Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Rocky Balboa has Apollo Creed. Superman has Lex Luthor. Wolverine has Sabertooth. Batman has the Joker. 50 Cent has Ja Rule. Tupac Shakur has Biggie Smalls. Barack Obama has Sarah Palin.

If popular media has taught us anything, it’s that every hero worth their salt has an equal, but opposite adversary to fight, and so it was for Spider-man. A simple mistake made sometime ago would come back to bite him in the ass in a major way. Not only would this mistake spawn one of the greatest Spider-man villains ever, it would lead to the emergence of a second, along with even more extraterrestrial nightmares.
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Back in the 90’s, video games had a trend of having big ominous corporations that served as the general antagonist for the story, even if the true antagonists just worked there. The idea that the heroes had not just one or two, but an entire (usually public) organization baring down on them for whatever reason was a pretty popular idea, due to the fact that just the idea made the fight that much more intense and necessary. Filled with corrupt corporate executives, the company seems benevolent to the general masses, but is secretly developing either weaponry, amassing political sway, and plotting how it can take over the world.

None fit this example better than Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation.

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Who puts the future in your hands? Robotix! Robotix!

As a child of about 5 or 6 and later, my mother would often take my sister and I to the local The Video Store. That is capitalized because, as I recall, that was the actual name of the business. Local businesses renting vhs tapes of movies and television was the norm back then, long before national chains like Blockbuster Video moved in and undercut them and even longer before Netflix would establish itself undercutting the national chains and let us not mention YouTube or Hulu just yet. Going to The Video Store was quite the treat. My mother would allow us to rent one or two videos of our choice. It would not be out of the norm for me to rent a couple episodes of The Transformers or Challenge of the Go-Bots. That was my proverbial jam in those days and, truthfully, still is. There was one movie in that children’s section that I really adored and rented many many times that was neither Transformers, Go-Bots, nor any other wildly popular franchise at the time (and there were a lot of them). This 90 minute movie was called Robotix. And that is why today is R for Robotix.

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Tom Delay

Delays are something geeks have to live with. As the hype for a movie, game, or book grows we get more and more excited and upon release its a moment of true excitement. We have to temper our expectations before we get that new thing in our hands, knowing that until its there, we have nothing and that it could be delayed or cancelled.

Delays are always with the best intentions. I mean really, if Portal 2 wasn’t ready for release in November 2010, then it wasn’t ready and it wouldn’t have been worth playing. And when it wasn’t ready in February 2011, it wasn’t ready and it wouldn’t have been worth playing. And now that its been released, some might say wasn’t ready and it its not worth playing, but that OK because they can patch it. [Read the rest of this entry…]

The Halo series has its share of heavy military reference material. There is perhaps none more completely mystified on the human side than the Office of Naval Intelligce, or ONI (pronounced in fiction as “Oh-nee”).

There is no in-fiction date of formation for ONI, but it is likely an extension of the current United States ONI, originally commissioned in 1882. The modern US ONI has the stated purpose of tracking enemy and friendly ships throughout the globe in order to assess threats to the homeland, and is one of the oldest branches of the US intelligence community though handled by the armed forces.
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Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

In a universe full of Super Soldiers, gods, mutants, monsters, robots, and just about everything else you can imagine, there is one organization that we can rely upon to keep tabs on all the madness and keep everything, and everyone, in line. That’s the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Division, more commonly known as S.H.I.E.L.D. And for the longest time, one man has been at the center of it all: Nicholas Fury. Nick has been many things during his lifetime: an amateur boxer, a WWII hero, a CIA agent, and a super spy. His most notable job was the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. While he may not shoot beams out of his eyes, have adamantium claws, wear a suit of armor, or have the proportionate strength of a spider, he is just as vital, if not more vital to the Marvel Universe, as any of its greatest meta-human champions.
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You know those certain types of bands that sing a certain type of music that’s so damn catchy, despite whatever your musical tastes are, you can’t help but nod your head in beat with the rhythm? Lady Gaga is many a person’s guilty pleasure for that fact alone, so we all know it happens.

That’s pretty much what Mindless Self Indulgence is – though much more palatable and a bit less shame-inducing. (for me, anyway)
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Every major love in Clark Kent’s life has an alliterative “LL” name: Smallville-schoolboy-crush Lana Lang, army-brat-turned-sassy-and-sexy-metropolitan-reporter Lois Lane, and mermaid (MERMAID??) Lori Lemaris.

But let us not forget the enigmatic and powerful Lex Luthor.

Oh, come on, you can’t tell me that Lex doesn’t have a serious boy crush for Superman, why else hate him so much yet want to BE him at the same time?

Writers of many stripes have tried to answer that question since the character was introduced, but none have been quite as successful as John Byrne’s 1986 post-Crisis interpretation. Despite the many alterations since, this is the core of the character that has shone through.

That is why L is for Lex Luthor. Read on!

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