Close your eyes. Take a breath. It’s going to be okay.

It doesn’t matter if you’re out of gas money or your car’s exploded or you’re in too much pain to get off the couch. `Cause that’s not what real traveling’s about. In any of those circumstances, you can still close your eyes and tune out. And right when you think all you’re perceiving is the Great Nothing, you’re going to realize that you’ve fallen into the Wonderful Everything.

I want you to mind-travel the universe.

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Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! I’m going to highlight some of the ways I’ll be staving off existential crises and reinstalling hope. After you see what I’m doing, hit up the comments section and share your own prospective week-activities.

C’mon, don’t be a lamebrain!

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How is this for a storm. The wunder-object Cassini has picked up a thunder-and-lightning maelstrom on Saturn that is so goddamn enormous, it wraps around the entire planet. That is some straight not fucking around space right there.

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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]

The theme for this week’s Images & Words is blood and thunder. This is the phrase that I couldn’t stop thinking of as I read the second issue of Siege, the limited series that sees Norman Osborn and his cronies trying to trash Thor’s crib. Built upon the premise of gods and superheroes duking it out, the expectation is that Siege would be an action-packed fanboy wet dream.

So far, the expectations are being met. And then some.

Picking up where the first issue left off, Siege #2 takes the reader right into the middle of the battle for Asgard. As was to be expected, Ares (yes, the god of bloodlust exists in the Marvel Universe) realizes that Norman Osborn’s been playing him for a damn fool! Jumping ship, Ares has himself a slugfest with the Sentry.  And it’s this slugfest  that ends up stealing the show.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say this – the fight ends with a fatality. Actually, it’s a two-page dismemberment, with entrails and blood and bodily fluids flying all over the damn place.

Yeah, it really is the artistic team of Coipel/Morales/Martin (pencils/inks/colors) that makes this comic especially worthwhile. Bendis’ scripting isn’t bad (in fact, it’s quite good) but the stunning visuals are what elevate the book. In addition to the aforementioned gorefest, even the more mundane sequences are sexy. Coipel’s pencils give Captain America a youthful sensibility which really shines through during his conversation with Steve Rogers.

Hell, the team even manages to make a snoozer of a meeting (between…well, some of Earth’s mightiest heroes) worthy being framed and hung poster-style.

I’m not going to waste time with one of my exhausting complaints about comics-events – but only because Siege is genuinely enjoyable. I think the series is pushing the Marvel universe in an interesting direction, and is doing so with guns and gods and explosions and all that other good shit. I’m sold.