Bruce Wayne is a corporate fascist. Imposing his will outside of the jurisdiction of the law, causing Socrates and good willed citizens of the world alike to shake their head.  How many schools could Bruce Wayne build with the amount of money he’s spending to build his fascist rodent state?

Occupy Gotham.
Occupy Metropolis.
Occupy Emerald City.

(This is Variant Covers, your weekly guide to the comics I’m checking out this week. Your pull-list is encouraged to be shared.)

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Spark a cigarette and pour a drink – you’ve made it home after the first day of the workweek! Congratulations! You’ve only got to get through that 9-5 shitstorm four more times until the weekend! And from there it’s only a few more decades before you either retire into poverty or die! Ta-dah!

Fugg that, son. Life’s a glorious experiment, so let’s dance in the laboratory and smash some beakers! This here’s the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE, a weekly post dedicated to combating ennui. If you fear that you’re becoming one of the flesh-and-blood automatons that chokes Wonder to death, hop into this refugee-camp. I’m going to show you what I’m doing to destroy apathy.

If you’re daring, you’ll hit up the comments section and do the same.

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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]

Life can be too damn busy at times. Too much work to do. Too many errands to run. Too many cults to join.

With free time a commodity, one has to be very careful about prioritizing. As much as it pains me, there’s no way that I’m going to get through this week’s stack of comics before next Wednesday. It sucks, but I’d feel like a real sonofabitch if I sat around reading comics instead of going to the pharmacy to pick up Grampa’s prescription.

So this week, I looked through my funnies and tried to determine which single issue would receive my attention. Again, this wasn’t easy – it sucks to have to put off reading Choker as Templesmith’s art is fantasti-gorgeous, and Wolverine: The Best There Is since it seems to be specifically designed for my ultra-violent sensibilities.

Nevertheless, I decided. This week’s featured collection of wordy-scribbles and colorful-doodles is Sweet Tooth #17.

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Alright my friends, here’s the deal. It’s a goddamn insane week in the world of funny books. The sort of pull-list enormity that threatens to bum rush my wallet and leave it groaning in a corner somewhere. Pleased, but exhausted. And slightly stretched. So instead of my usual jibjab where I blather on and on and on about one or two titles, I’m giving you the rundown on everything I’m going to check out. Each little description will be condensed, but oh my the quantity! And the cute little pictures to go with them! Buckle up, and gaze into the abyss that is my theoretical pull list.

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Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #5
The second to last issue of Grant Morrison’s mind-raping exploration of Bruce Wayne throughout the time stream ships tomorrow. It feels like forever since we last saw Brucey tripping the light fantastic through the various eras of Gotham’s history. Morrison has sewn the Batman inextricably into the fabric of the last five-hundred years or whatever of Gotham, as his time-traveling self set up the exact events that will make him don the cowl all those years later.

This issue gives us Batman the noir detective, which makes almost too much sense. Here’s hoping we’re shown more of Wayne as the Bioorganic Archivist at the imminent heat death of the universe that we saw a couple of issues ago. Yup, I don’t know what that means, but I sure fucking like it!

Northlanders #33
Brian Wood’s epic storyline, Metal, continues to lumber on, soaked in blood and social commentary. As our mentally-deficient but admirably violent protagonist Erik continues to purge his land of Christians, it seems that there’s nothing but a bad ending coming for the dudebro. I mean, I’m not a historian, but I’m pretty sure the Christians win. Still though, the clash of cultures quite literally has been righteous to watch. One of my favorite comic books every month, because it mixes two of my favorite things: violence and social philosophy in such a clean manner.

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Casanova #4
Time-space manipulation seems firmly stapled into the collective unconscious of this generation’s creators. And I’m cool with it. The fourth part of the reissuing of Matt Fraction’s first crack at comic books apparates from a different realm onto stands this week. Again, another comic book that I look forward to each and every week. This shit is dense, but rewarding. The sort of work that I have to read only after I’ve beaten down by caffeine-fueled attention deficiency, lest I miss some of the more complicated and/or confusing plot mechanisms.

Incestuously-overtoned James Bond skipping across dimensions? Sold.

As well, Fraction’s musing at the back of every issue are worth the price of admission for me. Last issue showed us an open Fraction spouting off on his past addictions, and the anxiety of learning to write whilst refraining for indulging in some mind-alteration. Since Fraction is a writer that I not only enjoy, but look up to, I appreciate getting a mainline into something resembling his more intimate thoughts.

Harlan Ellison’s Phoenix Without Ashes #3
Make no mistake about it, Harlan Ellison is the man. The gentleman who has literally sculpted science fiction through his life is dying, and the world is about to become a lesser place in some respects. Phoenix Without Ashes is coming out as his life swoons, as he mentioned back in September that he was suffering, and it wasn’t long until he would shed the mortal coil. Dude still rolled up to MadCon, declaring that he was going to go out like a motherfucker.

Spine-tingling respect for a creator who I have never indulged much in directly, but whose works have shaped many creators I have a raging passion for.

I need to get into more Ellison, and Phoenix Without Ashes is my introductory experience. The main character flees the constrictive society he was born into, only to discover the town is secretly housed within some sort of orbiting space station. Last issue’s ending was the sort of pants-shitting that I got at the end of Dark City, where a fleeing character stares into the deep abyss of space.

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I understand that OL suffers from a lack of patronage on the Sabbath. But I just want to offer an early reminder to those who are stumbling their way around the site: Rafael Grampá’s Mesmo Delivery is being (re)released this Wednesday.

As a proud owner of an AdHouse Books’ edition, I can attest that Mesmo Delivery is the real fucking deal. In just under fifty pages, Grampá demonstrates a mastery of the comics medium that others spend thousands of pages striving for. As an artist, he tempers the putrid and violent with an appealing cartoon sensibility. Or perhaps he understands that the reader will feel at ease with the spiritually-Nickelodeon images, thus amplifying the effect of decapitations and pants-pissings.

Again, I won’t harp right now. Between my previous feature, the upcoming Variant Covers and my probable feature for this week’s Images & Words, Rafael Grampá is bound to have some solid real estate at OL. Just make sure you buy this book — in addition to the novella, Dark Horse is tossing in some bonus shit as well. Summarily, there’s no reason to not support this rising star.