The Four Horsemen will be robbing me blind this year.
So, all the big toy news has come out of the New York Comic Con, and I think it’s safe to say Mattel stole the show. (more…)
ToyFare #130
I’m currently working on an article for an upcoming issue of ToyFare, but I thought I’d take a few minutes to peruse the latest issue.
Cover: For some reason, Harrison Ford’s face seems to be difficult to sculpt (much like Bruce Campbell), but the larger the format, the easier it appears to be–and Sideshow nailed it with their Premium Format Indy here.
Customizing 101: I’ve never been clear on the whole “Sucklord” thing. How can he sell action figures made from molds of real Star Wars figures? This is one of those underground things I’ve never looked into, like the Church of the Subgenius. Still, that figure’s cool.
Hot Plate: “Aquaman the A-Lister…I like the sound of that.”
Page 16-17: Most of the figures on these pages are cool, but the only one I’m positively getting is the Wendigo–whom ever time I think of, I hear the goofy voice from the early-90s X-Men arcade game screaming “Weeeendiiiiigoooooooo!!!” (more…)
Driven batty
Got a few spare minutes here, thought I’d post…just for fun, really.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I tend to prefer a single action figure of a character in his “iconic” look, rather than a number of costume variations. This is because I view my toys not as collectibles but as characters, and to have two Batmen next to each other, well, it breaks the illusion that he’s Batman and not just a toy. (more…)
New haulage from the Magic TRU
I’m a tad behind on the next installment of Batman vs. Predator: If It Bleeds (the art is done, but I still need to add the dialogue), so in lieu of that, I thought I’d post this little post showcasing my haul from the Magic Toys ‘R Us last night. (Yes Paul, it came through with the Snake Eyes.) By the way, don’t forget to vote in the poll about the message board (it’s on the left below the menu).
Quick update
I’ll have a (much) larger post up later today, but before that, just a few quick site-related updates.
First off, as you may have noticed, OB1 and I made some minor tweaks to the site over the weekend. We revamped the colors, making them more vibrant and adding a fade (like a ’90s rapper, yo) at the top. It’s a minor change that I think gives the site a crisper, more professional look.
We also added two new menu items, one for the Toybox (featuring a character who will be introduced soon) and one for comics. Anyone recognize the action figure for Comics? We’ve also made the menu images a bit larger, to showcase Red Kryptonite’s great art.
Finally, according to Dreamhost, the loading problems should be subsiding over the next couple of days. Fingers crossed that actually happens.
Well, that sucks.
No Odds ‘n Ends today. I was planning on doing some clever April 1 gag for the site, but I found my enthusiasm waned when I discovered someone had stolen my case of DCUC2 after it was delivered by UPS. The tracking page claims it was delivered yesterday at 7:53 PM, yet there was nothing in the little airlock of my apartment building where the packages usually are.
OK, well, maybe it wasn’t stolen–maybe UPS just delivered it to the wrong address, I don’t know. Postpeople mix up the apartments in my building all the time, so it’s possible some Samaritan who took it by accident will come by and drop the box off today or tomorrow…but whatever. I’ve waited way too long for this not to to be unbelievably pissed off. I plan to bug the crap out of UPS today…if only to make myself feel a little better by making some poor phone-farm schmuck’s life more difficult.
Sick Day Haulage
So I ended up leaving work last Friday morning with a cold, and it’s a good thing I did, because Federal Express and the USPS chose that day to deliver not one, not two, but three action figures in separate packages. (more…)
Weekend update
I took the above photo as part of a set I’m planning to use in a post about Face-Off Hulk, but for now, just enjoy this little homage to Todd McFarlane’s cover for Incredible Hulk #340.
My webhost is still having issues, so I may be posting a bit more sporadically than usual over the next week or so.
I’ve decided to keep last week’s Caption the Pic contest going for an extra week, primarily because I’m lazy and don’t want to pick a winner right now. So feel free to keep those entries coming–and multiple entries are welcome and encouraged. Right now, there’s no clear front runner in my mind, so the field is wide open.
Solved Mysteries
A friend of mine emailed me photos of a mysterious toy, hoping I could identify it:
I couldn’t, but with a few well-placed inquiries to my usual sources, it was ID’ed by Greg the Bunny of the RTM forum as the Star Wars “Vehicle Maintenance Energizer” from the old 1980s Kenner line.
It’s a glorified gas pump. This was definitely one of those consolation toys your parents bought you when the store was sold out of speeder bikes and Jabba playsets.
One More Quote
Leave it to Alan Moore to succinctly explain (way back in the 1980s) the major problem I see with continuity-altering events like Crisis on Infinite Earths and One More Day:
I believe this is dangerous for a couple of reasons. Firstly, by establishing the precedent of altering time, you are establishing an unconscious context for all stories that take place in the future, as well as for those which took place (or rather didn’t take place) in the past. The readers of long standing, somewhere along the line, are going to have some slight feeling that all the stories that they followed avidly during their years of involvement with the book have been in some way invalidated, that all those countless plotlines weren’t leading to anything more than what is in some respects an arbitrary cut-off point. By extension, the readers of today might well be left with the sensation that the stories they are currently reading are of less significance or moment because, after all, at some point ten years in the future some comic book omnipotent, be it an editor or the Spectre, can go back in time and erase the whole slate, ready to start again.
Moore goes on to discuss whether or not throwing continuity to the wind is a good or bad thing, and weighs the pros and cons of both, but I was struck by how much the above paragraph is relevant to what’s going on in superhero comics these days.