by Aaron Colter

There’s been a collective pants shitting in the comic book industry this week as DC Comics announced that they would relaunch nearly every series this September as a #1 issue, making the content available for download on the same day as print versions hit stores.

Shop owners are crying the death of the industry, and other publishers are trying to play catch-up. Meanwhile, DC Comics is taking a huge gamble on its latest venture. It’s no secret that the company has been playing second-fiddle to Marvel Comics, now backed by the giant Disney corporation, and cleaned house to make room for new executives from a more traditional background that owners Warner Bros. found necessary.

As harsh as it may sound, DC Comics can’t be supported by serialized issues that are sold to only a few hundred thousand costumers, at best, every month. The real money made by Batman, Superman, and all the other beloved characters, is in stupid shit, like T-shirts, movies, action figures, cartoons, and anything else you can slap a logo on to make it appeal to children and nerds.

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by Mur Lafferty

SuicdeGirls presents the tenth installment of our Fiction Friday sci-fi series, Marco and the Red Granny, which is brought to you by SG columnist Mighty Mur a.k.a. cyber commentator Mur Lafferty.

Marco and the Red Granny is set in a not-so-distant future where an alien species, the Li-Jun, has transformed the moon into the new artistic center of the universe, where the Sally Ride Lunar Base soon gains the nickname “Mollywood.” These aliens can do amazing things with art and the senses, allowing a painting, for example, to stimulate senses other than sight.

In the previous installments, Marco, a writer whose career has long been in the doldrums, gets a surprise call from an agent he thought he no longer had, informing him that he had received an offer from Mollywood for a much coveted Li-Jun patronage.

Keen to catch up career-wise with his ex-GF Penelope, who’d unceremoniously dumped him after being recruited by the Li-Jun two years earlier, Marco jumps on the next shuttle to the moon. Once aboard, he finds himself sitting next to a seemingly unassuming old lady called Heather, who turns out to be The Red Granny, a legend in Li-Jun’s reality show world for being a three-time champion of The Most Dangerous Game (which requires contestants to sign away the rights to their life).

After settling into his new accommodations at House Blue, Marco has a brief meeting with his new patron, a Li-Jun called Thirteen. It’s only then that Marco realizes he’s never been shown the terms of his employment, and a sense of unease sets in. That evening, Marco is taken on a trip to see The Red Granny in action in The Most Dangerous Game. After a bloody battle, the senior reality TV star is again victorious. The viciousness of the game however, leaves The Red Granny unconscious, and Marco shocked, disturbed, and in need of a stiff drink.

Unfortunately stiff drinks are frowned upon by the Li-Jun, so at the 2Two2, a bar specifically created for humans, Marco has to console himself with a fisheye – a drink that tastes of oranges and spice, and contains the story A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As soon as he finishes it, a second drink appears in front of him. When he asks who bought it, the barkeep points to a woman across the room who looks suspiciously like Penelope. Deciding to call it a night, Marco is escorted home to House Blue.

The next day, Marco learns first hand about the process that enables the Li-Jun to put taste into paintings, music into pie, and stories into (nonalcoholic) beverages. Having had his deepest and most depraved memories dredged and thoroughly probed by the aliens so they can be monitored and recorded, Marco finally sees the terms of his contract. Having accepted the Li-Jun’s too-good-to-refuse offer, Marco feels that though he’s been handed everything he ever wanted, somehow the reality of it is hollow…

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by A.J. Focht

The release of X-Men: First Class is just days away, marking the second of four major super hero movie releases to come this summer. In a recent YouTube viral video, A Toast To Green Lantern, all the super heroes with their own movies harassed Hawkman as he tries to get his own film. As it turns out, the joke was on the makers of the video as Warner Bros. has a Hawkman movie in the works. The current logline listed on It’sOnTheGrid is:

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by Aaron Colter

I didn’t ask to be born. None of us did. But there are still some really good things in life. Think about it! Rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens . . . and boobs. Anyway, it’s my birthday, so I think about these things, and dying. Out of all forms of entertainment, music makes me feel the most of alive. We should all go to a concert soon, together, and make-out. Until then, here are some songs that get the blood pumping.

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by Nicole Powers

Chris O’Dowd’s breakthrough role was playing uber geek Roy Tenneman in the Emmy Award winning British sitcom The IT Crowd. His character is well endowed in the information technology department but not so blessed when it comes to social skills. It’s safe to say, however, that in real life the exact opposite is true.

The highly personable Irish actor, who’s starring in three upcoming films – The Boat That Rocked (written by Richard “Bridget Jones” Curtis), Hippie Hippie Shake (with Sienna Miller and Derek Jacobi), and Gulliver’s Travels (with Jack Black and Emily Blunt) – displayed a distinct lack of prowess when it came to dealing with digital phone technology during SuicideGirls protracted attempt to interview him.

The first time Chris called in, he’d just embarked on a hike in the cell phone black hole that is Hollywood’s Runyon Canyon park. Thus our conversation was unintentionally aborted just as it had begun. It would take a total of five phone calls, including two more entirely aborted ones, before our interview was complete.

Read our exclusive interview with Chris O’Dowd on SuicideGirls.com.

by A.J. Focht

The weekend came and went with no signs of raptors or the rapture (except this). In fact, no apocalypse of any kind occurred, much to the disappointment of Harold Camping’s followers, and the delight and derision of most of the nerd population. That’s not to say that the CDC didn’t already have it – and you – covered, as they explained with the release of America’s official Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness 101 outline this last week. While there was no immediate need to put it to use, it’s very existence grants a bit of extra hope for the American citizen (except for those of us who can make out that massive gaping holes in the plan).

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by Bob Suicide

The other day I came across a picture which had the caption: “OMG, I love macaroni so much. I’m such a nerd.” This irked me to the very core of my being. Your quaint quirks don’t make you a nerd. Going to see a comic-based movie doesn’t make you a nerd.

Jeff Foxworthy has his famous You Might Be A Redneck If… sketch, and with the rising mainstream popularity of geek culture, there comes a necessity to distinguish true nerds from recent converts, so I thought I’d come up with a similarly styled list of rules to help separate the fo’ realz from the wannabes.

Now, many other lists say that nerds must wear glasses (preferably with tape around the bridge), speak Klingon (binary, C++, or some other geeky language), and have all the social graces of an ostrich with its head in the sand, but these should not be the required defining hallmarks of a great, eclectic group of hardcore fans of all things geek: video games, science, science fiction, comics, etc.

We are more than the negative stereotypes that have often been levied against us. So without further ado, I present my homage to Foxworthy and true geekdom, You Might be a Nerd if…

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