Archive for September, 2008:
Marvel Universe figures
I started reading the comments here and blew them off thinking… huh, just a few months back everyone loved the figures, now these guys are complaining about the look?
But upon going to the actual pictures at Marvelous News the figures don’t look nearly as impressive as the initial photos. It looks like the sculpt is intact, but compare the Bullseye uncarded and Bullseye promo shot, or the flaming Human Torch uncarded and promo shots. Some of these figures aren’t translating well. Perhaps it’s just the angles of the poses but the shoulder joints in some poses look unusual when they join the torso, some of the detail looks washed out. They just look… off.
On the plus side, Marvelous News has this as Wave 1, and they won’t hit for a while so we’ve got time to fix it right?
The line up:
- Black Panther
- Bullseye
- Daredevil
- Human Torch
- Human Torch (variant powered down, or is the variant powered up?)
- Iron Man
- Iron Man (Stealth Armor)
- Punisher
- Silver Surfer
- Spider-Man
Nick Fury on DVD, finally
Long-time Marvel fans know that there’s a ton of Marvel movies waiting for DVD release, if for no other reason than for cult appeal and die-hard comic fans who want to know what the hype was. Examples? The Generation X made for TV movie, the Spider-Man live action series, Doctor Strange, Howard the Duck (which did get a region 2 DVD release last year).
This week, however, we can cross Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD off that list. Best Buy is promoting it in its weekly ad along with the other Iron Man related content (boxed sets, Blu Ray, single disk, two-disk releases… come on now!) Maybe with the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine we can get the Generation X movie released, and then if Silver Surfer ever gets off the ground (pun intended) we can have the 80′s Fantastic Four movie. Marvel would do well to realize that the movies are already out there in bootleg copies and imports being sold to hard core collectors for well above the price of a copy of Ghost Rider or Fantastic Four. While the market is small, they’re willing to bear a premium cost for these things, and if you sell it at a reasonable rate, you’ll probably get a fair number of curiosity seekers too.
No more Mega-sized?
I saw this on the Super Hero Squad Forum and so I checked out Figures.com’s Q&A where a Hasbro rep says Mega-sized figures might be a thing of the past
FIGURES.COM: The Superhero Squad line has proven popular over the years with kids and collectors alike. Will fans be seeing more larger scaled figures in this line similar to the Apocalypse or Galactus?
HASBRO: There are no current plans for mega-scale Squad figures in 2009.
What exactly does that mean in the end? Mega Scale figures haven’t been selling? They’re struggling for new ideas for characters popular enough to get mega-figures? They realized how silly a mega-sized Wendigo would be? We’ll most likely never really know. Speculation on!
Be warned though, visiting the site treats you to nearly 30 flashing ads and then just teases a Superhero Times Q&A featuring… well, the same set of ads and even some text ads. Firefox + Ad Blocking Extension = a much more enjoyable reading experience, especially given the time it takes to render the page with ads.
This may be our last farewell post… on Winter Soldier.
Same news, different delay:
ITEM(S) NOT YET SHIPPED
Item number: 78452
Item name: Marvel Super Hero Squad – City in Crisis: Spider-Man, Mary Jane Watson, Green Goblin and Sandman
Quantity: 1
Estimated ship date: 12/23/2008Item number: 78453
Item name: Marvel Super Hero Squad – Winter Soldier Saga: Captain America, Falcon, Winter Soldier and Crossbone
Quantity: 1
Estimated ship date: 12/23/2008
Once again, you need to contact Hasbro to let them know that you still want these figures, now scheduled to ship sometime around Christmas apparently.
Marvel Universe Update
From Marvelous News’s new Q & A:
MN: How is the 3 3/4″ Marvel line coming along? Has there been any kind of updates, changes or additions made since Comic-Con that you can talk about?
Hasbro: The line is coming along great – we’re finalizing the 4th wave of single carded figures right now and we’re hard at work on the 5th wave for 2009. We’re continuing to partner closely with Marvel Publishing to make sure that there is a tight relationship between comic and toy. We’re also in the middle of nailing down the full year 2010 lineup, which is always exciting. The fan reaction has been tremendous for this new line and we’re looking at all sorts of exciting new possibilities and ideas!
So in sum: at least 5 waves have been worked on for 2009, the lineup is planned through 2010, and they hope the line stays connected with the comics.
External Rumorbusting
The status of the 60′s Batman TV series are famously rumor riddled. Lying in the Gutters is famously rumor riddled. Put the two together and you get… an editorial at TV Shows On DVD.
I’m 67% sure Rich will post a response on LITG about some of the statements made, but a few things stood out and I figured sine there haven’t been any good Super Hero Squad rumors lately (although I’m positive another crop of “Is the line doomed? Winter Soldier still isn’t out, Sentry still isn’t out, Ultimate Hulk isn’t out, Collector’s Pack 2 still isn’t out!” rumors to start any day now) I’d just sort out a few misconclusions from the TV Shows on DVD site (which I actually like, and if they ever read this, hopefully they’ll take this as constructive as it’s intended to be.
1) It’s not a CBR article. It’s an edition of LITG. A difference, though subtle, is that most in the comics world know not to blame CBR if Rich is wrong. It’s tantamount to citing something from Steven King’s column in Entertainment Weekly as “Entertainment Weekly said a lot of books nowdays are stoopid”. LITG is generally treated as a wholly separate beast and it’s probably better that way.
2) Who owns what…
“Let’s clear that up, though, about whom under the Time Life conglomerate umbrella owns the character of “Batman” (and related characters and trademarks). We’re told, time and again by people at the company, that it’s DC Comics, and not any other division of Time Life! The folks at Warner Bros. Pictures does not own Batman, nor does Warner Home Video (as we relayed at the bottom of our recent report of what WHV execs said on the subject at a live online chat held a week ago at the Home Theater Forum). And these “sister” companies to DC Comics have exactly as much right to tell DC what to do, as you and I have to tell our own siblings what to do (i.e., none). And the parent company apparently has very little interest in stepping in and telling these individual divisions how to run their day-to-day operations.”
Right… but what Rich is suggesting is that Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc., which does own DC Comics and is, in turn, owned by Time Warner, via their ownership of DC. While WB Pictures and WHV are sisters to DC, it’s not because they’re all owned by Time Warner, it’s because they’re all owned by Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc. What Rich is suggesting is that Warner Brother Entertainment, because DC is it’s subsidiary, is “A Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.” (as they note at the bottom of their website) owns what DC owns. An imperfect analogy would be the court system. At any given appellate level, no court is really able to inflict law upon the next… that would DC and WB Pictures for instance. They both, however, are bound by the decisions of the court above them. This would be Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc. The subsidiaries report not to each other, but to the same boss.
Rich doesn’t suggest any co-subsidiary owns any rights over any other, but rather that the company that owns the company that owns the rights, owns the rights by owning the rights owners.
How much day to day control WB Entertainment Inc. exerts is also subject to rumor… looking into the rumors regarding the “Death of Batman” is a good cross-section of the rumors surrounding WB control over DC. However, the fact remains, they own the rights owners.
Suggesting that the parent company has “little interest” in telling the divisions how to run the day to day operations is just conjecture, and in this case, off point. Just because Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc. can’t force a company it owns and a company it does not own to come to an agreement regarding rights issues, does not mean that Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc. doesn’t have some say in what goes on. TV Shows on DVD may have its sources saying there’s no interest in telling the divisions what to do, but LITG has its sources saying the opposite. Truth? Probably in the middle.
Anyway, the rest of the TV On DVD article is a list of parties that may or may not have some possible claim to a possible slice of the pie.
For instance, on costumes: “In fact, we have heard it said that some of those designs were copyrighted (though we’ve never been clear on the truth of that).”
On the Batmobile: “It’s rumored that the unique Batmobile design warrants royalties or residuals.”
On props: “It’s rumored that the unique Batmobile design warrants royalties or residuals. Other props, both large (Bat-Boat, Bat-Cycle, Bat-Copter) and small (utility belt gadgets, designs of something like a batarang or bat-phone, villain props, maybe even the Shakespeare-switch to the Batcave) could all possibly be unique enough to the show to require some sort of addition [sic] license for a DVD release.”
On an old lawsuit: “While we’ve heard that this particular lawsuit may be over (we’re not sure), all of these issues would have to be taken care of prior to a DVD release.”
The optimist in me thinks that most of these issues would be easily remedied once the owners of the footage and the owners of the characters get together. If, and this is a big if, the owners of certain possible claims (props, costumes) have legitimate claims, then the fact that they haven’t come forward in the past 4 decades to make their rights, or at least their claims, known (taking them from possible rights owners to known parties) may extinguish some of these potential claims, and those claims that survive… well… honestly now, how many pennies per unit could it really take to pay off a potential prop designer currently getting nothing?
So there you go, my take on the rumor busting of others.
Poll Results, New Poll – Villains
Ok, Poll results are in (and have been for a while… yeah, we’re a little backed up here) but in short, with 129 votes cast results for most wanted X-Character Super Hero Squad figure are:
Madrox 32 votes (24%)
Warpath 15 votes (11%)
Dazzler 62 votes (48%)
Cannonball 20 votes (15%)
And Dazzler is THE shock. Almost half of all votes cast despite her recent status as X-Curiosity (mainly because in recent years, the sole reason to give her an appearance has been to subject her to various questions and curiosities. Example: Jean Grey’s Genosha Invasion X-Men where she appears, dodges questions about her ex-pregnancy, her ex-boyfriend Longshot and her ex-rebellion in Mojoworld. Or New Excalibur where she appears, is possibly immortal, and dodges questions about it. Or in Uncanny X-Men where she appears, makes no mention of how she left Excalibur in part to reunite with Longshot who then also appears mysteriously in X-Factor with no mention made of what went on during their reconciliation. ) But she does have classic status, appearing during one of the X-Men’s major glory days, has some mainstream media exposure (granted, it’s all old by now) and is now back in the X-Men proper.
As for the rest, Madrox takes second while former X-Force teammates Warpath and Cannonball take up the bottom half.
And now for the new poll:
We’ve done Solo Books. We’ve done Team Books. We’ve done X-Books. This poll was going to be characters without ANY book, but most easily recognized characters are in one book or another so it would probably end up as a battle of the B-List characters (which is in itself a whole different poll) so we went with villains, and no, not because that’s the name of the new Heroes storyline. They rarely get more than a mini, and with the occasional exception of Weapon X and Thunderbolts, they rarely get any sort of indepth run to explore the characters.
Standard disclaimers for this sort of poll: rounding means results may not equal 100%, characters who’ve been given a “The Case For” don’t get a poll entry, we’re not official so while you’re opinion is important, it doesn’t guarantee results here, and finally the poll is a little buggy in relying on cookies or something to prevent ballot stuffing and as such, it’s not necessarily foolproof.
Mr. Sinister – Perpetual thorn in the X-Men’s side, he may have recently met one of his more final ends during Messiah Complex, but let’s be honest, he’s survived worse than blaster fire (in fact… his earlier appearances spent a lot of time explaining how he’s pretty much invulnerable, had malleable skin, was mostly vulnerable to Cyclops’s eyebeams) so there’s a strong chance he’ll come back to much with Summers DNA. Plus, what good is having the third Summers brother exposed if Sinister isn’t able to have some fun with it.
Thanos – The premier cosmic villain, the man behind the Infinite Gauntlet, the man that’s brought the universe to the brink of destruction time and again, only to have it screwed up one way or another, sometimes due to his own ego. Like all good villains, Thanos may currently be dead, but he’s come back from worse. Or at least just as bad.
Klaw – Master of sound, enemy of the Fantastic Four, Avengers, and Black Panther, frequent member of the Masters of Evil, imagine a grinning Klaw with translucent pink plastic energy crackling from his hand and you ask yourself what villain is more perfect for this line. Recently defeated in battle against the Fantastic Four, he’s probably the only member of this list not currently believed dead.
Doppleganger – The Spider-Man doppelganger from the Infinity War was just one of the many, many evil dopplegangers to plague Earth’s heroes during that War. While the remaining doppelgangers went wherever dead doppleganger’s go, the Demogoblin’s mystic energy kept the Spider-ganger alive. He may, emphasis on may, have died at the end of Maximum Carnage, but as the list of Spider-Villains that haven’t had figures made is getting thinner and thinner, and the Doppleganger remains a solid lower-level (however one measures level) Spider-villain, he’s not that unlikely.
