film version of Dune “You’ve got to be either stupid or crazy…”

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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]

After some deliberation, I’ve made the executive decision that OL is going to officially endorse FF #1 as the comic book of the week.

So why the hesitation? Well, I guess I was concerned that my choice would be scrutinized, determined to be nothing more than a declaration of pure fanboyism. After all, I did award the Images & Words honors to the final issue of Fantastic Four. And then I interviewed Nick Dragotta, said comic’s illustrator. And since I’m coming completely clean, I might as well admit that I featured the penultimate issue of Fantastic Four, as well.

So I didn’t want to come across as yet another Internet mouthbreather, shamelessly celebrating his current favorite bit of entertainment.

But after reading and re-reading FF, there’s no denyin’ that Jonathan Hickman has got me hooked. Indefensibly. The dude scripts the First Family with an earnestness that makes me weep. Forreal. As I read this issue, I can feel my heartstrings being yanked on with a violent fervor, reminding me that at its best science fiction is a genre concerned with the human condition. Hickman understands that the most outlandish of scenarios can resonate sympathetic.

Hell, even interdimensional conflicts and premonitions from the future can be imbued with familial strain.

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It almost seems ridiculous to get excited about anything surrounding the forthcoming Zack Snyder Superman Reboot Abortion. Sucker Punch has taught me that. Well, it should have. Yet, here I am. Amy Adams has been cast as Lois Lane, and I can’t help but be excited. Isn’t this the definition of insanity or whatever?

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When diversions are king, video games shall be amongst those running the pack. Making sure that everyone has the appropriate tattoos. Knowing the gang symbols. The terminology. Ruling the roost, if you will. This is Press Start!, the column where I spout off five things that happened in the world of gaming in a given week. My lists are dumb. Like yours, they are rife with personal preference, ideological tendencies, and since it’s me – juvenile bullshit.

I encourage all aboard to share their own musings.

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#1: Apple App Store Gets App That ‘Cures Homosexuality’, For Like A Second.
God damn, I have to give it to Apple. I knew from the multifarious apps found on Apple’s store were fucking powerful. I knew there were a lot of apps that could do a lot of things. Find a yummy restaurant for my belly! Find movie tickets. Play Angry Birds! Read a book! However, I wasn’t aware there was an app that could cure my raging hard-on for Chris Hemsworth in chainmail.

That’s where  Exodus International steps in! They released an app that claimed to cure gayness. It was a bit of an odd mood, since the fascist pigs at Apple have pulled some less polarizing applications. Wasn’t there one that cost like a zillion dollars? The Douche App? It did nothing aside from signify you could spend a lot of money?

Anyways, a day and one enormous 152,433 online signature later, they pulled the son of a bitch.

Go figure.

I’m actually okay with the existence of the app, if it wasn’t such an odd choice in lieu of what they have pulled. I am of the opinion that if a bunch of closed-minded assholes rubbing their genitals against a withering old tome want to try and make some money off their own ignorance, let them try.

Besides, it doesn’t work. I downloaded the app – mind you, I didn’t actually use it. However, if it worked, how would they trick the sinners into using it?! It must have unactivated capabilities, right? What I did do was stick my iPhone in my crotch and had my friend call me repeatedly with the phone on vibrate while I stared at Chris Evans’ pecs in the Captain America trailer. Still felt the love. Don’t tell my girlfriend.

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#2: New Movie ‘The FP’ Where Dance-Dance Meets Post-Apocalypse  Gang Wars.
In the future, we will all be divided amongst post-apocalypse gangs. When diversions are king, our lives will be dedicated to maintaining our reps and our various crews. The flick ‘The FP’ which screened at SXSW last week perfectly captures our forthcoming sociocultural  metamorphosis. Also, the movie is fucking madness.

Gangs fight it out in fatal games of DDR, titties, and absurd montages. The trailer is what happens when you cross 1980’s bro movies with video game slop-culture. In a completely conscious, and planning manner.

God bless.

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#3: Triforce Johnson Waits In Line For Nintendo 3DS. Gets Thrown Out. Returns.
Isaiah-Triforce Johnson is either the man, or a fucking mental patient. For some reason, I feel like the two categories bleed together so simply swimmingly when it comes to geek culture. Triforce, who had the phrase legally added to his first fucking name, is a man with a plan. The plan in question is to be the first motherfucker in Manhattan to get a Nintendo 3DS. He’s taken to this plan by waiting in line inside the foyer of the Union Square Best Buy in the Big Apple.

Earlier this week, Best Buy had security throw the dude out.

But that doesn’t stop a motherfucker, does it? He returned, and has apparently smoothed the entire thing over. “There was a Chris Brown launch party the night I came out” he said, so “Best Buy needed that space for the line. It kinda looked bad, but it was just a misunderstanding.”

Godspeed Triforce, you’re almost fucking there.

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Sucker Punch: If a train wreck could have an abortion, and then that abortion was eaten, and vomited, and smeared onto celluloid.

We have reached the fucking vanishing point. The moment where what feels like every single fucking nerd trope we love has been sodomized, lobotomized, and left for dead. Sucker Punch is the runaway diarrhea train of disaster defecated on the brains of Geek America. I am a fat, unwashed, dork. With mouth-breathing tendencies, and extremely low expectations. I get hard at the sight of girls with swords, and can intellectualize my way out of feeling shitty for the obvious objectification inherent in women in skirts moaning as they labor. Even with that, Zack Snyder managed to nonsensically cobble together every single nerdboy’s fantasies into a withering, quivering, fluid-covered disaster.

I am suddenly very, very worried for Superman. Maybe I should have been before.

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[face of a franchise presents two individuals that’ve fulfilled the same role. your task — choose the better of the two and defend your choice in the rancor pit that is the comments section]

Superman might be the hardest of all comics characters to cast. Why is that? Well, whoever plays him has to convey the power of a God while still coming across as a down-to-earth, awh-shucks farm boy. He eats mama’s apple pie and shits lightning bolts. He’s jacked as shit, but not a beefcake roid-head. Capable of pulverizing mountains, but always wears a smile that warms hearts.

Yeah, it’s a tough one.

From 1993-1997, Dean Cain graced ABC television with a magnanimous performance as the Man of Steel. So impressive was his four-year stint that he’s gone on to secure himself a spot as the host of TV’s greatest freakshow.

On the other hand, Brandon Routh graced the silver screen with his portrayal of Kal-El in 2006’s Superman Returns. While the film was a disasterpiece both financially and plot-wise, Routh should be commended for his work.

So who is it? Superman from that wacky TV show? Or Superman from that disappointing movie?

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Enlarge. | Via.

Check out that gorgeous shot. The picture is a collection of images taken by the spacecraft  Mars Odyssey over a three-year goddamn period. Stare at that, and then try and appreciate the fact that you’re looking at a fucking alien world. Faux-stoner moment, woah!

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