What if DocStout Wrote About Alternate Marvel Universes? - A Look at Marvel's "What If?" titles.

Even back in the late 1980s when I started reading comic books and following several storylines, there was a whole lot of catching up to do for anyone just getting started in order to fully understand what was going on. No one had thought of publishing trades to collect popular stories and the internet wasn't yet up to the task, so hanging around the comic shop looking at back issues and listening to the conversations of older comic geeks was one of very few ways to fill in major events in comic continuity. Fortunately, it wasn't the only way, as one of my very favorite titles Marvel ever produced showed key events as they happened... and then examined what would have transpired if things had gone differently.

The very first issue, nearly as old as I am.

What If? from Marvel has run off and on as a regular series or limited editions (one shots or short runs) from February 1977 through a five issues published in December of 2010. The cover typically shows a classic moment from Marvel history with some shocking twist, and the question is posed 'What if...?' things had gone just a bit differently, and in many cases, the point of divergence seems minor or very nearly happened in this alternate way, and the story is taken to a logical, if extreme, conclusion. Typical rules set up for characters in Marvel stories do not apply in the alternate universes and fan favorites can (and do) die, commit murder, destroy worlds or realities, etc...

For quite a long time, Uatu, a member of an alien interdimensional race called The Watchers who observe all realities but whose laws permit them from interfering, served as the series' narrator. The first few pages of each issue would provide a concise summary of events as they really happened in the Marvel Universe, which is what drew me to the title initially, and then the story focuses on the point of divergence. Uatu walks the reader through the tale pointing out important events necessary to comprehend the changes in the alternate story, and usually wraps up the story whether the ending is happy, tragic or bittersweet. Uatu himself has appeared in many other titles over the years, most notably in Fantastic Four comics, where he has broken his non-interference oath at least once.

For a character that turns up mostly as a plot device, he's been in a lot of  comic books.

More recently, the standard framing and plot device of a character narrator and focusing on events as they happened and a point of divergence has been phased out over time. After the end of What If? as a regular monthly or bi-monthly title, individual issues may have a narrator or not, and frequently the issue covers are made to look like issues within the comic series they are diverging from. On occasion, realities focused on in particularly popular issues of the comic have returned for “sequels” of a sort, where a new tale is told in the world that resulted from a particular What If? scenario. One of these, “What If?” #105 told the story of Spider-girl, daughter of Peter Parker, and spawned the MC2 spinoff continuity.

I found through the years of reading What If? that I had a better grasp of key moments in a lot of titles that I never collected than some of the fans of those particular comics did. Character motivations become clear when you see the same hero thrust into many different crises, some with no possibility of any happy resolution. The issue that hooked me initially was titled “What if Wolverine Had Become Lord of the Vampires?” and it made the strengths and relationships between a host of different heroes and villains apparent in the rise of a Vampire Lord with all Dracula's powers as well as all of Wolverine's tenacity, instinct and his admantium skeleton. This series, and how it captured the imagination was the precursor for Marvel events like Marvel Zombies. Showing how a hero fails sometimes tells you more about them than consistently seeing them win.

Aside from 1990s Ghost Rider comics, this was one of the most important comic issues for me, ever.

More recently, the title has been revived for limited runs of one-shot comics, typically giving the alternate universe treatment to whatever major Marvel event is taking place at the time. These titles will likely fall into the “must have” lists of the collectors who seek out every issue in crossover events like Civil War or House of M, and I would expect that within the next few years we'll be seeing a What If title for Fear Itself (which I'll return to once enough of it has come out to warrant a full review.) Other one-shots have returned to the classic formula with titles like “What if this was the Fantastic Four?” featuring Spider-Man, Wolverine, Ghost Rider and Hulk, which was dedicated to the passing of Mike Wieringo in 2008.

I haven't read this one, but I like to believe that it is really
"What if Tony Stark wasn't such a douche during the Civil War story?"

It has been a little while since I gave out more of my 10 required nominations for The Stylish Blogger Award, so I figure I'll take this opportunity to nominate two more. Another link back here (near the bottom) to the “strings attached” rules for this award, and congratulations to the deserving recipients!

First up, we have The Lead Will Walk The Earth, an amazing blog about zombies, and more particularly gaming with zombie miniatures. Great photgraphy, scenario battle reports, and lots of rotting flesh.

My second nomination is to Rob's Nerd Blog, which goes from Song-a-Day to movie reviews and quite a few miscellaneous interesting articles.

Check these guys out, let 'em know I sent you, and sound off in the comments about Marvel's What If? or anything else in today's post.

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My New Toy: Kindle 3 Wi-fi with Special Offers. A Review, and Device Details.

Yesterday I mentioned that I'd just gotten a new toy. With money being tight, little luxuries are not the norm, but I firmly believe that it isn't healthy to live as an ascetic all the time out of some vague notion of responsibility. The tax return came in, and I spent just a little bit of it to get a device I purchased with no buyer's regret whatsoever.

I have a Kindle. I'd talked about this once before, and how I'd likely be interested in the new Kindle 3 (wi-fi only) that got a price deferment from ads and special offers. Just because I believe that just because you are unemployed, it doesn't mean you can't treat yourself, I don't think that there's anything wrong with allowing your situation to affect a decision on how frugal to be. Now, rather than just discussing my day and my own perspective on this device, I want to talk a little about the device, specifically a little background on it, how it works and why anyone would want one in the age of the tablet PC.

I got it, and I didn't even have to punch a baby.

The Kindle is a device powered by a software and network platform specifically designed for reading e-books. It is designed with only the purpose of displaying documents in mind, and focuses on performance and battery life while serving its intended function. What an iPod does for music, the Kindle does for the electronically printed word. The first version of the device was released by Amazon on November 19, 2007 and sold out almost immediately. Subsequent versions of the hardware have become slimmer, lighter, with easier to read text and increased battery life. The price of the hardware has gone down over the years as well, with a first-generation Kindle retailing for $399USD, and the least expensive incarnation of the current generation (the one I picked up) coming in at $114USD.

The packaging on the newest Kindle is efficient and clever, almost minimalist, with the shipping carton folding open to reveal a form-fitting compartment with the device itself, below that there is a quick start guide and a compartment for the combination USB/Wall socket power and data cable. That's it, no extra packaging, and the technically savvy can safely ignore the paper manual, as the screen by default when shipped instructs the user to plug the device in and turn the power switch for further instruction.

I think the reason I geek out at efficient packaging has something to do with being a boardgamer.

The Kindle now boasts a battery life of three weeks, or seven days with an active wireless connection. This is due in large part to the technology used in its screen, and represents one of the advantages this device has as strictly a document reader over an iPad or other tablet computer. The e-ink technology used in the current display is based on millions of microcapsules, each about as wide as a human hair, that contain charged white and black particles suspended in a clear fluid. To represent text and pictures, the electrical charge determines whether white or black particles are drawn to the surface based on a positive or negative charge. This means that a black and white display has contrast and sharpness closer to actual ink on paper than any standard screen allows, and since the device does not require constant electrical use to keep the physical “ink” in place once set, the power requirements are reduced and battery life is extended.

Depending on the version of the Kindle purchased, it is capable of connecting to the internet either over Wi-Fi or (only in the more expensive models) over a free 3G cellular web connection. The connection allows access to the Amazon store to shop for books, wikipedia and wikitravel by default, and there is also a simple web browser in the “Experimental Features”. The e-ink technology has to “wipe” the screen and redraw every time an image changes, so scrolling on a web browser in black and white works best on text-heavy sites, though pictures display at an impressive resolution, all things considered. Each Kindle also has its own e-mail address, allowing documents to be sent directly to it from an e-mail client, typically the same one used to start an Amazon account.

The Whispersync wireless content delivery system is real fast.

Natively, the Kindle supports books in its own formats (AZW and MOBI) and can view TXT and PDF files as well. The popular EPUB format is not supported, but there are free programs that allow conversions of EPUB files that are not protected by DRM to a file usable by the Kindle, the most popular of which is called Calibre. The Kindle now also supports text-to-speech where enabled by the publisher using the integrated speakers, and MP3 files can also be loaded onto the device to be played in the background while reading. The quality of the speakers is good for their size, and there is a headphone jack built in for privacy and consideration to those who might not need or want to know that you like blasting Linkin Park while reading Tolstoy. There is also a built-in microphone, though there are no current software-supported features that use it as of the time this article was written.

The tablet PC has, for some people, replaced the functions of an e-reader as a device that has vastly improved features concerning video & audio playback, color screen resolution and web browsing, games and other internet applications, in addition to being able to read books. The difference between the devices is similar to the difference between a smartphone and an MP3 player or a gaming PC and a game console. A specialized device made for a particular function will in some ways perform that task better than a device with the same function as one of many features. In addition, the time between recharging devices is not a small gap, with 10 hours as the average high-end for battery life on a tablet PC, as opposed to an e-reader's 7 days. As technology improves, the tablet PC may well make devices like the Kindle obsolete, but we aren't there yet.

A replacement for the Kindle? Maybe someday, but not today, not for me.

As a gamer and a sci-fi/fantasy fan, I already have my Kindle loaded up with gaming rulebooks, sourcebooks, and various fantasy e-books that I couldn't finish sitting at a computer desk and staring at a screen. I anticipate that the Kindle will be a huge help to me while running tabletop RPGs, and will allow me to store PDFs of adventures, and my own character sheets for those few games where I get to be a player. I can also load a few tracks from my ambient music collection for horror if I want to run horror with music on the go.

On to paying forward the Stylish Blogger Award, as promised yesterday. This is tough, as this award has been around a while and the rules tell you to pass it on to ten or so other blogs, meaning a lot of blogs already have it. I'll link back to the rules here (scroll down) instead of reposting all of them every time I do this. Today, I want to take the time to nominate two sites: A Beer For the Shower, and Surrender at 20. Congrats, guys!

A Beer for the Shower is consistently entertaining, with text and surprisingly-good MS Paint comics related to whatever subject or story is the focus of the current post.

Surrender at 20 is a gaming site dedicated to news, updates and strategies for the PC game League of Legends, and I nominate this site despite its narrow focus for incredibly regular (often more than once a day) postings and really neat site design.

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Monday Potpourri, or How I Spent My Geeky Weekend.

Today's post may be a little more unfocused than my usual articles. I have a lot to talk about today, and about the only theme I can come up that links the varied topics is that they are all about things that happened this weekend. A few events relevant to this blog happened in the course of a few days, I had the opportunity to follow up on and am prepared to revisit two topics I've covered before, and I got to experience a major world news event through a uniquely geeky lens.

Throwing chronology completely to the wind, I'll start with one of the very last things that happened this weekend. Weeks before the first episode came out, I wrote a bit on HBO's Game of Thrones, and how excited I was about it. Right before bed last night, I caught the third episode and I'm about due for an update on how I feel about the show. There is a LOT of material to cover to tell the story laid out in the first book, and so far, I feel the show is doing a good job of telling the story without losing too much of the detail that gives the world its depth and unique feel. Many favorite characters have been presented at this point, and the casting choices have been uniformly good. Any changes from the books have been tiny things, needed to improve the flow of story, and I think the show is comprehensible to people who haven't already spent years discussing the books.

Arya Stark learning "dancing" from Master Syrio Forel. Great casting.

I've also had a full week, and much of the weekend to try out the new content I touched on in World of Warcraft, the “update” of classic raid dungeons initially designed for between 10 and 25 players, re-imagined as longer than usual 5 man adventures. Zul'Aman is virtually unchanged from its initial release aside from the same monsters being tuned a bit for fighting groups of 5 level 85 characters as opposed to 10 level 70s. Still frustrating in the same places, still easy in the same spots. More interesting to me is Zul'Gurub, which kept the original environments, but completely rethought the monsters and bosses, including a clever encounter that is only accessible if someone in the group has sufficient archaeology skill to mess with a cache of cursed artifacts. Both of these new 5-man dungeons are like running 2 heroic dungeons back to back, all gear drops are purple (Epic) quality and they take, typically 2-3 hours to finish unless you have a very good group that knows all the fights already. We got to figure out the bosses in ZG for ourselves, no guides or YouTube strategy videos to help us along, and that was great fun, and a refreshing change of pace.

One of the Tiki-themed Minibosses in Zul'Gurub.

On to blog business, this weekend, two things of note happened, my post “Can't Stick The Landing – RPGs and Poor Endings” was a featured article in this month's Carnival of Video Game Bloggers here at GamingMyWay, and I got another award! This site received the “Stylish Blogger Award” from The Angry Lurker, many thanks to him, and this is another “with rules attached” award, so here they are.

Now the rules of this award are to:

1. A thank you and link back to the nominating blog.
2. Share seven things about yourself.
3. Pass this award on to 10 or so other deserving blogs.
4. Let them know of your nominating them for the award.
   
   

Rather than fill the rest of this post with links to blogs, I'm going to comply with rule 3 in my own way. Throughout the coming weeks, one or two at a time I'll add my nominations. A lot of my favorite blogs already have this award, so I'll get the time I need to figure out who to pass it on to (no begging in emails or comments please) and the deserving sites won't get lost in a long list.

As for seven facts about myself... Well, here goes.

1. I grew up in a particularly dangerous neighborhood, the only Irish-American kid in an area that became a gang-controlled barrio just outside Chicago.
2. I was the initial designer of the Town Project in the RPGA's Living Greyhawk Campaign, which allowed players to write, develop and spend in-game resources on the management of their D&D character's home towns and villages in a global campaign. The towns could build structures to defend themselves, harvest resources and grow population, adding a lot of “Civilization/SimCity” elements to a shared-world campaign.
3. While working in the hobby game industry, I also pursued a performing career, working as a concert tenor, improv comedian and actor.
4. The band I've seen more often in concert than any other is They Might Be Giants.
5. I've taken classes in and since forgotten how to speak or read almost anything in the following languages: Spanish, French, German, Russian and Japanese.
6. I didn't have a driver's license until I was 21, and took the test to get one my 2^nd time ever behind the wheel. (Nearly passed, nailed it on the next try.)
7. I've been to the mayan ruins of Chichen Itza four times, and got to see the Throne of the Red Jaguar inside the central chamber of El Castillo.

El Castillo, the famous temple to Kukulcan in Chichen Itza.

Last, but not least, I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention the announcement last night of the confirmed death of Osama bin Laden in an American operation. My wife and I were online in our Sunday night raid, working on killing Heroic Maloriak with our WoW guild when the news broke. We have several active duty military personnel in the game who claimed to have known already, but were under strict orders to keep quiet on the subject until DNA testing confirmed the news. We alt-tabbed from game to news sites and social media outlets for details or confirmation that the news wasn't a hoax in between boss attempts. Eventually, the news became so distracting that we broke for the night so all the players could watch the televised speech.  Rather than cynically insist that this news changes nothing, or hop up and down chanting “USA, USA!” I find my reaction rather more complex, but a blog I read this morning put it more succinctly than I feel I could. That link is here.  

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Bonus Post Wednesday: Many thanks, The Liebster Award, and post #50!

This is the 50th post since I started this blog eight weeks ago tomorrow, and I wanted to thank the people who have followed me and helped this site grow fairly rapidly in a short time.  I wouldn't want a post of this nature to replace the normal weekday article, so I'll be back with normal geeky stuff tomorrow afternoon!

First up, I want to thank G over at Bar Science for being the first blogger to ever feature this site in a post, which made me feel good and helped some people find the blog.  Many thanks also to PekkaK from Finland, home of Poets of the Fall (one of my favorite bands), very nice people, and the blog God I Hate My Job for additional exposure just today.

Many thanks to Bard at The Clash of Spear on Shield for this blog's first award, The Liebster Blog Award.  Like many other blogging awards, this one asks you to "pay it forward" by passing it on in turn to deserving blogs, particularly 3-5 blogs with less than 300 followers.

This Award will be displayed from here on out on the right side of this page, barring a site redesign.

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In the spirit of the award, I'd like to honor the following 3 blogs and present them with the Liebster Award:

• PSYCHO CARNIVAL by Kelly
  This blog is pure madness. Kelly has a unique perspective, strong opinions, and he isn't afraid to share them. He also regularly connects with his audience (better than I connect with mine) by directly responding to nearly every comment left on every post. Always entertaining.
• a momentary lapse, with joel by Joel
  This is a movie review blog with a truly obscene number of updates which has been criminally overlooked. I'm biased, as I've known Joel for years, he's done a guest post here (and I've returned the favor) and back in college, we were mistaken for each other frequently. (A few weeks back, Kelly continued this tradition by calling me Joel in the comments!)
• The Hopeless Gamer by Paul
  I love RPGs. I could make every other blog post bounce between tabletop RPGs and video games, except I promised myself that I wouldn't, and there are plenty of RPG bloggers out there who write regularly about the subject, and better than I ever could. Paul at The Hopeless Gamer is one of these. His site design is also spectacular.

Congratulations on the well-deserved awards, Kelly, Joel and Paul!

Two months, 50 posts, almost 70 subscribers and nearly 4000 pageviews. I can't wait to see what the coming months and years will bring, and would like to thank anyone who reads these pages for making it easier to come back and write every weekday.

P.S. - Special thanks to Maui for his promotion of this blog online and the first ever “live shout out” for What's Next – The Unemployed Geek, at a karaoke event.

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