Final Fantasy VI dropped twenty years ago today in Japan. Dios mio, where did the time go? I love you, FFVI. If anything, I love you more than I had even realized. You see, I recently bought the Final Fantasy X HD remake and realized I despised pretty much everything about the game in retrospect. My fond memories  vaporized in a Hellfire Barrage of terrible voice acting, horrid characters, and tonally confusing moments. Yet, Final Fantasy VI sustains. I replayed through nearly fifteen hours of the game just six months ago, finding myself still taken with the world. The beauty. The sasquatch. Cheers, FFVI. Stay golden.

Where will you be Thursday at midnight?  Will it be at the first screening of Captain America 2:  Patriot Hard With A Vengeance?  Or must you be like me and wait until the schedule clears out and time permits? (Friday at 11:15 am…already Fandangoed the hell out my tix)  Either way, BTFC has some fantastic comics to recommend for your the time in between now and the glory that is seeing Rocky IV all gussied up for the new millenium.  So hit the jump and let’s talk Winter Soldier, a landmark book for the Ultimate Universe, Garth Ennis, Jaime Hernandez, and a slew of other great books.  Punch it, Chewie!

Oh yeah, a full list of books released this week can be found HERE.

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Aloha!

Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! What do we do here? Well, we discuss the various bites of nonsense we’ll be crammin’ into our skull-holes. Why do we have to do this? Well, if we don’t surround our brain-bones with inspiring, ridiculous, entertaining detritus, then there’s a chance that the bad vibes might get in. And bad vibes are to minds what termites are to wood.

You remember what the termites did to Grampy’s pirate leg, right?

So hop into the frenzy and show off what you’ll be doin’ this week!

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Welcome once again to BTFC, the one place you need to check before hitting the LCS, Comixology app, torrent site, or the great comic book black markets that reside in the backrooms of White Castles all across the continent.  The rules here are simple:  I’ll run down the list of what I’m grabbing, on the condition that you tell me what you’re picking up in the comments below.  This week brings an absolute shotgun blast of talent to the stands – from relative newcomers like Ales Kot and Simon Roy, to industry titans like Neil Gaiman, Mike Allred, and Paul Pope.  So fill the tub up halfway, hit the jump, and let’s get started, shall we?

A full list of this week’s titles can be found HERE.

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Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! In addition to being my feeble attempt to contribute to Spaceship OL, the MMC is the our proverbial water cooler. We gather `round and share the various ways we’ll be enjoyin’ ourselves throughout the week. Yes, it’s like show-and-tell, but for the Future-Net!

What’s that you’ll be eating? Doritos? How festive! And you, Larry with nubby pinky, you say you’re going to send bags of dogshit to your former secretary? Yes, I do think you’ll get restraining ordered! And Tammy, I can’t believe that you found those Peabo Bryson vinyls! Let `em spin, girl!

Let `em spin.

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Yo kids, it’s that time of the year.  The land thaws, the days get longer, and the great migratory pattern of the teeming, oversexed youth of the nation marches southward.  It’s also time to break out those wallets, and ramp our nation’s commerce back up.  For those not into buying nunchakus and shorts in every color, we got Ghost Rider rockin a hemi on hell-wheels, Daredevil changes locales, more John Prophet, more Kamala Khan, and Superman off da’ chain all comin at us today!  I got comic books in my blood, ya’ll, and I hope you do, too.  This is the American Dream.  It’s Spring Break, ninjas!  So put on your dark tannin’ oil, spritz on two kinds of Calvin Klein, and hit up the LCS for this week’s dopest selections.

Hit us up in the comments below to celebrate the accumulation of material goods with us, particularly of the four-color variety.

A full list of comic releases can be found HERE.

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Double-digits, suckahs!

All y’all haters never thought we’d make it to ten podcasts! And y’know what, I don’t blame you! The fact that Riff Simian has yet to give me a lethal uppercut? The idea that Caffeine Powered hasn’t Diet Mountain Dew’d himself into a cardiac event? The notion that Patrick Bateman’s mobility scooter hasn’t collapsed under his weight?

Miracles. Goddamn miracles. Each and every one of `em.

So cue up our newest mini-miracle and laugh at our mental illnesses. That’s right, this is basically a digital journey into an insane asylum. This podcast’s topics are variegated in the least cohesive sense of the term, with grown men discussing the fourth dimension and Lex Luger and Caff-Pow’s first moment of post-pubescent self-awareness and movies and television.

Oh, we also make video game noises and dramatically read vulgar fiction.

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Life is tricky and heroes help out.

There’s no doubt that there’re plenty of problems to be had. Even the strongest amongst us is still, ultimately, an insatiable consciousness traveling in a meek meat-vehicle. While many are bound to experience transcendence at some point, all must deal with turmoil. Hell, dealing with bullshit might be the very yarn woven throughout the entire fabric of the human experience.

“We are all bitched from the start,” Hemingway once wrote.

Luckily, the variety of problems running amok is matched by an equally impressive assortment of heroes. There’re all different sortss, some real and some fictional and others somewhere in between. What do they do? Well, right now they’re at work doin’ medical research and teachin’ guitar and writin’ plays and demonstratin’ the high-jump and makin’ pots of coffee and intermediatin’ conflicts and givin’ earnest advice and huggin’ it out. So if it seems like shit’s gettin’ mad-daunting, keep your eye out for a hero.

In the same letter mentioned above, Hemingway instructed his friend to “Forget your personal tragedy.”

That friend was F. Scott Fitzgerald.

My hero du jour? Michael Keaton. As a self-diagnosed maniac (diagnose yourself otherwise the man with the clipboard will tell you what you are), I need my inspiration to come from superheroes and ghouls and Tarantino characters. So, Keaton’s pretty perfect.

Us maniacs, we need Michael Keaton.

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Welcome to the MMC. I’m goin’ to show you some stuff I’ll be doin’ this week. Check it out and then hit up the comments section and describe what you’ll be rockin’ in the upcoming days.

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When you pick up a novel, you basically know what you’re going to get: some characters, a setting or two, probably some discernible overriding theme—you know, the bare necessities of storytelling. These components are in any narrative concoction; whether it’s good or not is usually all a matter of mixing it up the right way. And there in the middle, moving them all about in some dramatically interesting fashion, is the conflict. Conflict can be a make-or-break element because a story’s clashes and bashes and gnashes propel everything and really make the story come to life. But for me there’s an even more primary conflict attached to this whole process, one that exists outside story itself: summoning the strength to actually pick up the novel to read in the first place. And, if you don’t mind, this conflict is what I’d like to investigate here today.

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A new Wednesday, a new batch of comics.  This week we head back to Gotham, Zero writer Ales Kot puts his spin on Avenger Secretions, Matt Fraction & Co. present a Very Hawkeye Holiday Special, and I hep you cats to one of the greatest crime comics that has been right under our noses ALL THIS TIME!  So hit the jump, put the needle to the vein, and let’s get this week’s comic fix on, shall we?

For a full rundown of this week’s comics, click HERE.

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