New Comics Day

Also got the first wave of the DC Classics Green Lantern sets - very nice to see.

• Marineman #2
• Irredeemable #21
• Thanos Imperative : Devastation #1
• Steel #1
• JSA All-Stars #14
• Batman Beyond (Ongoing) #1
• Freedom Fighters #5
• Weird Worlds #1
• Doom Patrol #18
• Superboy #3
• Adventure Comics #522
• Brightest Day #17

That's all!

New Comics Day

New comics day is here, and it brought DC Classics, Wave 15! Huzzah. Regrettably, my OMAC figure had a fused wrist that snapped when I attempted to correct it, so I may have to hunt down a spare - but it IS just OMAC, so I can glue it into place and not worry too much about it if I can't find one.

The books :

• Angel #40 - Art quality nosedive.
  
• Darkwing Duck #7 - Still rockin'.
  
• Chaos War #4
• The Mighty Crusaders #6 - Feels rushed.
  
• Green Lantern / Plastic Man : Weapons of Mass Deception #1
• Time Masters : Vanishing Point #5
• Superman #706 - Not bad, for filler.
  
• Supergirl #59
• Green Lantern : Emerald Warriors #5
• Batman #705 - Mmm.. no. Why can't people leave the man alone?
  
• Batman and Robin #18 - A-ha! That medical condition that I heard of that time..
  
• Green Lantern #60 - Oh, HIM. I think we last saw him lay and egg in JLA.
  
• Birds of Prey #7
• Brightest Day #16 - Well, hell. They're about to make Black Manta make sense.
  

That's all!

DC Classics Thoughts

So, tomorrow, on Cyber Monday, Mattycollector.com is re-activating some of the DC Classics Two-Packs that they have sold online, making them available again. Of course, I got most of them the first time.

• Adam Strange and Starfire
• Animal Man and B'wana Beast
• Romat-Ru and Karu-Sil
• Ultraman and Alexander Luthor Sr.

The only one I missed was the Ultraman two-pack. At the time, I wasn't interested in it, but with the reactivation, I may pick it up. For the most part, with these online-only two-packs, they focus on characters that might not otherwise fly off the shelves. Starfire is the only real B-list or better amongst the bunch. I think this is a pretty smart idea, letting us diehard collectors have a chance at smaller runs of more obscure characters.

That said, they haven't introduced a new one in a little while, so I'd like to suggest some more potential two-packs.

Firebrand and The Shining Knight - I love the All-Star Squadron. Sir Justin has a fun potential accessory with his sword, and it would help build on the line's sparse Golden Age presence.

Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle - Did I mention that I love the All-Star Squadron? The line already has Commander Steel. We need his All-Star comrades.

Johnny Thunder and his Thunderbolt - This one is perfect for a two-pack. You can't sell Johnny Thunder by himself, it just isn't done. And he's a founder of the JSA. The T-Bolt would be an awesome new sculpt, and Johnny's mold could reuse or be reused for lots of other sportcoat-and-slacks types, especially one I'll get to in a moment.

Uncle Sam, Phantom Lady, and Doll Man - The Sinestro Corps two-packs had one of Karu-Sil's doglike 'fathers' as a limited-articulation bonus, and a tiny Dollman honestly wouldn't need ANY articulation. The Freedom Fighters have to get started sometime!

Impulse and Max Mercury - We've got Barry, and Wally as Kid Flash. No Jay yet. So this one may be dubious in its prospects, but we already have a Robin roughly equivalent to his Young Justice costume, and a leather-jacket Superboy, and Red Tornado - so we really need an Impulse to round out the team's starting line-up. And who better to pack in with him than Max?

Doc Magnus and Platinum - They've got Iron and Gold so far, in the line. Mercury's coming, too. You could do Platinum as a single-card, but why not pair her with the otherwise plain-looking Doc Magnus? And hey, you could even reuse the same basic mold as Johnny Thunder.

Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne - Secret identity action figures are another fun thing you can do with the small-target-audience format. Plus, the DC Classics line has been pushing hard to release versions of every figure that appeared in the Super Powers line, and Clark Kent was one of those, though he was a bonus mail-away figure.

Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane - In a similar vein, supporting cast figures. Jimmy can re-use that Johnny Thunder mold, and could have some fun accessories. And Lois is probably the single most important civilian in the DC Universe.

Oracle and Commissioner Gordon - Also supporting characters, but Oracle, at least, could be the head of a Birds of Prey set - perhaps including two-packs of Hawk and Dove, or Huntress and Zinda Blake. Huntress could support a single-card release, definitely, but Hawk and Dove were made to be together, and how else will we get a Zinda? Barbara is already sort of represented in the line, with the classic Batgirl figure, but still..

Week in Geek

Kind of a hectic week in geek, though a lot of it was spent in non-geeky pastimes like routine household maintenance. Still, I managed to get several nerdy tasks completed.

Most importantly, I got to run one of my Mutants and Masterminds games and make progress on some characters for the other. We got to run a short session of the Nexus game wherein I introduced a new player and his new character to the group, and we've got some very promising concepts for the Golden Age game brewing. I may even get to run next weekend, as well, which would make three weekends in a row - an almost unheard of streak for this year.

I also did some advanced toy hunting today, picking up a few more rare DC Classics finds from the collector I know in Pennsylvania - including some of the proto-Classics line called 'DC Superheroes'. Same articulation and scale as the Classics, but sometimes a little less in the quality control. On the other hand, that line has a number of figures not yet adapted to DC Classics, including Parasite and Bizarro. Steel, also, but the collector didn't have one of those for me to buy.

New Comics Day

Woo! Got DC Classics Wave 12 at the comic store today. Good stuff.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer #35
• Irredeemable #13
• Doom Patrol #10
• Nemesis : The Impostors #3
• The Great Ten #7
• Red Robin #12
• JSA All-Stars #6
• Secret Six #21
• Batman and Robin #12
• Superman : War of the Superman #1
• Brightest Day #1
• Knights of the Dinner Table #161

Just starting to read them now..

Week in Geek

I had the week off of work, so I was able to go hog-wild with absorbing as much media as I could possibly stand. A local video store going out of business, coupled with some trade-in exchanges at the local Vintage Video and Game store gave me a pile of DVDs to watch, and I haven't even gone through half of them yet.

The unexpected gem of the lot so far is the third disc of Azumanga Daioh, which I really enjoy. I'm going to Netflix the rest of the series. I also enjoyed a Blu-Ray of Family Guy's Empire Strikes Back parody.

I got in some quality video game time, with Dragon Quest IV and Lunar : Silver Star Story. Really trying to finish Lunar so I can move on to other things.

I suppose the biggest geek thing of the week would be my trip to Pennsylvania, to the home of an old acquaintance who is liquidating a massive toy collection. I found several things for the DC Classics line that I really, really wanted. Mongul and Cyborg Superman! Aquaman, with Grodd's right arm! The Solomon Grundy wave!

Most satisfying.

Week in Geek

An award-winning post for most tags!

My new PC arrived this week, and it is lovely. I had a bit of a scare yesterday when it froze up and then would not POST after reboot, but after re-seating all the components, it seems fine. So something was simply loose. Windows 7 is lovely as well - I've had good luck with everything running so far except my flatbed scanner whose era was sometime around Windows 98.

Finally finished Lego Indy 2, and have started working on Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 again, but I think I'll be heading into Dragon Age, soon.

I got to run my Mutants and Masterminds game last weekend, where we finally got to introduce the third regular member of the team. I think if I can pick up one more regular player, I'll be happy - I can use an NPC for the fifth pilot.

I've been reading the first volume of Showcase Presents : Green Lantern, collecting Hal Jordan's Silver Age adventures. I'm about halfway through, but I think it'll deserve a post of its own when I'm done.

Lastly, I had an excellent stroke of luck yesterday - on one of my irregular toy hunts, I managed to turn up the Marvel Universe figure of Bullseye, one of the very few I had missed, as well as the 'Super Powers' version of Parademon from the DC Classics line. Toys 'R Us is apparently exclusively reactivating certain oldler DC Classics waves - I may yet find an Aquaman to complete the Gorilla Grodd wave.

Toy Hunting, Addendum

Well! I found a great little site with good visual representations of the figures from two of the three lines I collect! Infinite Heroes, sadly, does not have pictures on the site, but Marvel Universe and DC Classics do!

DC Classics : http://comicfigs.net/Line/DCUC.htm
Marvel Universe : http://comicfigs.net/Line/MU.htm

So those are excellent resources for people who'd like to see the scope of the toylines in question.

Toy Hunting

I made thr rounds at the local Wal-Marts, Targets, and Toys 'R Us this weeknd, looking for new toys, after managing to score DC Classics Wave 1 Batman and Penguin from Amazon for decent prices.

One Wal-Mart had a new set of Marvel Universe figures - Wolverine (Blue and Gold costume, no mask); Jean Grey; Vision; Sunfire (listed as 'Marvel's Sunfire', perhaps for trademark reasons?); and Warpath (in X-Force garb).

And a Spider-Man (House of M variant). I admit it, I was weak.

Another Wal-Mart had four of the seven members of DC Classics Wave 10 - the Imperiex Wave. Picked up Batman (Black costume); Robotman II; Beast Boy; and Power Girl. Still need Forager, Joker, and Man-Bat.

All in all, good hunting.

CandidGamera vs. Collectoritis

I'm a collector. I'm driven to collect things. Not just random things, mind you. It has to be a set of things, and I'm usually able to resist until I buy the first one. Once I've got one, I have a strong desire to buy them all.

I'd been able to resist superhero action figures for a very long time, but then DC and Mattel came out with The DC Infinite Heroes line.


These are 3.75 inch figures (aka 'G.I. Joe scale') with good articulation and nice detail. What sold me, though, i s that they lead off the line with lesser-known figures like Adam Strange. They come as singles, 3-Packs, and 6-Packs most commonly.

The downside is that the female figures, in an effort to give them realistic proportions, have arms and legs too thin to support middle joints. So no elbows or knees for the ladies.

Complimenting that line is the Marvel Universe line.


Also 3.75" scale, the Marvel Universe line is slightly more upscale - the figures tend to have more articulation, and nearly all of them include an accessory. And like Infinite Heroes, the first batches included some more obscure characters like Union Jack. Of course, the price point is a little higher.


The Marvel Universe line includes mostly 1, 2, and 3-packs.


The downside here is that some of the accessories are pretty forced or lame, andthey've already shown a fondness for producing pointless variants. Two Spider-Men, Two Punishers, Two Hulks, Three Iron Men, Two Johnny Storms, Two Ms. Marvels.. The upside is that the women actually have the same articulation as the boys.

The last line I started picking up has actually been running for a long time, necessitating a lot of catch-up buying on my part - the DC Classics line. These are 6-inch action figures with excellent detail and articulation. They go for about $12 or $13 apiece, which isn't too bad. Collecting all the figures in a given 'wave' of figures give you the pieces to build a larger 'extra' character, which is fun, but hell on someone with collectoritis.


So, I will, from time to time, post some pictures to talk about these lines of toys. As soon as I get used to Blogger's picture-posting conditions so I can do it more creatively than I did this time.