One thing you can say about Star Wars is that it brought us the coolest weapon ever in the laser sword they call a lightsaber. Both high-tech and medieval, it's perfect for hand to hand combat and for slicing your enemy in two. And they come in cool colors! Walt Hickey and Rachael Dottle researched all the lightsabers mentioned in both the Star Wars canon and the Expanded Universe and plotted them by how common the colors are. This chart made me want to see a turquoise lightsaber, but I was really curious about a black lightsaber. Read about the research that went into this chart at FiveThirtyEight. The links there are liable to send you down a Star Wars rabbit hole. -via Digg

The Joker isn't just a pretty face with an excruciatingly hysterical laugh- he's also a metahuman with extraordinary powers that aid him in his quest to get under the Batman's skin.

And yet even though his powers make him more than a match for ol' Batsy he lets the Dark Knight live- because their show must go on.

Should Batman ever want to kill the Joker once and for all he may find the task difficult, if not impossible- because the Joker has toxic blood, an extremely high tolerance for pain, oh, and he's immortal.

In fact, the Joker has become immortal both by becoming a Dark Judge in a Judge Dredd crossover and by injecting himself with a mysterious toxin that allowed him to heal from mortal wounds in the story arc Batman: Endgame.

But the Joker's greatest ability, and his greatest achievement, is his ability to make Batman laugh:

In the final pages of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s acclaimed one-shot, Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker tells a joke about a pair of inmates in a mental asylum who try to escape, with Batman finding the punchline — “What do you think I am, crazy? You’d just turn it off when I’m halfway across!” — hysterical. Some people believe the joke is what the title The Killing Joke refers to (if you believe Batman actually kills the Joker in the end) but that’s something we may never know. In either case, the Joker successfully, unquestionably made the Dark Knight laugh, and if that’s not a superpower, we don’t know what is.

See 15 Superpowers You Didn't Know The Joker Had here

If some guy told me he had a frozen Bigfoot head sitting at home I'd assume he was talking about some kind of frozen confection shaped like Bigfoot's head, you know, the ones with the bubblegum eyeballs?

Well, in this case the frozen Bigfoot head in question is "real", that is to say, YouTuber Peter Caine Dog Training claims to have the actual severed head of a famous cryptid in his freezer says it's the genuine article- and he's willing to examine it on video to prove it's authenticity.

Here's the story behind this man's hoaxy sounding claim:

The man who showed the world his “Frozen Sasquatch Foot” earlier this year is back with a piece of the beast that is even bigger and better than the giant foot … a head he claims was once on a living Sasquatch before his father killed the huge creature in 1953, cut it up and froze it until his son found people who would believe the story or needed to raise some money. That day has arrived.

“My Bigfoot frozen head video is doing good, 30,000 views in 2 days but that’s not good enough everyone needs to know Sasquatch is real before the Government tries to silence the truth #Bigfoot”

(YouTube Link)

-Via Mysterious Universe

Movie fight scenes are exciting to watch but they can also be quite formulaic and predictable, and it often seems like the writers just give up and pull tropes out of a hat when it comes time to write a fight scene into the script.

But there are certain fight scene tropes that cartoonist JHALL cannot stand and I tend to agree with him, especially the one where the main character masters a martial art in less than a month.

Do you think people would spend their lives mastering a martial art if some yutz "chosen by fate" could learn all the ins and outs in a few weeks? And what would be the point of mastering a martial art if some heroic little girl can still kick you straight through a wall whenever she wants?

Come on Hollywood, try harder!

See 5 Fight Scene Tropes I Hate at Dorkly

Japanese advertisers have cornered the market on weird commercials, and American advertisers have come up with their fair share of strange TV spots too, but if you're looking for something tasteful yet bizarre you've got to head to the UK.

For these days British advertisers are fond of creating oddball commercials with a decidedly British flair that properly reflects British culture and therefore sets them apart from the rest in terms of strangeness.

I mean, where else can you see a monkey singing about Jammies, a mounted moose head that craves wine gums or a wife being unfaithful to her husband with a lobster?

(YouTube Link)

Drawing a daily comic can be a real challenge, and even cartoonists who've been drawing dailies for years say they have a hard time coming up with new material day in and day out.

The Person Who Discovered Sharks pic.twitter.com/USsJ0wL51P

— Brans-Siberian Orchestra (@bransonreese) April 3, 2017

So when comedian and cartoonist Branson Reese declared he'd draw a comic a day for a full year many people thought he was full of Reese's Pieces, but Branson proved them all wrong by delivering 365 deranged daily strips, after which he took a week off like God:

The fact that Branson's comics are so bizarre probably made it a bit easier to come up with material, since he seems to have a never ending supply of strange scenarios floating around in his head, but drawing a strip a day without fail is still quite a feat!

See 18 Comics From The Internet's Weirdest Artist, Branson Reese here

Negan is currently the bad guy to beat in the world of pop culture thanks to the popularity of AMC's The Walking Dead, but even with all his cruel, vindictive and brutal tendencies Negan's a nice guy compared to The Joker. So should Joker face off with Negan there's no question the Joker would win hands down.

And yet Negan is stronger than Mister J, and he has his beloved bat Lucille, which he wields like a magic club of sorts, so maybe he could hold his own against the Joker?

Eh, why bother arguing about it when you can watch this episode of Super Power Beat Down by Batinthesun and take their word for it! (Fight starts around 4:45, NSFW language)

(YouTube Link)

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

in my opinion the Cantina song played by Max Rebo's Band in the original Star Wars is perfect just the way it is, but the geeky folks behind The Warp Zone felt the song needed lyrics to be perfect.

So they came up with ridiculous lyrics about alien happy hours and the Cantina's criminal clientele, but it seems the writers are either droid activists or married to robotic entites- because they're angry about how droids are treated.

(YouTube Link)

-Via Laughing Squid

Harry Potter is a story written for children so J.K. Rowling didn't spend too much time making realistic characters, plus it's a fantasy series so realism can detract from the magic and wonder of it all.

But let's face it- if Harry Potter had actually survived the killing curse as a baby he would be one jacked up looking kid!

Serverus Snape was a slippery character with a dark past, and even though he turned out to be a double agent in the end all the bad stuff he did while working for Voldemort would look pretty bad on his resume.

And wizards may have figured out how to remove the horrible effects inbreeding has on their children, but in real life whenever people talk about their "pure bloodline" we start imagining what their mutant kids look like. (Comic by Andy Kluthe and Andrew Bridgman)

See If Harry Potter Characters Were More Realistic here

Matt Groening and the writers on The Simpsons have made some incredibly bold predictions over the years- and way too many of them have actually come true.

Does this mean these visionary animators possess psychic powers, or is modern life just becoming so ridiculous it has more in common with cartoons than the real world we once knew?

We could debate that question for years to come, but Disney's recent acquisition of 21st Century Fox proves The Simpsons is without a doubt the most prescient show on television.

The Simpsons has now predicted Disney buying Fox, the FIFA scandal, Greece’s economic collapse & President Trump (via @TomButler) pic.twitter.com/yj3qjx9TBB

— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) December 14, 2017

They predicted Trump's presidency, they knew Siegfried and Roy's tigers would one day turn on them, and they even predicted that Bengt Holmstrom of MIT would win the Nobel Prize for Economics.

(YouTube Link)

Read 11 Events Correctly Predicted By The Simpsons at Mental Floss

It's supposedly rude to eavesdrop on other people's conversations, but where are you going to hear inane rambling, deranged conspiracy theories or conversations so vapid they lower your IQ if you don't eavesdrop?

Writers, artists and other students of human nature love to eavesdrop because it gives them real life reference for their works, and illustrator Avner Geller has heard so many stupid and funny conversations he decided to start drawing them all.

Avner calls his project #ThingsThatIHear, and it all started with a real-life first world problem he overheard in the wild:

The idea for “#ThingsThatiHear” arrived when I was visiting a cookware store in Los Angeles. A young woman was looking at her phone and gave a big sigh, turned to her friend decisively and exclaimed, “He wants to go to Bali. But I say Fiji!” I couldn’t help but laugh. The absurdity of this “first world problem” was too much. From that moment on I started to catch all sorts of real-life conversations, that eventually turned into these illustrations.

The characters in the world of “#ThingsThatiHear” are people we all know: They are our office mates who complain to us about the daily grind. They are the awful online date we are trying so hard to forget. They are the people silently stalking our Facebook. More than anything they are the US when we think no one is listening.

See more from I Often Overhear People Say Funny Things, So I Started Illustrating Them here

Stephen King has written many scary stories about inanimate objects, from The Mangler to Christine to The Monkey, but the scariest object he ever had to face was The Desk, which he thought would be a dream come true.

As you'll see in this comic by Zen Pencils, Stephen bought the massive oak desk in 1981 and proceeded to write some of his most famous novels behind it, but the desk only served to make him feel like an alien in his own home...

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

The Empire excels at taking planets by force, or destroying them outright should the planet's inhabitants choose not to submit, so their coffers are overflowing and their Sith commanders are paid well.

But had Darth allowed one more Death Star to be destroyed or failed to eliminate one more race of furry teddy bear creatures he may have been let go, forcing him to find a 9 to 5 and earn his credits like a lowly moisture farmer.

Photographer Michaël Massart imagined what Darth would look like if he had to take a severe pay cut and work some Joe job as a car wash worker, dishwasher or bus driver, and it seems even at his lowest point Darth still has henchmen.

Michaël does a good job of giving Darth and his two guards plenty of personality even though they're wearing full armor, and when he incorporates the lightsaber into the bit he does it just right.

See Photographer Reimagines What Would Happen If Darth Vader Faced Financial Crisis here

Hunter S. Thompson was an unconventional man to say the least, but he still liked to celebrate the holidays by putting up a Christmas tree just like an average Joe.

However, Hunter disposed of his tree in a way many of us wish we could but few would dare to attempt- by  incinerating it in a post-holiday blaze of glory in his fireplace.

Hunter demonstrated his Christmas tree disposal technique to TIME magazine writer Sam Allis when Sam visited Hunter's Colorado home in 1990, telling his secretary Deborah Fuller:

"Let’s give the journalist a memorable experience to write about. He needs to learn how to burn the creosote out of a chimney. We can’t run the risk of a chimney fire during the year.”

(YouTube Link)

Sam had this to say about the day he witnessed Hunter's version of Christmas cheer:

“I gave up on the interview and started worrying about my life when Hunter Thompson squirted two cans of fire starter on the Christmas tree he was going to burn in his living-room fireplace, a few feet away from an unopened wooden crate of 9-mm bullets. That the tree was far too large to fit into the fireplace mattered not a whit to Hunter, who was sporting a dime-store wig at the time and resembled Tony Perkins in Psycho. Minutes earlier, he had smashed a Polaroid camera on the floor.”

Hunter had decided to videotape the Christmas tree burning, and we later heard on the replay the terrified voices of Deborah Fuller, his longtime secretary-baby sitter, and me off-camera pleading with him, “NO, HUNTER, NO! PLEASE, HUNTER, DON’T DO IT!” The original manuscript of Hell’s Angels was on the table, and there were the bullets. Nothing doing. Thompson was a man possessed by now, full of the Chivas Regal he had been slurping straight from the bottle and the gin he had been mixing with pink lemonade for hours.

Read more about Fear & Loathing at Christmas at Dangerous Minds

Batsy isn't the only one who has witnessed, and done, some dark deeds in the DC Universe, because the Flash has quickly become one seriously dark dude!

(If you watch the CW show then you probably know some of these storylines already, but if not be warned there are spoilers ahead.)

Barry Allen has had his psyche damaged by a past he cannot escape (the death of his mother) and the earth shattering results of his actions (Flashpoint) but nobody got in to Barry's head like his nemesis Zoom.

Zoom made it his mission in life to take down the Flash no matter the cost, and as far as super villains without a conscience go Zoom ranks up there with the likes of Darkseid and the Joker in terms of body count.

But one kill in particular caused Barry to forego his heroic ethics and kill Zoom with impunity- the death of his wife Iris West.

Zoom murdered Iris because he was in love with her too, and because he had a psychotic infatuation with watching Barry suffer, but despite his anger the Flash let Zoom live- so Zoom showed up a few years later to kill Barry's new fiance on their wedding day.

Barry couldn't bear to see another woman he loved get killed by Zoom, so he took matters into his own hands- by snapping Zoom's neck before he could deliver the killing blow. It was a justifiable homicide, but it still took its toll on Barry's state of mind...

See 6 Flash Comics Way Darker Than Any Batman Story here