I have again been neglecting my responsibilities to jam pure awesomeness directly into your forebrain, but I will now remedy that situation by jamming pure awesomeness directly into your forebrain… with apes and monkeys!

Apes and monkeys are not, of course, the same thing — an ape is a different critter than a monkey. They’re all primates, of course, but apes include gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans, while monkeys include spider monkeys, howler monkeys, baboons, mandrills, proboscis monkeys, capuchins, and (hee hee) titi monkeys, as well as many, many more.

We may think of them as our hairier, less sophisticated cousins, but apes and monkeys are capable of many amazing feats, ranging from traveling into space to running large and unusually awesome libraries. They can help the handicapped, act in movies and TV shows, and even be elected to city councils!

But they are not to be underestimated. Sure, chimpanzees look cute and harmless and fun, don’t they? But chimpanzees are stronger and faster than humans, and attacking chimps have seriously mutilated and killed several people in the past. Our primate cousins could mess us up pretty good if they wanted to.

Nevertheless, their many skills and their aptitude for ass-whuppin’ combine to make monkeys and apes just ridiculously awesome, and they’ve been rewarded with lots of love from the entertainment community. Comics have loved apes for over fifty years, with DC’s Silver Age devotion to apes and monkeys being particularly strong — Detective Chimp, Congorilla, Gorilla Grodd, Titano, Monsieur Mallah, and the Mod Gorilla Boss all got their starts in the ’50s and ’60s, and more modern ape characters have included Gorilla-Man, King Solomon, Rex Mantooth, Cy-Gor, Brainiape, Axewell Tiberius from “Monkeyman and O’Brien,” and the Kriegaffes that show up from time to time in the “Hellboy” comics.

How much do people love apes and monkeys? Just look at this page.

Monkeys and apes are awesome.

This is awesome.

No, seriously. This is awesome.

Time once again to access our amazing archive of the assembled annals of astounding awesomeness! Join us as we explore the awesomely awesome awesomosity of robots!

How awesome are robots? Just look at the Wikipedia page on robots. Robots are so awesome that not even Wikipedia’s mindless dedication to dreariness and tedium can manage to strip the awesomeness away! And if you want even more examples of robotic awesomeness, you should go here and prepare to spend all day getting your feeble nonrobotic brain blown.

Robots are built by mankind to make their lives easier. Luckily, robots always go berserk and start shooting humans with lasers and chasing them with clamping claws and killing Sarah Conner and eating old people’s medicine for food and ruling the Earth as terrible metal despots. You love serving your robotic masters, don’t you, fleshbag?

Even good robots are far more awesome than humans. R2D2, Machine Man, Data, the Iron Giant, KITT, Astro Boy, Tom Servo and Crow, Dynomutt — we were lucky they were on our side, ’cause they could’ve taken us over easy. And we would’ve loved them for it, ’cause they’re all just so awesome!

The robot pictured above is a real robot, not something from fiction. It was designed to play ping-pong. Yes, ping-pong. That in itself is pretty awesome. But just look at it. You know it’s got some lasers and chainsaws hidden away in there, right? Never doubt the awesomeness of robots, or this guy will kill you with ping-pong balls accelerated to light speed.

I’ve been horribly neglecting my responsibility to provide you all with semi-regular exposure to things that are AWESOME, so let’s go ahead and start remedying that situation right now.

Our first Dose of Awesome pondered the many mysteries of the ninja — today, let’s look at the ninja’s natural enemy: the pirate!

You can learn a lot of important and relevant information about pirates here. But the more entertaining stuff is here.

Pirates have been entirely beloved by all right-thinking people since at least 1881, when Robert Louis Stevenson published “Treasure Island.” Recent years have seen pirate movies and pirate books and even Talk Like a Pirate Day. And of course, the Red Raiders have embraced all things pirate in recent years.

Even the ladies love pirates! No, I’m serious, I think they’re totally into ’em. Well, at least they’re totally into Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean” so that’s close enough.

This is the only way to make pirates more awesome.

I was digging through some of my newer comics a few weeks back, and it occurred to me that I had some good comics, some cool comics, a growing number of not-really-very-good-at-all comics, and not very many comics that I could really classify as AWESOME. And to be honest, I realized that was a problem not just with comics, but with almost everything. It’s a big beautiful world out there, but sometimes, it sure is tough to find stuff that blows your brain out the top of your skull, makes choirs of angels forget to sing, and just leaves you screaming “That was AWESOME!”

So let’s start off a semi-occasional series, for whenever I’m too bored to post anything else, focusing on stuff that’s just awesome. Nothing in-depth, nothing complicated, no thoughtful and wise think-pieces here. Awesome is its own reward.

Today, we’ll start off with one of the core members of the Awesome Community: Ninja!

If you want to learn the real, cold facts about ninja, you should read this page and take careful notes. If you want to learn that the purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people, you should read this page… WHILE SCREAMING!

(Quick mid-blog quiz: Can you find the four ninjas in the picture above? Be careful not to guess wrong or the ninja hiding in your room will cut you down like a dog!)

Ninjas are so awesome that they will sometimes just bust out an inflatable guitar and provide themselves with guitar solos, just because they often kill unworthy rock bands that try to give them guitar solos.

In conclusion, even these ninjas are pretty awesome. Oooh, who’s the snugglicious widdle ninja-pookins! Ow, where’d all these shuriken come from?!