Issue 23: Life in Space
By Mr. Atoz, The Librarian

Enterprise

It’s time for yet another glance at a Star Trek character, and in my opinion, the most important one: the USS Enterprise.

I’ve maintained for as long as I can remember that without the Enterprise, there can be no Star Trek. The absence of Enterprise has been the main reason for my disinterest in Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It is in my mind the third member of the Cornerstone Trio of Star Trek: Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise. The Enterprise is the machine that drives the journey to the stars. Without Enterprise, the name “Star Trek” makes no sense.

No where is this more aptly demonstrated than in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. The Enterprise is returning to dock after a fierce battle with the maniacal Khan, and without one of her sons, Spock. She returns victorious, yet wounded. Kirk is told by his fleet admiral that Enterprise will be decommissioned. In the meantime the slicker, more modern starship called the Excelsior will begin its voyage in Enterprise’s stead. Kirk, on the insistence of Spock’s father Sarek, sets out to retrieve Spock’s body to join with Spock’s soul, (which Spock has placed inside Dr. McCoy. You’ll have to watch the movie to see how this works.) Kirk recruits the old crew to hijack Enterprise out of dock. Captain Stiles of the Excelsior sees the Enterprise leave dock and chases them. The slicker, faster Excelsior should be able to easily track down the wounded old girl, right?

Wrong.

The trusty old girl, undoubtedly determined to find her lost “son”, gives all she has and leaves Excelsior in the dust. (Excelsior’s engines shut down trying to make it to warp speed). The older, wiser and more dependable Enterprise outduels the sleaker Excelsior. So much for the latest technology? Ahem…

Sadly, later in the movie, in order to deflect being apprehended by a renegade Klingon crew, Kirk energizes the crew and himself onto the surface of the Genesis planet and destroys Enterprise with the Klingons on it. The shot of the crew watching Enterprise fall from the sky is one of my favorite shots in any Star Trek movie.

The Enterprise is our trusty steed in our journey through the stars. She gets us out of danger, gets us home, and takes us to worlds unknown. Confined to dangers of strange alien worlds, the silver glow of the Enterprise docked among the stars is more than a welcome site.

Issue 23: Superhero Information Initiative
By The Dude

Irate and Ready to Rant, The Iceman Cometh

The Dude has the perfect pick up line for Iceman. Well, perfect if he was gay. Iceman could say, “Straight up or on the rocks.” Then Double O Seven would say, “Shaken but not stirred.” All hilarity aside Iceman is not gay, and The Dude gets pissed at how Bobby is always portrayed in such a pansy way. Robert Drake should be a god among mutants.

The Dude will admit that he has been partial to Iceman since he first saw those cool, (get it?), slides on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. (Spider-Man, your friend Firestar is so HOT man.) Let us be realistic though, if some crap shot loser with magnetic ability is so powerful…. Your body has like 0% magnetic metal in it, and is 75% water. The Dude doesn’t need to be a mathlete to figure that out. So why does Magneto cause the world such problems? The Dude thinks Iceman should say, “Take a chill pill bro,” and freeze his glutiousMAGsimous. Of course, then we would not have all those cool movies with three or four comic book plots smashed into one big screen story to watch. Where would we be then? Maybe watching previews for Rocky Balboa and wishing to god Rambo would just kill himself, and put us all out of our Vietnam misery. [Editor’s note: The Dude digresses.]

While some people take comfort in my on going presence, The Dude takes comfort in knowing that the IQ level at Marvel may have slightly increased. Marvel recently decided that if Iceman lost a body part while in his mutant state he could in fact reform it.

The Dude: “Really? You just realized the guy can manipulate water, and the air is full of H2O particles?”

Marvel Idiot: “So maybe… wait… I may have an original thought… Iceman could take those particles, and reform a lost body part.”

The Dude: “Genius!”

Not only should he be able to reform body parts, he should be able to: grow, shrink, shape shift, become or create anything he can imagine. Iceman should be like the Green Lantern, but with water and without a silly girl ring. (Green, that is like a color of the rainbow. What could I associate a rainbow with… hmm… oh well.)

The Dude owns a fourth edition of X-Men #1, and feels fortunate to actually have read about Bobby’s first appearance to mere homo sapiens. Back before the X-Men weren’t the ultimate, uncanny, extreme, giant-sized, astonishing whores of the comic world, (this statement excludes DC characters Batman and Superman- who, combined, have more titles than all other titles published. The Dude feels a new word besides whore should be created to describe them. Like sluore, whort, or myexgirlfriend), the Dude remembers reading Uncanny X-Men when Bobby was not a member, and still didn’t know Spidey’s friend used to be one of these guys. Then The Dude discovered that this astonishing line- up of Banshee, Havok, Nightcrawler, Rogue and Kitty Pride were just lame members of a current roster. There were actually cool Omega-level members like Iceman that sometimes graced the roster.

Let’s review the facts:

1. Bobby Drake is Iceman.
2. Iceman can control H2O.
3. H2O is known to be abundant.
4. 75% percent of everything is controllable by Iceman.
5. Marvel portrays Bobby as a booby.
6. Marvel is probably not a member of Mensa.

Seriously, The Dude wanted to urinate on the screen at X-Men: The Last Stand. (Ummm, Last? Hmm, money bad no more X-Men movies good.) I so love when they make founding members students of members that came along two decades later.

Issue 23: Spotlight on Technology
By Dr. Roger Korby

Behold, the Power of the Wii

“I named my Wii Mii McGeeky.”

When Nintendo announced that they were naming their new video game system the Wii, I thought it was a really lame name. Especially compared to the code name they had been using up to that point – the Revolution. The Revolution is infinitely cooler sounding than Wii. The name is slowly growing on me though. One thing I like is that you find yourself saying ridiculous, (and potentially dangerous), sorts of things when talking about the Wii. When a friend of mine said the phrase at the beginning of this article he drew a roomful of blank stares and doubled-over laughter. Besides the obvious, (to a fifth grader), male genitalia connotations, the name implies several other things that I’m sure Nintendo had in mind: it sounds like the word “we” which implies groups of people can play it and it sounds like the word “wee” as in “Fun!.” Also, if you flip the “W” over you get the word “Mii” which is what Nintendo calls the avatars you can create for yourself (see below).

What is the Wii?
The most noticeable thing about the Wii is the controller. It’s a wireless device that looks like a fat television remote with several buttons on the front and one trigger on the back. An optional attachment called the “nun-chuck” offers another joystick and two more triggers. Both the remote and the nun-chuck are motion sensitive and in most of the games that are out now you control the game by mimicking whatever action is taking place on the screen, (swinging your arm to hit a tennis ball, flicking your hand to swing Link’s sword.) Basically what this means is that where there is a Wii, there will be much flailing of arms.

The Wii can connect to the internet using its built-in wireless network card. (I think they will be releasing a wired network card at some point in the future). There aren’t any online games out yet, but eventually you will be able to play against your friends over the internet which is cool.

Another cool feature of the Nintendo Wii are mii’s. These are on-screen characters that you can customize to look like yourself or pretty much anyone.)

Some games are mii-compatible meaning that the mii’s on your system and mii’s that are shared from your friends’ Wii will show up in your games. I was playing Wii Sports bowling the other day and saw a friend’s mom, dad and wife bowling in the lane next to mine. It’s really cool how seamlessly the whole mii integration works.

The biggest negative about the Wii is that it is terribly under-powered compared to the other new video game systems, (the Xbox 360 and the PS3.) Both of the latter systems boast much more powerful processors and push out graphics in high-def, (up to 1080p.) The Wii gimps out a meager 480p on hardware that is marginally better than the Wii’s predecessor, the Gamecube. One nice-ish side effect of the Wii being mostly a Gamecube is that it will play all the Gamecube games, (and there are a few that are worth playing.)

What are the games like?
So far I’ve only played 5 or 6 games on the Wii. One game, Wii Sports, comes bundled with the system. It’s fun, but it’s basically just a nice demo of some of the stuff you can accomplish with the motion sensing features of the Wii. The sports – tennis, baseball, boxing, golf and bowling, with the exception of bowling, are all very simplified versions of the sports. In Wii baseball, for instance, you don’t have control over the fielding or base running… you simply concern yourself with timing your swing right and the system handles everything else. It’s still actually a lot of fun, but it leaves you wanting a more complete baseball game. It was probably a really wise decision to leave the bundled game relatively simple… the last thing Nintendo wants is for people to quit because the games are just so hard they’re not fun. (And within a year or two there will probably be several baseball games offering more complete control over the action.)

Speaking of games so hard they are more like work than fun… I’ve been playing a lot of Trauma Center 2: Second Opinion. In this game you are a surgeon and the remote and nun-chuck become the tools of your trade: scalpels, forceps, syringes, bandages, etc. I was joking about this game being “work” because most of the time this game is a blast. There are a few levels, (ie: surgeries), that take a few tries and some that require what I’ll call a trick to pass, and the details of the trick are basically left up to you to pull out of thin air. On one level in particular I kept doing something wrong because after about 7 minutes of complicated procedures my patient kept dying. I finally googled for some help and found that I needed to do one particular thing at a particular time or else it was impossible to pass the level. Attempting to increase the difficulty of a game by requiring the player to perform arbitrary and mysterious actions is pretty lame. Besides this, everything about Trauma Center 2 is great.

The Wii also emulates a ton of old video game systems, (NES, SNES, N64, Master System, Genesis, Turbo Grafix 16.) You have to buy the games and they range from $5 to $10, which seems a little expensive to me. Nintendo will be releasing 4 games each Monday and there are already some pretty great games available. I have not bought any Virtual Console games yet, but I’ll probably pick up some of the old classics like Kid Icarus or Metroid. I haven’t seen this myself, but I read that you can suspend these emulated games, save this saved state to the Wii’s memory and restore them later. Most of those old games wouldn’t let you save at all, (or used passwords), so this is a huge improvement. I’m hoping that Nintendo goes through the trouble of adding some internet multi-player functionality to some of these old games. I can just imagine turning on my Wii, noticing a friend is online and challenging him to a quick race in Super Mario Kart.

The Wii is a great video game system. I was a bit skeptical about the control system, but the few games I’ve played so far have convinced me that it works really well. I can imagine future Wii games exploiting the new control system in cool and ridiculous ways – like strapping a remote to each of your arms and legs and controlling your character by running in place, jumping and just generally acting like a lunatic.

Issue 23: Tournament of Villainy
By Rascal Stallion

Skeletor vs The Joker

Name: Skeletor		Name: The Joker
Occupation: Demon Ruler of the Dark Side of Eternia	vs.	Occupation: Clown Prince of Crime
Origin: The Masters of the Universe		Origin: Batman

The day room at Arkham Asylum was about to become even more unusual than, well, usual. The television was on the Gameshow Network and was currently showing a 3-decade-old episode of the Joker’s favorite show The Joker’s Wild.

Suddenly, Skeletor burst into the room, furious that he could not watch Matlock. Being ever devious, the Joker had hidden the batteries to the remote control and Skeletor’s frustration was nearing the point of no return.

Suddenly Skeletor snapped. He teleported himself across the room and smashed the television with his Havoc Staff. The smashed television showered sparks and broken glass down on the room. “Now I, Skeletor, am master of the universe, and subsequently master of this room!”

“What’s a skeletor?” the Joker asked.

With that insult, Skeletor whipped his Havoc Staff around and fired several mystic force bolts at the Joker.

“This room needs an enema,” thought the Joker as he dodged the bolts.

Skeletor’s attack continued as he shot energy from his eye sockets and fingertips at the Joker. The Joker was not so lucky this time as he was partially hit by the blast. The jolt momentarily stunned him and he lay prone.

Skeletor seized the opportunity to hit the Joker while he was down. Using his telekinesis he began dismantling the ceiling and dropping it on the Joker.

As the dust settled, a low moan was heard. The Joker lived but he was hurt badly. He called out to Skeletor, “Come closer and I’ll tell you where I hid the batteries to the remote.”

As Skeletor approached he boasted, “Of what consequence are you now? These people, this world, they are nothing – the universe is power, pure unstoppable power – and I am that force, I am that will.”

Just as Skeletor neared the Joker a flash of life crossed the Joker’s eyes. He knew he had been suckered in, but it was too late.

The Joker grabbed Skeletor’s hand as he shrieked “You ever dance with the devil by the pale moonlight?” The high voltage hand buzzer the Joker gripped sent wave after wave of deadly voltage through Skeletor’s bones, reducing them to dust.

The Joker laughed maniacally as the Arkham staff tranquilized him. They removed the rubble from atop the Joker and rushed him to the infirmary.

View Tournament Bracket

Issue 23: Tournament of Villainy
By Rascal Stallion

Hans Gruber vs Alien

Name: Hans Gruber		Name: Alien
Occupation: Exceptional Thief	vs.	Occupation: unemployed
Origin: Die Hard		Origin: Alien

Hans Gruber quietly walked through the hallway of the spaceship with Karl and Franco. They snuck aboard the ship as part of an elaborate escape attempt gone awry and now they found themselves hurtling through space.

Franco attempted to make idle conversation as they walked along: “Have you seen the Fall line from Givenchy? It’s quite breathtaking.”

The enticing conversation was cut short, however, as a hulking alien dropped from the ceiling and stood before them, blocking their path. The men were taken aback as the alien snarled ferociously at them.

Hans said “Franco, you know I could talk about men’s fashion and industrialization all day but I’m afraid escaping this ship must intrude. Kill that thing.”

Karl stepped forward and began blasting at the alien with his machine gun. The Alien recoiled briefly at the assault and then lunged at the man, claws and teeth gashing him. This wouldn’t have been as bad if Karl was a worm but as a human bisection proved to be a disaster.

The situation escalating, Hans’ mind began to work. A plan was quickly formed as Hans noted the alien’s bare feet and the great window to his left. “Shieb den fenster!” he ordered.

Karl looked at him blankly so Hans frustratedly reiterated his request, “shoot the glass.”

Hans and Karl turned and blasted out the space window as the alien approached them. As the bullets pierced the glass the pressurized air inside the ship contrasted with the vacuum of space and the entire party was violently whisked out the window.

The conditions evidently did not bother the alien but the lack of oxygen was a definite problem for the two men.

Hans watched in horror as the alien got to Karl first and bit his head off with its massive jaws. He wondered whether suffocation or the vicious beast would claim him first. As he began to lose consciousness it dawned on him that in space no one could hear him scream.

View Tournament Bracket