You know how they say that when you find The One (in a romantic sense, not in the Keanu Reeves in The Matrix sense), you realize you’ve been waiting for this person since before you knew they existed?

That is exactly how I feel about the Inception BRRAAAAHHHMM! button that’s been making the rounds today that gives you a familiar snippet from Hans Zimmer‘s score. It’s dramatic, exciting, attention-grabbing — and versatile, too! I intend to have this open in my browser always from now on, because I never know when I might be in a situation where a little “BRRAAAAHHHMM” could add some pizazz, some gravitas, or just some punctuation.

Here’s 10 Situations In Which It’s Appropriate To Use The Inception BRRAAAAHHHMM Button [...]

When I first picked up Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series, I fell for it, hard. Here, finally, was a quirky, beautiful love interest who wasn’t just another Manic Pixie Dream Girl — a three-dimensional girl with motivations and an inner life of her own. (It doesn’t sound like that should be too much to ask, but the sad case is that it often is.) I found O’Malley’s take on the archetype to be just about perfect.

Then Edgar Wright‘s film adaptation came out, and it was hilarious, and inventive, and energetic, and sweet, and… and yet another story about a Hapless Hero and a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Although the film remained mostly faithful to the main plot of the source material, it had to cut copious amounts of backstory to fit into the running time. Perhaps no one suffered more than Ramona Flowers, who went from a fascinating, complex woman to a pretty trophy to be won.

What was most disappointing about it is that the downgrade felt unnecessary. Manic Pixie Dream Girls abound, but there’s always an opportunity for them to be more than that. Below, in honor of O’Malley’s original Ramona Flowers, are five other Manic Pixie Dream Girls who aren’t [...]

When GoDfather Dave3 suggested yesterday that the best Hulk of all might be Rainn Wilson, I immediately thought of a giant green Dwight K. Schrute from The Office. Terrified yet?

Of course, Dave3 meant the actor, but I like to pretend that Wilson and Schrute are one and the same. And I can see his point. Wilson’s proven himself convincing as both an ubernerd and a frustrated ball of rage. But why stop there? John Krasinski, a.k.a. Jim Halpert, was once considered for the role of Captain America, after all.

Below are a few other Dunder-Mifflinites who could step into roles within the Marvel universe [...]

Witchblade #134 & #135
Almost Human: Parts 1 & 2 (of 3)
Written by Ron Marz
Art by Stjepan Sejic
Letters by Troy Peteri
Top Cow
Price: $2.99; Release date: March 03, 2010 [#135]

I came to Witchblade armed with nothing but Wikipedia and an open mind, and as such, I concede that great chunks of the story probably went over my head. But long-running series like this one can’t do well unless new readers can come in a hundred issues in and still find something to appreciate. While I didn’t find the experience unpleasant, there wasn’t much that compelled me to explore further, either.

A quick summary for the other noobs out there: Witchblade centers around Sara Pezzini, an NYPD detective and the current wielder of said Witchblade, a powerful supernatural weapon that can shift its shape to protect and aid the user. These two issues in particular, #134 and #135, are the first two books of a three-part arc about Sara tracking down the green-haired cyborg assassin called Aphrodite IV, who works for the shadowy, uncreatively named organization Cyberdata [...]

30 Rock
Season 4 Premiere
Starring Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan
NBC, Thursdays at 9:30pm

Last season, I tuned into the 30 Rock premiere with high expectations, only to be met by the awkward-and-not-in-a-good-way SeinfeldVision. After a consistently hilarious second season, everything in SeinfeldVision felt off, as if the writers had suddenly changed focus. The episode proved to be the harbinger of a disappointing season that, while still occasionally brilliant, relied far too heavily on big-name guest stars while letting its strong supporting cast fall to the wayside.

Fortunately, this season’s premiere — the cutely named Season 4 — was a happier beginning. We got a good amount of time with all of the secondary characters, including the oft-forgotten Josh, as well as all the clever one-liners we could possibly expect from a half-hour of comedy (my favorite: Pete’s “Another actor? Why? They have so many feelings and opinions!” Okay, it’s in Scott Adsit’s delivery. It’s not as funny written down). Plus, Steve Buscemi! It had its flaws, however. The theme of the episode — drawing in more mainstream viewers — may be a bit too on-the-nose for some, considering 30 Rock‘s notoriously low ratings. And it wasn’t a standout episode for any of the main cast, Kenneth in particular. But I’ll get to that later [...]

Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Famke Janssen, Mary-Kate Olsen, and Olivia Thirlby star in this drama set in the mid-90s from director Jonathan Levine.

Angie “Bitch Happy” Han takes us into the world of Jorge Vega’s Gunplay, the 2007 Platinum Studios Comic Book Challenge winner about a Civil War buffalo soldier whose curse compels him to kill one person every day of his life. Creepy!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art makes the case for an unlikely but fruitful link between haute couture and comic books with the Costume Institute’s new exhibit, Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy.

Geeks of Doom met with a lot of great, hardworking independent comic creators during this year’s New York Comic Con. Here is the first installment of our series of reviews for the nearly 20 lbs. of books we came away with after all the smoke cleared.

Check out our round-up of the best and worst of New York Comic Con 2008.