If you have been around the nerdier sectors of the net in the last decade, you have surely seen The Brick Testament, by Brendan Powell Smith a loving fumetti recreation of the BIble’s most gruesome, perverted and vengeful moment rendered in Lego brick men and women.

What you may NOT have known is that the whole glorious thing is coming out this month in a paperback from Skyhorse.

Who says print is dead? This profoundly revelatory tome belongs on every book shelf in the nation for continued guidance.

But the Bible is not the only holy text that Smith has turned his posing prowess to. On his Flickr page, he has recently recast Road House with minifigs; the Patrick Swayze/Sam Elliott opus that might be called “The Gospel According to Barroom Brawls.”

Brendan Powell Smith lives by his creed: “Let there be Lego® Brick!”

Yeah like the rest of you East Coasters, we just had a little wee temblor. My mind refused to believe it was happening, preferring to think that it was a big truck driving by or the Second Avenue Subway rattling by…except that doesn’t exist just yet. Having been in the Northridge quake, I knew it wasn’t serious…yet, but the idea of the piles of books in Stately Beat Manor tumbling down filled my heart with dread. But the cat didn’t even wake up.

Hope the folks closer to the epicenter are okay. Virginian Colleen Doran tweeted:

That was the biggest earthquake I have ever felt in my life. Freaked out, and so are all the animals. 6.0 right here folks. GEEZUS! @joanhilty Think we just got a direct hit. Never felt anything like that in my life. Went running out of the house, animals howling!We’re all OK. Bro tried to call from Richmond, no cell phones. That shook the house big time. Really creepy. Crooked pictures on walls, stuff fell down in barn, no damage. Deer trembling with terror outside barn, staring at us like “What the hell did you do?”

Very skeerdy of earthqauke. So I ate dessert.

Illo from DRAGONHEAD by Minetaro Mochizuki, a very, very creepy manga about a train full of high school students trapped in a tunnel by an earthquake. Recommended for when your nerves calm down!

Well, not really a fight, more of a strafing run, since it’s unlikely Chris Ware will ever be asked about Grant Morrison in an interview. While on his voluble book publicity tour, Scottish superstar Grant Morrison continues to drop quotable bombs to be picked up by websites worldwide. Today the battlefield is Rolling Stone, where he comes clean on Chris Ware; the Acme Novelty Library genius, known for his grim vivisection of human futility, is not Morrison’s cuppa Earl Grey tea.

I can appreciate someone like Chris Ware for his artistry, which I think is beautiful, but I think his attitude stinks, it just seems to be the attitude of somebody really privileged, and honestly, try living here, try living on an Indian reservation and shut up, and really seeing all that nihilistic stuff, it really makes me angry, it’s unhelpful to all of us, and it’s coming from people who have money and success to talk like that and bring those aspects of the way we live in favor of all the others, and it’s indefensible.

So I never liked that stuff, I always thought that I had a real Scottish working class thing against the fact that these were done by privileged American college kids, and they were telling me the world was flat. “You’re telling me the world is flat, pal?” And it’s not helpful, it doesn’t get us anywhere. OK, so it is, then what? What are you going to do about it, college kid? My book wasn’t academic. I can’t take on those Comics Journal guys, they flattened me, as they did, it’s just defensive, smartass kids.

Later on, Morrison is asked again about his actual feud with Mark Millar:

He still lives in Glasgow, is there a chance of bumping into him?
There’s a very good chance of running into him, and I hope I’m going 100 miles an hour when it happens.

Oh no, he didn’t!

In a longer profile, we get to see more of that Morrison magic:
In the center of Morrison’s high-ceilinged living room is a blood-red leather couch, paired with a fuzzy crimson rug that looks to have been made from the fur of a poached-and-skinned Elmo; a silkscreen image of what appears to be a female ghost hangs above the fireplace; on a table in the corner sits a hypnotic, unnerving painting of a pentagramish figure etched with quotes from both the Kabbalah and Orson Welles’ The Shadow radio drama – the work of a freaky outsider artist named Paul Laffoley. “He’s a fascinating guy,” Morrison says. “He had to have his foot amputated, and he wears a huge clawed lion’s foot that screws into his leg.”

We don’t need us to tell you that it’s tough times in the heartland of America these days. Slowing manufacturing, a recession that never really ended in some places, and a recovery that has failed to ignite.

Luckily, one thing has come to the Steel belt to liven things up — superhero movies. With Batman filming in Pittsburgh, Superman in Chicago, and now The Avengers in Cleveland (standing in for NYC? Ooooooookay) it’s been boom times for photographers.

Here’s the latest Avengers leaked photos, showing Cap and Thor battling mocapped Hydra or someone goons.

Oh yeah, chug that Snapple, Chris, take it all.

Wow, I am SO going to go see this movie.

Considering that an entire scene of the movie was supposed to be rewritten after blackmailers revealed a page online, all these set photos seem awfully spoiler-y.

But WHO CARES, OHMIGOD, I CAN’T WAIT FOR THE AVENGERS.

The feud between dueling comics movies COWBOYS & ALIENS and THE SMURFS erupted in violence last night when COWBOYS star Harrison Ford ripped the head off a stuffed Papa Smurf handed to him my late night chat host Conan O’Brien.

Ford’s rage may have been misplaced, as COWBOYS & ALIENS eventually edged SMURFS at the box office by a million buckaroonies or so.

If nothing else, the incident set up a dandy idea for a sequel: COWBOYS VS LITTLE BLUE PEOPLE.

When DC released a bunch of October Bat-book covers the other day, it was quickly noticed that Starfire’s costume had gotten much smaller, a natural move for the exhibitionist alien.

It was also noticed that part of the Red Hood had gotten bigger.

Now known as the Red Hood, Jason Todd was formerly a Robin, and we suspect the enhanced-junk in his costume is an homage to the totem of the Bat family group of titles.

Click for the original. If you dare.

What was artist Kenneth Rocafort thinking? Maybe he is just a big fan of bats.

UPDATE: Maybe this is an homage to Burt Ward, who famously had to have his bulge supressed so as not to scandalize America.

It’s a new style of pimping.

Instead of selling their bodies, or busting their backs digging ditches, some Chinese prisoners are forced to play World of Warcraft and pass the winnings on to cruel prison guards.

Liu Dali spent three years in one such labor camp, and claims that after a hard day’s work was completed, he and up to 300 of his fellow detainees were forced to make virtual money in online games like World of Warcraft, for the benefit of prison guards. The guards would then use the virtual cash for their own means, including trading it for real-world money. Dali claims he overheard guards bragging that they could make close to $1,000 a day off of the efforts of the inmates, none of which ever made its way into the hands of the workers. He also claims that certain quotas were set, and that those who didn’t raise enough virtual cash would be physically beaten.

Although gold farming, as it is called, was banned a few years ago in China, it still goes on. Although everyone assumes that the prisoners were playing WORLD OF WARCRACK, as we reported a while ago, free MMORGs like PERFECT WORLD are a $5 billion dollar a year business in China–the games are free but many items must be purchased to excel at the games.

Funny old world.

Have a great holiday!

By now you have all seen the above image, which swept through social media yesterday with the tagline “Macho Man prevented the Rapture.” In a world seemingly without order, connecting the senseless (and very sad) death of Randy “Macho Man” Savage, and the impending Rapture predicting by Harold Camping (inexplicably still alive) would seem to give us some joy.

But where did it come from? Such viral images come and go so quickly on the internet, we thought it would be informative to see what we could come up with as an origin story.

Unsurprisingly, the image first surfaced on Reddit, and it seems to be the work of cartoonist Bobby Campbell, aided by Photoshop and Google Image search. Campbell has some other unusual stuff on his site, like the below image of Alan Moore reading the Illuminati, but nothing to match the grandeur of this mash-up. Campbell even made some desktop-sized versions of the image, here and here.

Macho Man himself has been the subject of a few works of fine art, such as Suzanne with the Macho Man by Suzanne Marie Leclair. Prints are available for purchase in the link. We predict a healthy afterlife for the Macho Man as an iconic figure.

We couldn’t find the original of the Macho Man part of the picture, but the Jesus part seems to be this uncredited image.

UPDATE: The Macho Man component has been identified as a promo image from THQ’s recent WWE All-Stars video game.

So there you have it: video games + religious art + the internet = folk art!

While we were poking around, we found lots of amazing apocalyptic Christian art, all sadly uncredited. Come on people, don’t be shy, like the Master of the St George Altarpiece! They didn’t have Reddit in the Middle Ages but they do now. It’s called progress.

We especially liked his one, of Jesus and the Devil arm wrestling for our souls.

…and this holy Unicorn horse stampede. Has no one set up a tumblr of Warcraft/religious iconography yet?

As for the Rapture itself, and what it will look like, we’ll go with an oldie but a goodie, courtesy of Hieronymus Bosch.

BONUS: Thanks to reader M.S., here’s a painting that wraps up all the kitsch in one glorious image! Cheeseball cover artist/Frazetta-tributer Boris Vallejo painted this view of a muscular Jesus dying for our sins all the way back in 1969, but clearly he was channeling the apotheosis of the Macho Man even then.

The war between cars and wrestlers has claimed another victim. Randall “Randy Savage” Poffo, who thrilled the wrestling world with his hysterical rumblings and grumblings as Macho Man, died in a car crash this morning at age 58. He reportedly suffered a heart attack while behind the wheel, and veered across traffic into a tree. His wife of one year was also in the vehicle but was not seriously injured.

Macho Man’s romance with the late Miss Elizabeth is one of the most legendary wrestling storylines of all time, and Savage one of its greatest performers. In recent years, Savage has served as a spokesman for Slim JIm meat snacks, so let’s all raise one in his memory today.

In case you were wondering, Aaron, author of SCALPED, WOLVERINE and PUNISHER MAX, sports a beard as fearsome as his talent.

We all know Green Lantern is HOT. The comic, the movie, Ryan Reynolds. Blackest Night set the DCU on a whole new course, and the GL family of books under the guidance of Geoff Johns, has continued to lead the sales charts.

But in Green Lantern hot enough to start a small electrical fire?

Yes.

It seems that the “Green Lantern Animated Light-Up Displays” which were recently shipped to retailers have a wiring problem which has caused at least one fire in a comics shop. The fire was quickly put out, but after a retailer on the CBIA Retailer Forum advised of the problem other retailers began reporting suspicious smells and hot spots.

This led to a note from DC VP Bob Wayne of unparalleled urgency:

URGENT RETAILER ADVISORY: GREEN LANTERN ANIMATED LIGHT-UP DISPLAY

Retailers, please be advised that DC Comics has received reports of electrical problems with the GREEN LANTERN ANIMATED LIGHT-UP DISPLAY (OCT100366).

DC urges retailers to unplug the signs immediately.

Watch for further information in the next few days, including what steps DC will take in rectifying the situation.

The fire is coming from inside your store!

The display, designed by Jim Lee and Scott Williams, retails for $150 and was intended as a cheerful, flashing beacon to indicate that Green Lantern fans were welcome. It was not intended to plunge them into a fiery inferno. And thanks to the quick actions of Wayne and retailers…hopefully it won’t.

More at ICv2

An astonishing icepunk adventure by the great French cartoonist Jacques Tardi is coming in March from Fantagraphics. It looks truly neat-o.

Bonus: editor/translator Kim Thompson tells why it was chosen:

Three reasons. First, I like the idea of picking from all periods of Tardi’s career and this, being just his third graphic novel, nicely extends the range. (The one after that will be literally his most recent book.) Second, I like the fact that it’s so visually distinctive, and I like its historical importance as an early steampunk — or “icepunk” as I like to call it — work of comics. And third… well, the third reason I can’t actually tell you. It will become clear eventually.

Click for larger versions — you’ll want to!

Jim Woodring demonstrates the giant pen at the Gage Academy.

As you may have read, a gunman down in Panama City, Florida walked into a school board meeting, sprayed a V for Vendetta symbol on the wall, walked around with a gun, making a lot of statements, started shooting and eventually was shot by a deputy, then killed himself. (Reports differ on this, but the most credible reports are that he used his gun on himself.)

This video is pretty unbelievable, especially the part where a woman sneaks behind him and whacks him with her purse. And gets worse from there.

Bleeding Cool has the man’s Facebook page, covered with V for Vendetta imagery. The man — identified as Clay Duke — claimed his wife had recently been fired by the school board.

Back in August, we noted that the upcoming Yogi Bear movie appeared to be a horror film about deviant sex, based on the perverted poster.

When we finally saw the trailer in theaters, we suggested in jest that shooting the filmmakers was the only way to stop this abomination.

It turns out someone had a similar idea.

Except it was instead to show Boo Boo shooting Yogi to get a measly $5000 in blood money reward.

In your heart, you know that is how it will end.

Everything about the new CGI Yogi Bear movie is terrifying. But this short trailer — made by RISD animator Edmund Earle, in homage to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford– may just have justified the mere existence of this miserable movie.