The Rumor Buster

Stealth Iron Man: Blue vs. Black.

I’ve noticed that one trend in Super Hero Squad rumors tends to be costumes. I’ve previously discussed 616 Mr. Fantastic, Sabretooth, and even Ultimate Hulk (although that was more of a size thing than a costume) and now I’m addressing the greatest burning question right now: Why do customizers make Stealth Iron Man dark blue?

The answers tend to vary… I’ve heard that customizers do it because that’s the way the other action figures represent Stealth Iron Man, which is too simplistic. I’ve heard that it’s easier to do blue, which, once again is rather simplistic.

Actually, let me back up a bit… the question of why the armors are painted blue comes from the perception that stealth means black. While yes, the original Iron Manual does refer to the stealth armor as jet black, color was not such an issue with later designs as the “stealth” aspect of the armor came from energy bending, wave evading, super-duper technology.

Back to the blue armor…

The mother of all answers came from a gent who said, and I’ll paraphrase to make it sound LESS crazy… “before digital printing, there was no way to produce black, so dark blue was used.”

Note, the actual language had a little dis-jointed language and some talk of “pre-90′s digital printing”, but without proper structure so it’s impossible to tell if he’s talking about (a) printing before the 1990′s digital printing, or (b) digital printing before the 1990′s. I’m going to assume he means (a) because… well… that’s the crazy answer that makes more sense.

Now, the actual answer as to why Stealth Iron Man is dark blue: Because it almost always gets drawn that way! All the way back to Iron Man 152. Cover Browser shows a nice cover of Iron Man 152.

Yes, the background, which was some early photo/art collage style (and in my opinion, done much more tastefully than the Marvel Universe card set from the late 90’s that tried the same thing) is blue, but to the discerning eyes (or, as I like to call ‘em, “most people”) you’ll notice black. The armor is black, the text is black, the line art is black.

Now, having never had a chance to interview the artist, I can’t tell you if the dark blue highlights were chosen for pure aesthetics (as opposed to using, say, gray-tones, or white highlights) but I can tell you the look is sharp. Green highlights? Dark red? A gray-tone Iron Man in a full-color comic? Maybe the right artist could pull them off, but the dark blue on black just works.

So why blue? I can’t speak for each customizer, but it’s either a mistaken perception that the blue highlights are the actual color of the armor, an attempt to recreate the classic, iconic armor color scheme, or maybe just because it looks good.

Either way, lack of pre-90’s black ink isn’t the answer.

Now, of course, I feel the urge to address the no-black ink rumor (well, I guess it’s more of a belief or an assumption.) It’s bunk. Total bunk. As fans of the “dot” art look that resulted from half-toning in pre-90’s printing will know, (see recent issues of Mighty Avengers for Iron Man, Doctor Doom and the Sentry in a half-toned adventure) that dot look from old comics comes from the CMYK printing process that was used in early printing.

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (aka Black) inks are used in various combinations to create the remaining spectrum of colors. Layman’s answer: the pattern of the ink “dots” results in what we see.

For good (but more technical than I want to get into) explanations, try Tech Color’s explanation, or, Manga Tutorials explanation of the difference between CMYK and RGB printing techniques, off-set printing versus digital printing, or this piece from Comic Artists Direct, which is dated, but so isn’t all good history, and finally the fine folks at Gutter Zombie discuss the differences in CMYK and RGB printing in depth.

When all is said and done though, the fact that black ink is one of the 4 essential parts of color printing in “pre-90’s digital coloring”, pretty much shuts down the claim that the Stealth Armor is blue because black wasn’t available.

Now, keep in mind I’ve simplified the explanations to make it more user-friendly, but if you’re at all interested in the secret world of four color printing, check out those links and use them as a gateway. Who knows… maybe now you’ll enjoy that Mighty Avengers story a little more.

Edit: Confession time… the “no black ink in pre-90′s digital printing” guy was my word count stalker. I was going to give idiocy the benefit of anonymity, until I ran across him randomly flamebaiting me in a forum thread I’d never participated in and telling me to not bother posting. On top of being called stupid for not believing Hasbro reps secretly pulled Collector’s Pack out of anti-wheelchair sentiment and then explaining their rational to a friend of some guy on the internet (and then having my insulter backpeddle by saying he never said I was stupid, just that I’ve never said anything smart) I wonder why I was trying to be nice. Try and do a nice thing for someone and this is what you get. Sheesh!

The Squad so far…

Cool Toy Review’s big reveal for tonight is apparently this snapshot from Marvel’s presentation showcasing the Squad so far. Worth noting? Collector’s Pack 2 Professor X, Iceman, Juggernaut, Shadowcat, Chrome Silver Surfer (alright… the whole CP2 is there…), Kraven, the upcoming new Ultimate Hulk and re-done Galactus, both the Gray and the Silver First Appearance Iron Man…

It does not feature the City in Crisis and Winter Soldier figures (at least I didn’t see them), or the Electro wave, or most of the upcoming Hulk and IM repaints, so imagine the spread to get a bit bigger next year.

It’s actually pretty impressive to see them all in one place… less so for those of us that already have our figures stored in one place (with the exception of those elusive unreleased figures.)

How many Spider-Men do you see?

More Super Hero Squad photos from NYCC

I know I ragged on Cool Toy Review for jumping on the Guess-the-SKU bandwagon with the Wolverine/Hand Ninja (back when all we had for news on the set was “The H”), but they’re not bad folks. In fact, they’ve even got more photos of the Super Hero Squad figures shown at this year’s NYCC.

Obviously the big news was our first look at Mary Jane and the City in Crisis set, and the big rumor was the dubious Wheelchair theory discussed in other posts, but the eagle-eyed observers will notice subtler things, namely all those re-paints.

First off, you’ll notice that there were 8 Iron Man related figures grouped together here so it’s a good sign we’ll be getting Iron Man wave. No word yet on whether it will be another wave of 4-packs (as the first Iron Men were, and as repaint sets usually go), or whether it’ll be 2-packs like the Hulk figures, but we’ll see soon enough. I still can’t tell if Crimson Dynamo is a different paint job but my computer screen may just be off. Same goes for Iron-Spider-Man, but even if he’s a straight re-release fans of Avengers: The Initiative will know why they need 2 suit Scarlet Spiders (and why 3 suits is currently too many.)

In prior posts we mentioned how Ares and Thor look less metallic than the current photos, but looking at Spidey’s squirting a black web which is a relief to variant hunters who purchased the Target white-web shooting Spider-Man shown in earlier promo shots. Shield-slinging Cap looks a lot darker than the other Captain Americas we see, and Red Skull’s Cosmic Cube is gray, not the clear plastic we’ve seen on Hasbro Toy Shop.

As we discussed in the Prototypes post what you see isn’t always what you get. Will these turn out to be surprise paint-change variants like the Silver Iron Man/Gray Iron Man Hall of Armor 4-packs, or is it just a matter of prototypes not matching end results?

We’ll find out soon since most of these figures are scheduled for release on Hasbro Toy Shop within the next month and a half.

City in Crisis, Winter Soldier official pictures.

And for real breaking news (as opposed to just rumor squashing)…

Hasbro also has up the first official pic of City In Crisis here and the Winter Soldier set is here

City in Crisis Description:

Spider-Man has battled his entire life to keep his loved ones safe, but sometimes even his best isn’t enough. Two of his most dangerous enemies have kidnapped Mary Jane! They’ve got her captive in a position too precarious for the wall crawler to take any chances.

Help Spidey save the day and come to the aid of his smart and sassy girlfriend, Mary Jane! Fun four-pack of chunky, stylized characters includes Spider-Man, Mary Jane Watson, Green Goblin and Sandman figures.

Winter Soldier Description:

Cap’s old partner Bucky is back, but he’s been brainwashed by the bad guys, and become the dangerous Winter Soldier! Captain America and Falcon rush to find him, hoping to stop him before he gets into real trouble. Unfortunately, Crossbones is waiting for them, and he can’t wait to tear into the two Super Heroes.

Team up with this fun, four-pack and create lots of exciting adventures! Chunky, stylized characters include Captain America, Falcon, Winter Soldier and Crossbones figures.

Long story short: no, you can not tell your Super Hero Squad figures from their foreheads alone, that was not Kraven’s mane, and official is cool.

Blade, Red Skull at Hasbro.com

The Abomination 2-pack for the Hulk movie wave 1 is available for pre-order now at Hasbro Toy Shop and today they’ve added the new Blade, Sentry, Red Skull and Electro 2-packs.

Those last 4 aren’t up for pre-order yet, but they’ve got entries which is usually a good sign that pre-orders are coming.

Addition to the Collector’s Pack Post

You can tell I was pre-occupied last night when I posted about the Collector’s Pack.

I forgot to mention that marketing decisions and character selection are done before sculpting, drafting of solicitation material, release of that solicitation materials to the public, and demonstrations of promo-shots. Hasbro has been known to announce less-than-desired figures before, but they always follow through with the figure.

In character selection, marketing and manufacturing typically look at what figures will sell, what figures are requested, (and during the Jesse Falcon Toybiz Marvel Legends era) what figures complete sets.

Deciding, ex post facto, that the wheelchair was going to undersell the line, is not just bizarre marketing strategy, wasteful and counter-intuitive but… well… this is a family blog so we’ll watch our language.

The original poster has followed up with information that he didn’t hear the information, but that it came from a friend who heard it from a rep (telephone game! I love it!)

The gentleman who’s spreading it is using anecdotal evidence that Professor X has been a peg-warmer before, but… well… one man’s experience is not necessarily determinative of the rest.

Points other people have made on the thread: well… my word count stalker posted to roll his eyes and say “here we go again”, and a Mr. Woodsmok pointed out that 4 months isn’t much headtime for Hasbro to get production amped up, packaged, sent out to the multi-national corporation that is Walmart (and who typically pre-orders way in advance), etc., etc.

But like I said, maybe it’ll turn out to be true. Maybe not.

Fresh off the rumor truck: The new Collector’s Pack

The freshest rumor I’ve come across yet: That Collector’s Pack 2 will be released this August as a Walmart Exclusive.

Key parts of the rumor:
1) That it was pulled because Hasbro thought kids didn’t want characters in wheelchairs (which is non-sensical because if that was the case, Hasbro would have replaced Xavier with any other character they could think of, including another repaint which would lower the cost of the unit even further. Besides that, of course, we have the fact that Professor X is a long-time mainstay of toy lines featuring the X-Men, from back in the days of 5-inch Toy Biz, X-Men movie figures, The Marvel Legends Galactus series, so why marketing or whoever would think that one figure out of the 8 in the pack would negatively effect sales to the point it offsets the market for collectors who want new characters for their sets…)

2) That demand for Xavier brought the set back from the dead (which doesn’t carry on with the anecdotal experience of message board travelling where people are either calling for Chrome Silver Surfer, Iceman in Booties, or debating Shadowcat’s sculpt)

3) That Professor X will come with Cerebro, which means either the sculpt is going to be re-done or we’re going to have the first ever non-attached figure accessory (what toy-manufacturers like to call a choking hazard in a line that’s safe for 3 and up)

4) That it’s a Walmart exclusive.

The problem:

The rumor has no source.

The main source, the one that’s posting from place to place, is using a guy from Sirstevesguide by a guy who’d posted 12 times in 3 years who says he heard it from a representative at NYCC (who then kept the information from everyone else). Telephone game anyone?

Does that mean it’s guaranteed wrong? Or that there isn’t a legitimate source for this information? No. It could happen, and heck, it could happen exactly how this rumor says, but in the meantime we’re looking at a fairly unsourced rumor, with questionable authority, based on a dubious premise of action figure discrimination and unusual marketing theory.

Generally with these types of “reports” the toy forums will start the normal circular self-referential stuff that normally goes on (which I already explained once before with the example of A posting one place, B reading the post and reposting, C reading that post and posting elsewhere, with A reading that post and determining that his original post is now verified) and soon enough it will be considered true but at least people reading this will think twice. The irritating part? It’s already being posted in the typical forums as truth.

We’ll see in August or maybe earlier how much, if any, of Mr. Slayer’s rumor turns out to be true but I’m going to treat this rumor the same way I’ve treated every single “release date” that’s been promised so far. You know, the guys who heard it from this guy they met that the pack would come out in May. Then June. October. November. January. No no, February, for real this time. March.