Variant Covers. A look at the comic books that I’m buying/interested in this week.

You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how crazy I was during the semester. Or maybe you would. White-knuckles, ripped on caffeine. Oscillating between “this is totally doable” and “I need pills and a shack in the woods.” What gets me through it? Funny books. Narrative and drawings. Well, that, and really weird audio files of white noise to write to. With that in mind, writing this column every week is a relaxation technique. Stack it on top of my psychiatrist, therapist, and girlfriend, and I’m almost functional.

Let’s dance.

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Casanova: Gula #2.
The Casanova series is one of those titles that has to benefit from reading in a collected manner. I read this title monthly, and by the time the next issue is coming out, my frazzled stem can’t compute what I read before. The issues are stuffed to the brim with madness. This is a good thing. But trying to keep track of everything that’s going on, with thirty-day breaks? Not so hot.

Let’s see: Last month, Casanova Quinn disappeared from the timestream, and now it’s of grave importance that he’s tracked down. This march into absurdity (I mean this positively) is headed up by Sasa Lisi, a blue babe with a good amount of arms. Meanwhile Cass’ sister has just been hired to kill some peeps, including their father. Gulp and stuff!

Slather this on top of some really weird meta-fiction, endless references to awesome, and gorgeous artwork, and you have madness in a can. Or uh, a binding. It’s enjoyable mind-rape, but goddamn if the side-effect don’t include loss of memory and sudden confusion.

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Incognito: Bad Influences #3.
Zack Overkill has just gotten out of his life of crime. Sure, he was ripped out of it and then thrown into working for The Man, but he was out. Now thrown back into it the underworld he was wrested from, he operate undercover while holding onto his tenuous set of new-found morals. That is, if you believe he’s reformed. My guess? Somewhere in the middle.

Last issue saw Overkill galavanting about with an old buddy, only to have the guy sell him out. Son of a bitch! Apparently you can’t go home again. Even if that home is prostitutes and death scenes.

I love this series, specifically for the themes presented. The notion of attempting to clean yourself up, and what that entails, calls out to the mess that is my collected consciousness. Overkill is a man trying to turn a new leaf, but can he resist the temptation? In this case, can he resist punching motherfuckers’ heads off and banging whores? There’s the axio, that if you want to quit an addiction, you need to gut your entire life. Escape from the hedonistic tendencies of those you partook with. Overkill is doing the exact opposite – being thrown back into the madness.

Can the dude make it? Dunno.

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Interlude: Shit I’m Loving.
This column is a weekly conduit of the bullshit that’s coming out on any given week. As such, while I generally recommend shit that I’m humping on hard, I don’t often pause to drop what I’m infatuated with. An atemporal exploration of the dope shit I want to marry. So I figured I’d throw one out there.

I’m madly, madly obsessed with Cowboy Ninja Viking. The title has it fucking all. The grand slam of tropes and bonerficiations that sell me hard. It’s got mental illness. It’s got ridiculously gorgeous artwork. It’s got meditations on modern life and the existential ennui we all are subject to. It’s got action sequences and ultra violence. But more than that, it’s fucking hilarious.

This is a title that has me giggling outloud in the middle of the night like the retard I am. The dialogue  is equal measures witty and profane. Childish and acerbic.  I’ve rocked through a trade and a half of the title, and I’m edging like woah. Don’t want to finish it. If you haven’t checked this shit out, I’d recommend it. Madly. In love.

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[photo by brian auer]

Holy shit, it’s Monday again. Funny how that happens. The workweek stings, but there’re plenty of ways to dull the pain. No, I meant other than booze!

Let’s swap ideas. I’ll show you how I’m going to continue embarking upon the path of personal evolution via pop culture and mindrot. Then, you hit up the comments and do the same. It’s simple as that for your simple ass.

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Rockin’ / Bowie — Hunky Dory

I’m not a prophet or a stone age man
Just a mortal with the potential of a superman
I’m living on
I’m tethered to the logic of Homo Sapien
Can’t take my eyes from the great salvation
Of bullshit faith
If I don’t explain what you ought to know
You can tell me all about it
On the next Bardo
I’m sinking in the quicksand of my thought
And I ain’t got the power anymore

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Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy posted a gorgeous video today of solar eclipse seen from NASA’s STEREO spacecraft.

In a previous post, Plait explained what NASA’s STEREO spacecraft was:

STEREO –  SolarTErrestrial  RElations  Observatory – they traveled in opposite directions, one ahead and the other behind the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. The goal was to get a wide, stereoscopic view of the Sun which would provide 3D information on our star.

Hit the jump for the video, and go here to read Plait’s more detailed description of STEREO.

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Well, all right. He wasn’t almost on Xbox Live, but Microsoft and Conan’s team were discussing the possibility.

Joystiq:

During the “Hollywood Creative Masters” session at CES last month, the executive producer of Conan O’Brien’s show, Jeff Ross, spoke on last April’s  short-lived rumor of talks to relaunch the show on a proposed Xbox Live channel (before the deal was made to bringConan to TBS), reports  Gamasutra contributor Chris Morris (who moderated the CES session). While Ross said it was “interesting to sit and look at it,” Microsoft’s proposal lacked a clear vision, and he recalled that “a lot of the conversations were, ‘Well, it’s a show, but it’s not a show and there are no breaks, but maybe there are breaks and it’s not 60 minutes — it’s this,’ and nobody really knew what it was.”

“So it was really going to be a leap of faith to jump in with these guys and figure something out which we didn’t know,” Ross said, later reiterating that “we had some eventual television offers and we basically shied away from the [Xbox thing].”

Imagine if this shit came to fruition? My asshole would have burst out of its confines, splattering the walls in confusion.

In addition to the first glimpse of Captain America footage, Marvel dropped a new peak at Thor on our asses tonight during the Violence and Corpulence Bowl tonight. I’m stoked for this flick, and every teaser brings me closer to hunting down Chris Hemsworth and dragging him to my underground prison. I’m a slut for chain mail.

Hit the jump for the teaser.

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You have to adore the ESRB’s descriptions of games. Especially when it turns up all sorts of interesting nuggets. Take Dragon Age II for eample.. The ESRB went and did all of us a solid, unveiling some delicious nougats. Like fellatio. And same-sex hook-ups! Outstanding.

ESRB Description Per Destructoid:

During the course of the game, characters sometimes engage in sexual dialogue (e.g., “Why is it always about sex with you?” and “Sailing is like sex. Do it wrong, and it’ll make you sick.”). Players can also initiate brief cutscene sequences in which couples (male-female or same-sex) are shown kissing and embracing one another in a bedroom as the screen fades to black. In one cutscene, a woman kneels in front of a male character and appears to perform fellatio–there is no depiction of the sex act; the camera pans out to the rest of the room. The words “a*s,” “bastard,” and “sh*t” appear in dialogue.

I’m glad the Dragon Age series brings the same-sex thunder. It’s a great past time of mine in Mass Effect 2 to pine for Chambers with my FemShep. However, the powers that be saw to it that it was impossible to consummate a same-sex tryst. Fuckers. In Dragon Age? It’s all good.

In addition, I imagine in a game that encourages investment in an avatar as a logical arm of your moral and philosophical choices,  homosexual gamers may be bummed out that they couldn’tactualize their sexual orientation in the game. So big-ups to making it possible.

That’s just me.

Did you catch the trailer for Captain America during the Super Bowl? No? Watch it here! You did catch it? Watch it again! I’ve been skeptical of Captain America for a good while now, but man. My gooey fanboy gunk was floating about after the trailer. What does a trailer  guarantee? Nothing, nothing at all. But it was fun.

Hit the jump for the trailer.

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Whaddup! In before the trailer drops tonight are some high-res scans of Cap from Empire Magazine. There isn’t anything new inside, but everything is much sexified and clearer.

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Is Robin coming to The Dark Knight Rises? I speculated upon that shit last week, when it was announced JGL is negotiating to be in the flick. Now the rumor mill has begun to churn, steam rising and gears crunching.

Slashfilm:

But a report from a Michigan NBC affiliate might now suggest otherwise. According to reports, location scouts for  The Dark Knight Rises were in Grand Ledge, MI recently and were looking at a water treatment plant to possibly be used as “a hideout for Batman’s sidekick Robin.” Are the location scouts being misquoted? Could this just be a red herring? Or are they possibly referring to another Robin? Read all the possibilities and quotes after the jump.

I don’t blame anyone who initially balks at the concept. In fact, both Nolan and Bale have publicly stated in the past they didn’t think it was the best idea.

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Last month Darren Aronofsky revealed he had plans for a graphic novel he wanted to parlay into a flick. Some peeps speculated that it may have been an alteration of his Batman pitch back in the day. Well, then folks are wrong. Today we know what it is, and it sounds fucking awesome. The graphic novel is Noah, and it is an adaptation of one of Aronofsky’s unproduced flicks. The project will be released in 2012, and is being illustrated by Pride of Baghdad’s Nico Henrichon. Hungry for more?

io9 Drops Some Details:

It’s a really cool project and I think it’s really timely because it’s about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what’s going on on this planet. So I think it’s got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist. He’s a really interesting character. Hopefully they’ll let me make it.

Hit the jump for a promotional video featuring Henrichon’s artwork.

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