To all space-babies and planet-dwellers tuning in – welcome. Thanks for making OL your choice in the galaxy’s foodcourt of edible debris. Tonight’s special is the charbroiled mindrot, served with   a side of over-enthused nerdgasm. Make sure you wash it down with an ice-cold beer.

This here is the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE, the weekly joint in which I lay out all of the puddles of escapism I’ll be soaking up. Inspired, you then hit up the comments section and do the same. In the ideal universe, the MMC is the chillout tent we use to avoid the burden of the workweek. So c’mon, let’s dance.

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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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We are once again celebrating Monday Morning Commute! Sure, the work week will probably bring plenty of stress and disappointment. Maybe you’ll get fired. Maybe your boss will sexually harass you. Maybe he won’t. But no matter what setbacks you suffer, you’ll need to make time to enjoy life. Otherwise, what’s the fuggin’ point?

Check out what I’ll be doing this week. Then, if you’re daring, let me know what you’ll be up to. This is nerd-culture at its finest.

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The line art for ELECTRIC ANT, an adaptation of the PK Dick short story of the same name. EA is published by Marvel Comics and scripted by David Mack. This was one of those simple drawings– it literally took about three hours from start to finish. They’re not always this easy. I love drawing animals.

[pulphope/blogspot]

[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]

I’ve spent the last ten minutes gazing into this goddamn word processor. It’s white and bright and winning this staring contest with ease. Fugger! It’s not fair — he’s got pixels and electricity and all I’ve got is the soft gelatin of these dull cow eyes. My retinas will burn out before I think of a clever way to convey my message, so I might as well just lay it out there.

Paul Pope is a master comics creator. And he’s grossly underappreciated.

Those curious about Pope should refer to THB: Comics from Mars #2.

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Somewhere around 5AM I Googled “Paul Pope” and stumbled across Comics from Mars #2. Apparently it’s Pope’s newest addition to the THB universe and an exclusive at this weekend’s Baltimore Comic Con. I’ve only dabbled in THB, as I was planning on waiting for the huge collections rather than hunting down issues from the hidden realm of comix.

But bleary eyed, tiring, and a willing gulper of Pulphope-flavored Kool-Aid, you better believe I ordered me one of these.

Source: Pulphope

[via Pulphope]

Trying to remember how to draw R2-D2 while waiting on some pasta last night. Realized I never looked at him very closely.

Paul Pope doodling Star Wars? Nerd heaven.

Pulphope, holding in his hand the first one hundred pages of Battling Boy. I’ve been waiting for this book for a couple of years now, so to see such a tease pop up on his Flickr got me all sorts of hot’n’bothered.

The general premise of Battling Boy: the son of some sort of god/superhero has to come down from the mythical mountain to beat monster butt. Fairly simple story, with art to make the jaw-drop. The artist has hinted that this is going to be an unrestrained opus, with fight scenes taking up fifty pages at times.

Mr. Pope, feel free to bind those pages and send them to me via FedEx.

Paul Pope is not only an amazing comics-creator, but a true inspiration and one of my personal heroes. I admire Pope because of his ability to swoop into the world of comic books to deliver amazing stories  & fresh perspectives, and then stage an exit before falling victim to the pitfalls of the medium. I don’t know much about the technical aspects of illustration, but I know that every single panel of Pope’s work I’ve ever seen feels authentic/genuine/as though the man is incapable of phoning it in.

Although he’s  spun some of great  yarns about franchise-characters  , he understands that they fulfill a certain role. In an interview to address his exhibition at the Art Directors Club in New York City, Pope offered the following:

“They periodically kill off Superman or Captain America or Batman, then according to [formula], they resurrect them again. I don’t follow continuity comics unless a really amazing cartoonist is drawing the story, an Eduardo Risso or a Frank Quietly or a John Cassaday or a Steve Rude. I think superheroes represent themes rather than function as true characters in any literary sense. Because in real life and in literature, people and characters make choices and have a destiny, and must necessarily change–maybe for the better or the worse– but they are substantively different from the person they were at the beginning of the story. The superheroes don’t change, the guardians of the franchise don’t want to change them, and the audience probably doesn’t want it either.”

So although I enjoy the hell out of Batman Year 100 (which, roughly speaking, reads to me as a cross between the Batman mythos and a Bladerunner-styled technofuture), Pope’s original works are the creations to which I am most drawn. For an amazing testament to the power of sequential art, I strongly recommend 100%. Despite being a bit of a cynic, this book makes me believe in the value of love and art and trying to make the most out of a life that often seems utterly insignificant. And while this all sounds great in theory, Pope’s execution is nothing short of perfection.

As a student of narrative, there’s been many a night in which I’ve asked myself, “What’s the fucking point of this stuff? Why should I even bother concerning myself with the past? What can fiction do for the world?” The best answer I’ve ever received comes on the eighteenth page of Pulphope, Pope’s collection of art and essays:

“When I need my own mirror of men and angels, I too turn to hear the voices of the dead. Without even having faith in mystics, I too turn to take my cue from dead mystics. When I need voices, I turn to Emerson and Thoreau. Their Transcendentalism rings a bit hollow to me (I am no Platonist), but their words still ring clear and true. I turn to the dour civics of Confucius and the clear-eyed cynicism of Machiavelli. The life-embrace of Epicurus. I turn to the dreamtime of Jung and the pastorality of Tolkein. And to others. These poets and philosophers are the whispering dead I hear, pointing the way to the road which leads out of this inferno. These are the dead on the roof with me, these are my Virgils. They point their parchment fingers toward the arc of the heavens, helping make sense of a meaningless rising moon and a mute and dumb setting sun.”

Today, the mailman dropped off a limited edition Paul Pope print from the folks at Nakatomi Inc. The one-sheet is a tribute to Guido Crepax, an Italian comics artist of yesteryear whose work is (apparently) marked by sexually-charged female figures. The 13×19 variant features babes, motorcycles, and a shootout; in other words, it’s dope.

I couldn’t be happier with this print. Beautiful in its own right, I’m going to hang it with the added satisfaction of knowing that I possess a limited edition poster created by comic books’ most inspirational, if not underappreciated, artists.

I don’t have much hope — but I have Pulphope.