Hey everyone, welcome to Rob's observations.

Today's show is one that we have been building up to.

This is the perfect time for this subject and to really dig deep and expose the fact that this is in fact that this is in fact and has been Marvel's secret playbook, the playbook

with which that has helped transform modern Marvel in the modern years.

I'll go back 20 years since the 2000s.

That seems like it was a long time ago.

It is in fact over 20 years ago, but it's

it's like it was yesterday to most, most of us who actually work in the common book business.

And that, the secret playbook, is the series that Marvel launched in 1976, 77, called What If? What If? And what if was there, I always call it, when I'm telling my friends, it was their Twilight Zone show. It was their show that, you know, proposed alternate realities, alternate timelines of some of your

favorite events that occurred in the Marvel universe. In essence, it was, like I said, their

Twilight Zone show and their character, the omniscient, omnipresent, The Watcher, a key character

from the Marvel Cos cosmic universe introduced in the

fantastic four he the watcher had always frustrated everyone no matter what store story that he

appeared in because he would not intervene sometimes he would give these ominous warnings like he

would do the fantasy four or others or the X-Men.

And yet he could not, in fact, intervene in these stories because he was sworn to only observe,

only act as an observer.

So what a perfect candidate, the Watcher, to be the host of this brand new series of comic books, which were double-sized.

Here's the great thing. What if comics were double-sized? They were more than 22 pages, more than 17 pages. Sometimes you got a 30-plus page story. They cost a little more. You know, I don't necessarily know the brainchild of why this existed, but whoever created the what-if line of comics was a

genius. This hits in, again, 1977. I'm 10 years old. I am the perfect age for this.

This series becomes ridiculously popular, and I based on on the fact that it not only had an extended original run, but it also then was revived multiple times, and each of those revivals seemed to have gone very well.

I have a personal history with what if that I'll get to

...