F For Fake

Some shtuff arrived this weekend. First up, the Legacy Menasor set from Hasbro Pulse. I really love this, the package is ENORMOUS, an homage to the old combiner gift sets. I am tempted to leave it as is, as it's so pretty like this. I had made plans to order a second set whenever the next Pulse sale pops up, but lo and behold, it finally sold out this week. I was thinking that the fact that it is mostly a repack, with only minimal design changes for a couple of bots, plus the high price tag, would keep it in stock a while longer. Oh well, happy to have this one.

Yeah, I have never seen one like it, and research lead to zip. Cool looking, it's the sort of thing I might pick up for $15 at Hobby Lobby, but definitely dubious of any actual vintage provenance.

Yeah, I have never seen one like it, and research lead to zip. Cool looking, it's the sort of thing I might pick up for $15 at Hobby Lobby, but definitely dubious of any actual vintage provenance.

It's not an exciting choice for sure, but it's a choice that makes sense. When EOV didn't fund, they listened to some of the fan complaints, and went with a wide appeal, classic character, at a good price point, and no popular 6" figures locked behind pay tiers. So, he may not have many bells and whistles, and the tiers don't really do anything for me personally, but there's no question he's a dramatic improvement on the TB version. For that much plastic, $200 seems fair. I backed him.

Yeah, this is the one that came immediately to mind. That beast came in its own cardboard suitcase! I basically had to just lean mine up against a wall, didn't have another space that would handle it!

Can't go wrong with those books! That 3-D Alien Worlds is one of the best covers ever!

Oh man, I could go for a shmear of lox right now!

Finally got around to unboxing these Grimlocks...or Grimslock, if you prefer. I think I prefer. The Shattered Glass and G2 decos hit pretty close together, it was a surprise. They look great. I love the metallic teal on the G2, and the Trypticon deco on SG body looks terrific. Thought about pulling out my SS86 as well to take a pic, but was ultimately too lazy. These are big chonky boys, and hold the distinction of being one of the few modern TF molds that I can transform without having to resort to a Youtube tutorial!

Oh wow, that's interesting! Like the Dreadstar comic, but tied into the Captain Power toy line? That would be interesting. I never had a ton of Captain Power stuff, but my best friend did in grade school and I thought they were very cool!.

Beauties! You know, I bet the "orange" and "red" are the same box, just in different stages of fading. Those are terrific, I'd love to dig up a green one some day!

Some recent pickups. Grabbed this DC Icons Supergirl at a garage sale today. For my money, this is the best Supergirl figure ever made, and according to eBay prices, I'm not alone in that thinking. I really loved the Icons line, really wish DC had continued it. I liked the Essentials line that followed it well enough, but Icons had accessories, great sculpts, and great character selection. The fact that we were robbed of that solicited Blue Beetle and Booster Gold two pack still chaps my hide. In other DC toy news, I am on record as not being a fan of Todd's DC Multiverse output. By biggest gripe is the character selection and designs. I understand that Batman sells, but I have no interest in modern characters, art-inspired designs, etc. I don't know anything about Dark Knights Death Metal or any of that stuff, nor do I desire to. I just want vanilla sculpts of classic DC characters designs. So, Todd hasn't had much to offer me, but things have been changing bit by bit. It started with that Blue and Gold two pack, which I had to have. Now there's a new Blue Beetle single pack figure with a different deco, and other classic characters coming. So, I have decided I will grab the classic designs as the come out, and that should be managable, since he still seems to want the line primarily focused on stuff I don't care about. So this week I picked up Captain Atom at Walmart, and Flash and Beetle at Target. I've got a couple of Knightfall Batman on their way, as well as Catman and Riddler. If I pick and choose, this could be a decent toy line. Also grabbed this Hawkeye with Sky Cycle, because how could I not?

Was able to get out and dig for the first time in a long time, this morning. Just have not had the time this summer, lots going on. Went to one of my favorite spots, and immediately scored this Marvel Comic Book Collecting box. I have been looking for this thing for many, many years. I think another one popped up in this thread not too terribly long ago, but I'm too lazy to scroll back and check. This thing came with a comic collecting kit, that included this box, a poster, some comics, a little price guide, and bags and boards, i believe. You can find the poster relatively easily if you're willing to pay for it, but the box is pretty elusive. There's a green one, and the red one, and the red one was what I had. Had to have it, really made my day. Also picked up a couple of Spidey pinbacks in nice shape, and oddly enough, a model and toy mag I'd been looking for, for my Alien collection. I'd been planning on grabbing one of these some day, they're not valuable, but I was not at all prepared to stumble across a lovely copy at a garage sale. So now it's mine! Didn't pick up many comics, but I did liberate this smut for a few bucks. I'm not a big Tim Vigil guy, but $2 for that Grips Special felt like a no brainer.

Doom Patrol is one of the all time great series. I don't have the floppies anymore, but a surprising amount of the material has been collected in omnibus form, including the silver and bronze runs, the Morrison run, Pollack's run, even Byrne's run. I'm still amazed that we not only got a tv series, but that it pulled such a large amount of material from the comics. It was its own thing, but it was also surprisingly faithful, in character and spirit, to the comics, if nothing else.

It's insane to think that it was originally solicited something like five or six years ago. What a long, winding road it took to get here today. I ordered mine, but it hasn't shipped yet. I think this will be my "spooky" read for this Halloween season.

I think the issue with collecting it consistently is that while Hickman was the ringleader, he didn't write all of the books, so how do you proceed? Some readers only want the Hickman books, which have all been collected in OHC, but some folks want ALL of the series, which I imagine gets messy with creator credits and stuff. But then again, if you only buy the Hickman OHC's, it feels like you're probably missing some of the story. I don't know that there's a perfectly clean solution, especially now that we're like 4 years into the thing, Hickman is gone, creative teams and titles have all changed. My problem coming back to it now is figuring out which titles are "essential", and which ones are just ancillary.

At first, they were doing a good job with the monthly trades, as they collected all of the various series, all in order. And that was fine, but then the events started getting their own hardcovers, and were separate from the collections, so you had to figure out where to slot those in with your reading. I sold the trades and am not going back to the hc's, but it's true, you pretty much need a map or tour guide to figure it all out, which seems dumb.

I was really enjoying the entire line of X-Books, but a bit after X of Swords I just got off track and then never got caught back up again. So I am at least a couple of years behind, but I was really loving it up to the point. Obviously the Hickman books were the better ones, but Marauders tied in closely to those stories as well. Excalibur by Howard was certainly enjoyable, but i've always been fond of the Captain Britain/Excalibur/Moore side of the X-universe. Fallen Angels was easily my least favorite, and I didn't exactly love the Wolverine stories, at least not at first. But taken as a whole, I really enjoyed the line of books. Now I have to figure out where to pick back up. It gets fairly convoluted.

I mean, I gotta say, I kinda dig these, simply as pieces of art. Not as covers, but as drawings, they're angular and funky, and have a style. It doesn't stack up well compared to his earlier, slicker style, but in and of themselves I don't hate them. Well...ok, that face on Cap is not great...I can't lie. My biggest complaint, again, is that these are just pin-ups with a bunch of funky computery effects work filling out the image. There's no storytelling here. But I could level the same complaint at a majority of covers these days.

I discovered Miller with DKR, probably not unlike a lot of kids at the time. Daredevil came just a few years before I started reading comics. However, DKR lead to my going back to read Daredevil, which I came to adore, and I also loved Ronin as well. It may very well be his peak. However, I did stay onboard through Sin City, which I also really loved, and still do. When DK2 hit I was like "Ok, I see what you're going for" and didn't outright hate it like so many did, though it definitely was a shift. He completely lost me not long after.

My biggest gripe with the Miller covers isn't the drawings themselves; it's the fact that they look like convention sketches that have been used as covers. I really hate covers that are just straight pin-ups, with no storytelling whatsoever going on. I know that ship sailed a long time ago, but it's still a major gripe of mine. As for the drawings in and of themselves, I dunno. I think the Daredevil is pretty cool, and the Thing is pretty crazy looking. The Wolvie is ugly though, sorry Frank. I was an apologist for his shift to the primitive style, particularly on DK2, but even I can only make excuses for so long.

Well, I don't know if it's good, but it's certainly not lacking in stuff happening!

Awesome, can't wait!

OH, that's good to hear, because I haven't actually read them! I missed the original releases, but I thought I'd grab this to keep the Bat-shelves complete. Had no idea of what to expect, really, so this is welcome news.

Next, a stack of dirty muties! When the Krakoa era of X-Men began, I was determined to keep up with it via the monthly digest trades, vowing that I'd eventually pick up all of the oversized hc's. I very quickly fell behind on both goals, and in the interim, prices have really shot up on the hardcovers. Last week I found an auction for a huge stack of the books I need, still sealed, and all in one group, and ended up getting them at a nice bargain. Wasn't cheap, but was still well under what I would have paid had I bought each volume individually. Now to catch up on the rest.

Some new things came in this week. First up, a couple of recent Bat-releases.