Not trying to be insipid about this, but as I recollect the past year in my life, 2012 wasn’t very earth-shattering for me. It more or less amounted to another 366 days with some minor flourishes thrown in to keep it interesting (leap years are always cool, though). Several non-decisions on my part, no doubt, contributed to this, since I didn’t go out of my way to change it up too much, but things mainly worked out in a rather predicable fashion regardless. This subtle development, of course, has its own positives and negatives, neither of which is worth complaining about to any great extent because things were OK to begin with. And, similarly, since life is all about taking the good with the bad, when neither of which occurs to any major degree, the only thing to do is to take it as a slight lull in life’s symphony, artfully set to enhance its ambience when needed (as it will). I am sure, as time goes on and I keep on keepin’ on, moments from this past year will swell back up from the background and take on more significance until these mere moments become momentous. So seen this way, my new year isn’t merely about completing what’s left unfinished, but discovering what I didn’t even know was there—as I obviously don’t right now—because I couldn’t see that these moments will indeed be integral once they fit in perfectly with my forthcoming experiences. And that, my friends, is what I hope 2013 has in store for me: not simply making the future vibrant, but making the past more memorable when my dotted life connects. We shall see how it works out. Time, as it can only do, will tell.

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I had ill (or perhaps marginal) words for my savior Warren Ellis’ newest novel Gun Machine over in Rendar’s Year’s Best. Despite that, I still bought it on Tuesday. Reading through it a second time, I’m enjoying it much more. I think it has to do with me coming to grips with it being decidedly different from usual Ellis affairs. I still find it incredibly rushed, with a panoply of interesting ideas left half-sprung. What ist here is interesting, and worth reading. Especially if you’re an Ellis fanatic. None the less, decide for yourself. Here is a trailer for the novel, featuring narration by Wil Wheaton and artwork by Ben Templesmith.

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It’s with a tearful eye and a hyper-extended thumbs-up that I bid farewell to 2012.

The last twelve months have been some of the finest of my entire life. And I’m not exaggerating. Unlike those saccharine slobs who always clamor about the present hour being their finest and the preceding moments nothing more than the bliss-steps to their existence plateaus, I have no illusions about the fact that I’ve chalked up some miserable years. I’ve anguished through entire calendars, burnin’ `em up with fuel of the most incendiary sort.

Self-doubt! Resentment! Apathy! Vitriol! Cynicism! Sally forth towards the mire!

But 2012 was a whole different beast. Sure, there definitely some moments when my nostrils were assailed by the wispy vapors of the aforementioned propellants. But repugnance was ultimately cast aside, overpowered by the surfeit of wonder! It’s almost as though entertainment and art and love formed a giant sword-wieldin’, monster-destroyin’ mech, and I got to pilot the son-of-a-bitch!

If only!

Anyways, it looks as though every crew member of Spaceship OL is delivering their year-end highlights, so I’m going to join the party. But since I’ve garnered a reputation as being the erratic, currently-undiagnosed-but-we’re-working-on-it, hack-writin’ resident of the crew, I’m going to switch things up a bit. Each of my highlights will be paired with an Ultra-Dimensional Portal! By clicking on any UDP, a hole will be punched in space-time, and your consciousness will be projected astrally.

Got it? Okay, here’s one last look at 2012!

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Well then! Nary three days have passed since our own Rendar was lavishing rope all over the bust and buns of Ready Player One when this news comes out. The author of the aforementioned jam is currently the hotness around The Town, and he has been afforded a ridiculous advance for his next endeavor. At, to be paid for writing. The concept, the concept alone.

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“I shouldn’t’ve done this. She’s not safe by herself. We gotta go back.”

“Dammit Greg, we haven’t had a date-nite in thirteen weeks.”

“You’ve been keeping track?”

“Of course I’ve been keeping track. Date-nite is a sacred event, a testament to the wonder that is our relationship. There’s compromise – you choose the movie, I choose the restaurant. There’s chivalry – you hold every door and pay for everything, even when I protest. And there’s sex – we always end the evening by rolling around in bed, expressing our physical attraction by playing with each other’s ballsacks. We need this.”

Greg paused. He wanted to feel okay about leaving his mom at home, but he couldn’t. Dale saw this, and continued making his argument.

“Listen, your mother’s going to be fine. She’s just old, and sometimes that means she gets a little confused-”

“A little confused? Yesterday I poured myself a glass of a milk and she said that she never knew Martians could handle Earth-dairy.”

“I’m sure she was just joking around.”

“Oh yeah? Then why did she part the curtains, point out the window, and exclaim, ‘Looks like, we’ll be touching down on Ganymede in no time! Quick! Put on your spacesuit! If the admiral catches you out of it, he’ll stick you with kitchen-duty!’?”

Dale knew his boyfriend had a point. But couldn’t give up. Selfishly, he wanted dinner and a movie, followed by sex. More altruistically, he honestly didn’t think Greg’s mother was in any jeopardy.

“Greg, if I thought there a serious risk that Rhonda would hurt herself, I wouldn’t be in the car with you right now. But she’s fine — you put her to bed and watched her fall asleep. You know where she’s going to be when we get back? In bed, sleeping! Probably dreaming about traveling the solar system in a rocketship, but in bed nonetheless. We’ll check in to see her peacefully sleeping, sneak into the kitchen for a piece of that rum cake you spent all afternoon baking, and then hit the bedroom.”

Dale kissed Greg on the cheek, and all was well. Greg had been mollified. Date-nite was still ready for lift-off.

And then the panic-gazelles stampeded across the Great Plains of Greg’s face.

“Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Fuck, we have to go back right now! Dale, turn the fucking car around!”

“Greg, calm down! What’s wrong?”

“I’m so stupid! I was so fucking caught up in putting Mom to bed that I forgot take the cake out! I forget to turn off the goddamn oven! D’ya know how much alcohol I put in that cake? The fucking house is going explode!”

[][][]

Rhonda Bilkes crossed the threshold, excited for the mission at hand. She’d been to Ganymede to Mars and even Pluto. But never had she been tasked with surveying the Sun.

Oh, she could already feel the wonderful solar heat penetrating her spacesuit!

—-

Welcome to the Monday Morning Commute!

This is the spot I drop a whole bunch of nonsense, and then show off the various ways I’ll be entertaining myself during the course of the workweek. Hey man, don’t blame me! I’m a hack-writer and I’ve got duties to fulfill! Anyways, your job is to hit up the comments section and share the methods of life-improvement you’ll be employing.

It’s show-and-tell for pop-culture addicts, basement-dwelling-nerds, aspiring artists, and all others who count themselves amongst the OL faithful.

Let’s rock!

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Oh snap! Looks like OMEGA-`LECTION DAY is upon us! I can’t believe we’ve made it to another one, but since we’re here we might as well celebrate! Hit the jump to check out all of our totally legitimate coverage!

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Hello there! If you’re reading this it means that Frankenstorm hasn’t totally rocked you. Not yet, anyways. Or, if you took the proper precautions as I did, you’re safe in a bunker, leisurely tapping away on a hard-shelled laptop produced in 1995 and powered by a Soviet-surplus generator.

Mother Nature is a powerful woman of antiquity, but I’m a crafty miscreant in the digital age.

Anyways, welcome to the Monday Morning Commute, the weekly meeting at which we confess our darkest entertainment secrets. Can’t tell your boyfriend about that comic book you bought? Come to the MMC! None of your coworkers will appreciate the Japanese import you just got in the mail? Come to the MMC! Pretty sure your wife doesn’t give two buttery squirrel shits about the fact that you’re going to beat Super Mario Bros. 3 without the use of a single warp or whistle? Come to the MMC!

I’m going to get things started. But then it’s up to you to share what you’ll be doing this week. C’mon, it’s electronic show and tell!

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The shit! I’m not even done picking the boogers out of my snot-covered face after finishing Diaz’ This is How You Lose Her when this bomb drops. The son of a bitch has been given a half-milli genius grant, and homeboy is pledging to use it to finally write his monster book.

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Oh Amazon Prime, bless you for this gift. Well shit, I paid for it. But I’m still really fucking excited.

[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]

It was during the 8th century BCE that the Greek poet-Jedi known as Homer detailed the events of the Trojan War with the Iliad. An impassioned narrative of a conflict between kings, warriors, gods, and mortals, Homer’s epic poem has been celebrated since its inception. However, the readers who stop after reading the final line of the Iliad (“Thus, then, did they celebrate the funeral of Hector tamer of horses.“) has only treated themselves to half of the story.

The second half of the tale comes in the form of the Odyssey, an epic which follows Odysseus on his dangerous voyage home. Odysseus is a hero of the Trojan War (like the Trojan Horse? Yeah, that was his idea), but he’s slipped into a slick puddle of shit-luck. As such, his return to Ithaca has been delayed by incredible storms, man-eating monsters, an encounter with Polyphemos that ends with being cursed by Poseidon, the allure of Sirens’ songs, and more than a few battles. Oh, when Odysseus finally gets home, he has to figure out how to kill all of the assholes that’ve been depleting his estate and trying to court his wife.

But don’t worry – Odysseus pulls it off, and in style!

“’Dogs! You thought I would never come back from Troy, so you have been carving up my substance, forcing the women to lie with you, courting my wife before I was dead, not fearing the gods who rule the broad heavens, nor the execration of man which follows you for ever. And now the cords of death are made fast about you all!’”

Not only is the Odyssey a mythological tour de force that’s still read and studied and imitated today, it’s also the first documented sequel in the history of narrative. And it’s bad-ass. Hell, many believe it to be equal, if not superior, to the Iliad.

Sure, there’s an argument to be had that most sequels are cheap cash-grabs that capitalize on the popularity of great works. There’s no denyin’ that much of the direct-to-video market is built on this premise. But with the Odyssey having been established nearly three thousand years ago, there’s a time-tested precedent that sometimes sequels are worthwhile continuations.

So here’s our topic of discussion: What is your favorite sequel?

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