I don’t have a lot of time at the moment (so go read Gavok’s What-If countdown, it’s great) but I do want to give you guys a heads-up!

Your local B Dalton or Barnes & Noble bookstore may have a sweet deal for you lurking around. They released a bunch of the Marvel Masterworks series in softcover format a couple years ago at 12.95 a piece.

I dropped by my local B Dalton today (and a tip of the hat here to the awesome manager there, her ladyship Shonda Wilson) and they had marked the books down to five dollars. I got 45 (or so) issues of early Marvel comics today for 25 bucks. Well, less, because I am technically an employee, but still!

Five dollars, people.

Here’s some ISBNs to make it easy on you.
The Amazing Spider-Man vol 1 (collecting ASM 1-10): 0-7607-3793-2
The Amazing Spider-Man vol 2 (collecting ASM 11-19): 0-7607-4957-4
The Amazing Spider-Man vol 3 (collecting ASM 20-30 & Annual 1): 0-7607-5565-5
Uncanny X-Men vol 1 (collecting The X-Men 94-100 & Giant-Size X-Men 1): 0-7607-4958-2
Uncanny X-Men vol 2 (collecting The X-Men 101-110): 0-7607-5566-3

Links go to the BN.com website, where the books are listed at full price. I don’t think that this is just a local deal, so give your local B&N or B Dalton a call and see if they can’t order one of these for you. I’m talking 30 issues of Lee/Ditko Spidey and the very beginning of Claremont on X-Men here.

I also bought Daredevil HC v6, wrapping up the Bendis/Maleev run in glorious hardcover format, Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her, Black Widow by Grayson/Rucka/Jones/Hampton, Gambit v2 by Layman/Jeanty, War Stories v2 by Ennis, and Daredevil: Means & Ends by David Lapham. Lads and ladies, I think I may have a problem. An addiction.

However: Comics :toot:!

This article is dedicated to all the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner fans out there. Why? Because anyone else is probably going to be bored out of their skulls.

30) WHAT IF…? STARRING SECRET WARS: 25 YEARS LATER

Issue: Volume 2, #114
Writer: Jay Faerber
Artist: Gregg Schigiel
Spider-Man death: Yes
Background: The all-powerful Beyonder brought a group of heroes and a group of villains onto a planet he created to battle for his amusement. The storyline is known for introducing the Venom symbiote, putting She-Hulk in the Fantastic Four and for one of the funniest movies on YouTube. Dr. Doom, using his own genius, found a way to steal the power of Galactus and challenge the Beyonder. He then stole the Beyonder’s power too, but things went to Hell and he ended up back to his usual ugly self. So if Galactus is powerful enough to challenge the Beyonder, why didn’t he? And what if the fight between the two ended with both of them dying? Toss in Reed Richards’ death for flavor.

The story begins on the 18 birthday of Balder Blake, otherwise known as Bravado (son of Thor and the Enchantress). As he does every year, he tries to lift Mjolnir, his father’s hammer. He still can’t lift it, despite the support of his friends Crusader (daughter of Captain America and Rogue) and Mustang (son of Hawkeye and She-Hulk). They return to his house to find a surprise party waiting for him. It’s there that we meet his other friends Torrent (daughter of Wolverine and Storm) and Firefly (son of Human Torch and Wasp). As the story goes, the Secret Wars lasted for about five more years with many casualties until the two sides decided to call a truce. Now, for the most part, they and their children live in harmony.

There’s also Symbiote Spider-Man. He acts a bit creepy, talking in “we speak” that Venom was so famous for. Plus he’s a bit anti-social. Curious…

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What if I just got straight to the article itself for once?

70) WHAT IF DEATH’S HEAD I HAD LIVED?

Issue: Volume 2, #54
Writer: Simon Furman
Artist: Geoff Senior
Spider-Man death: No
Background: Oh, boy. Where to begin?

There’s a good chance you’re scratching your head, wondering who the hell Death’s Head I is and why he would deserve his own What If issue. First off, stop scratching your head. It’s a disgusting habit. Death’s Head I was a character from the 80’s created by Simon Furman and integrated into the Marvel UK Transformer comics. Death’s Head I was a charismatic and likeable bounty hunter, striking some of the same chords that Deadpool would years later. A robot from the future, Death’s Head I spoke through a voice box on his face, usually turning his statements into questions, like a French guy trying to speak English. Like for instance, he’d likely tell you, “Refer to me a freelance peacekeeping agent, yes?” He was weird like that. It was neat.

Death’s Head I mainly hung out in the year 2020, but had a tendency to time travel, usually leading to crossovers with guys like the Fantastic Four and She-Hulk. During the 90’s, Marvel decided to reboot his image. AIM had created Minion, a powerful robot with the ability to absorb the instincts, skills and knowledge of whoever he destroyed. He’s like an evil Megaman, except he looks like a blatant Predator rip-off. Minion was mainly created to destroy a mysterious threat named Charnal. I’m not savvy on the details here, but Minion ended up going up against Death’s Head I and Mr. Fantastic in our present. He killed Death’s Head I and absorbed his mental workings. It was too much for Minion to handle and parts of Death’s Head I’s personality caused Minion to override into something new. Now calling himself Death’s Head II, he and Marvel’s heroes fought the merging of villain Baron Strucker’s soul and the remains of Death’s Head I’s body. In other words, Charnal. Death’s Head II was victorious and went on to have some extreme 90’s adventures. Yay?

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I love Marvel. I have ever since the beginning. I still own the first two comics I ever read. Amazing Spider-Man numbers 316 and 317, the second story involving Venom, I believe. It was a David Michelinie/Todd McFarlane joint. FOOM, Merry Marvel Marching Society, Marvel Zombie, you name it, I was it in an unofficial way because I was little and had no money. This stands to this day. Most of the DC books I read are published by Wildstorm.

There’s a lot of things I like about Marvel (Spider-Man). High on that list (after Spider-Man) is their trade policy. Is there a miniseries coming up soon that you want to check out, but you’d rather read it all in one chunk for better enjoyment? Grab the trade that’s gonna hit somewhere between one month and three months after the last issue ships. This is somewhere between two and two billion times better than DC’s trade program, which is “You’ll get the trade when we remember to actually print it.” Identity Crisis, for example, had a year-long wait and was released twice in floppy form before we finally got a trade. Common sense would tell you to strike while the iron is relatively hot and push that trade out there. Marvel does what DC don’t (that pun works a lot better with Sega and Nintendo, I think), though, so it’s all good.
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