New comics, Thanos, and wieners.
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The Marvel Select Thanos figure is now out in stores, and baby, it’s fantastic. Or, dare I say, Than-tastic? Why yes, I do dare say that. It’s a freakin’ huge chunk o’plastic, and he comes with a figure of his true love, Death, complete with removable skull mask. Thany (as his pals call him) also comes with an extra swapable hand wearing the Infinity Gauntlet. The paint job is well done, and the overall quality of the figure gives me hope for the forthcoming Watcher figure, which is a must buy.
Discussing the Thanos figure with pal Cully, the biggest fan of Thanos creator Jim Starlin that I know, I mentioned that I hope to see more of Marvel’s cosmic characters show up in action figure form. The In-Betweener would be kind of neat, and Cully brought up the Living Tribunal (complete with hovering head, courtesy some kind of complex magnet arrangement?). Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you the second worst-selling Marvel action figure series ever. (Here’s the first.)
Of course, not that I’m buying a lot of toys at the moment, since I’m waiting until the toy room at the new house is set up before adding more to the collection. Yes, we’re going to have a room for toys…how delightfully decadent. But the girlfriend continually refers to it as “the Spider-Man room,” which makes me worried that my collection will be confined to a rickety table in one corner while her boatload of Spider-goodies fill up the room. Ah, well.
Now, to the other fantastic thing that our store received on Wednesday…
…All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.
Clean, uncluttered art…visually interesting supporting characters…beautiful coloring…snappy writing…situations we’ve seen plenty of times before, made fresh again…a powerful and friendly-looking Superman…there’s a lot to love in this comic.
Though I bet it’ll get nitpicked to pieces by those sorts of people who don’t like things that are marginally different from that which has come before.
Don’t listen to them…trust me, for I am old, and wise in these matters. It’s a great darn funnybook, deserving of your attention. It’s Superman boiled down to its basic essence, similar to Morrison’s work on New X-Men. Unlike New X-Men, which was primarily Morrison taking a tour of long-abused X-cliches and showing how they could actually be interesting if handled correctly, the new Superman title simply pares everything down to the basics everyone knows (or should know) about Supes: Lex hates Superman, Superman is a hero, Clark is a goof, Jimmy is Superman’s best friend, Lois is a reporter. No company-wide crossovers or supporting character subplots here…just plain ol’ Silver Age super adventure.
Other new items this week:
Mad Kids #1, the “all-ages” version of Mad Magazine, is now out, and the primary differences between it and its apparently not all ages counterpart is more puzzle pages, an interview section (with a band I’ve never heard of), and more pull-out posters and pages and cut-out crafts. It’s not as watered down as I feared it might be (the cover features Gromit of Wallace and… fame spewing out a river of vomit, for example), so maybe it’ll get the necessary parental disapproval it needs to help it sell.
Captain Universe: X-23 – Primary reaction of our customers to the cosmically-powered version of the female Wolverine (i.e. her glowing blue claws): “aw, c’mon.” Not exactly putting its best foot forward, I’m afraid.
Supergirl #3 – It has the (apparently) pre-Crisis Luthor, in full battle armor, fighting Supergirl. Ordinarily, I’d be all over this book, since I’m a Luthor fan…but since I read the first issue of Supergirl, I’m pretty gunshy about buying any more.
Complete Omaha The Cat Dancer trade paperback – With a cover (not safe for work) that I absolutely cannot display on the rack. Oy.
“Everybody’s a comic book artist”
“‘He has wiener vision,’ Sam said of his hero, who looks like a giant hot dog in a bun with stick arms and legs. ‘Hot dogs shoot out of his eyes and they’re poisoned, so if the criminals eat them, they get killed.'”
