The Rumor Buster

Danger of Dreadknight and Iron Monger Attacks coming soon to HTS?

With Iron Man coming to DVD on September 30, it would be really appropriate for Hasbro to put out the upcoming Iron Man 4-packs, and they’ve already put up preliminary pages for the Iron Monger Attacks set and Danger of Dreadknight sets.

And remember, just because Hasbro puts up preliminary pages does not necessarily guarantee that the products are imminent. Remember Winter Soldier was up as a pre-order in May before being taken down, and although the pages for Ultimate Hulk and the new Galactus Mega Packs are still available for viewing at the main Hasbro site, the coming soon pages were pulled, as were the pages for the ever-upcoming Sentry wave. Still, it’s a good sign.

Super Hero Squad Fabric?

Ok, standard disclaimer about not linking to ongoing eBay auctions because more often then not, the ones that benefit are the scalpers and all that… but if you go to eBay and search for Super Hero Squad Fabric you’ll see one of the more interesting licensing examples of Marvel’s Super Hero Squad. Literal bolts of fabric. Perfect for making pillow cases or curtains, or maybe even a backdrop for your display case? A search on Google Shopping shows some varieties of color. So puzzles? Check. Operation Hulk? Check. Fabric by the yard? Check. What’s next? Birthday party napkins? Bubble dispensers? The future is wide open.

Infinite Heroes Black Adam et al

If you’re not willing to pay the still-exorbitant eBay prices for Black Adam, Qwardian Weaponeer, Hush and the Manhunter robot (seriously… I just saw bidding up to $11 on a figure) you can try Impulse Creation. As a warning, I have NOT tried them before, and this is my first attempt at using them, but they have the figures in stock for $5.69, and shipping started at $6.50 for UPS. 4 figures, plus shipping, equaled just under $30. Anyone have any good results from this store?

Edit: 9/26/08 – Came home today to find my box with the figures in it. 4 days from order to opening isn’t that bad, but as we all know past performance does not guarantee results. I probably won’t get a chance to update the profiles until next weekend but who knows.

Headlines gone wild!

Every so often I come across some hype or some marketing that (in my opinion) humorously gets it all wrong. Either it markets a story that’s not what is being told, it promises things it can’t deliver, or best of all, it just sounds confused.

Take this blurb for X-Men: Worlds Apart for instance.

Point 1: Storm has in fact returned to the X-Men in Ellis’s Astonishing X-Men. How long-lasting, who knows, but given the recent interviews suggesting a more fluid X-team structure (thus allowing Emma Frost to be in every X-story. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing) there’s no reason to believe Storm can’t continue being an X-Man who only pops up for occasional stories.

Point 2: Headline for that blurb for X-Men: Worlds Apart – “Storm returns to the X-Men”

Point 3: Marketing hype trying to explain why this story “matters” (and presumably why it was named X-Men: Worlds Apart rather than Storm (vol. __) or something less distinctly marketed because presumably the average reader is more likely to pick up an X-title focusing exclusively on one character, than a solo mini, and for the eventual bookstore placement it’s presumably better to have it placed with the other X-books, rather than next to the Spider-man and Squadron Supreme trades) – blah blah blah “What she discovers, though, may force her into a position where she must decide: Will she remain a queen or return to her mutant teammates, the X-Men?”

Come on now. Calling it X-Men: Worlds Apart seems like a cheap attempt to game the alphanumeric organization, a little like aaa____username profiles. Marvel has gotten a little shameless with this recently, for example, in tying up both it’s Excalibur and Exiles titles, Marvel threw them into a mini-series called X-Men Die by the Sword. Magneto, despite having already carried a few mini-series, gets his origin re-told in X-Men: Magneto Testament. But it’s an unfortunate fact of editorial mandate that the events of a solo-character mini-series are unlikely to over-rule the developments of two ongoing series (Astonishing and Black Panther), and if you want us to at least pretend there’s a chance something, anything, is actually going to happen, how about using a headline that plays along?

And we now return you to your every day programming.

Marvel’s December Solicitations

Still no sign of the fabled Super Hero Squad comic series in the December solicitations but what do we have?

Spider-Man Brand New Day Yearbook – apparently has OHOTMU style profiles that (many would hope) explains some of the post-OMB storyline craziness.

Venom Dark Origin 5 – so far the story has just made Eddie more of a creepy loser but who knows how the story will turn out.

Lots of solicitations are classified until after Secret Invasion 8, so there’s many, many gaping holes for titles like Initiative, Ms. Marvel and Iron Man. The Fantastic Four Cosmic special is equally classified, but Marvel seems to be insisting that Sue is due to die. If she is, that would explain why they’re pumping out appearances of the Lady Liberators in Hulk, She-Hulk and the She-Hulk one-shot.

Immortal Iron Fist 21 gives us yet another possible glimpse into yet another possible future. Some day I expect Marvel to do a Countdown Arena type story where various characters from various futures fight to the death. My bet for favorite battle? The Moon Knight of 2099 will team up with the Iron Fist of 3099 to battle Killraven (the first one) whose brain has been placed in a Deathlok unit.

The Marvel Apes series has had a few surprises but it seems like December’s 0 issue, chock full of reprint goodness, is just a test to see how padded the eventual hardcover needs to be.

New Warriors, the title (issue 19 that is) features more of Thrasher’s visit to yet another possible future, while New Warriors, the group (the originals that is) visit Nova in Nova 19. Between Avengers The Initiative, appearances in New Warriors and now Nova, the original New Warriors (or Counter Force or whatever Marvel’s trying to bill them as now) are getting as much as, if not more, exposure than the group that has their name.

Marvel has fallen in love with one shots recently and this month is no different, with one shots for She-Hulk, Moon Knight (a Christmas special at that), Thor, Wolverine and Punisher receiving one-shots, and Dark Reign following up on Secret Invasion’s aftermath.

Thunderbolts 127 is apparently setting the stage for a board clearing, game changing new line-up and things don’t look good for Songbird. Poor Songbird.

What If is back with another set of one-shots, and Marvel’s Noir series of mini-series kick off with Spider-Man and X-Men.

Marvel’s Adventures line only offers up Spider-Man, Avengers, Fantastic Four and Super heroes this month, but Wolverine and Power Pack continues.

And wrapping things up, Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men Kingbreaker are leading into the War of Kings.

One more last word on Winter Soldier/City in Crisis

And that additional, final last word is… a date. September 23, 2007. One month, 5 e-mails threatening to cancel the order… one can only hope that this is in fact the final last word.

Infinite Heroes Black Canary set on TRU?

Toys R Us has an unusual listing on their website for “DC Comics Hero 3 Pack” and they’re showing the picture for the Black Canary, Green Arrow and Green Lantern set, but not referring to the figures by name or as anything other than DC Comics Hero 3 Pack. Also unusual is their Flash 3-pack listing showing 3 prototypes two being Flash and the other a caped figure (Black Hand?)

So who knows what you’ll get, but it sounds fun, if you don’t mind paying $12.99 plus another $5 or so for shipping and handling for some figures that some reason are overpriced at $10 let alone $18. Still, keep checking stores and you’ll get lucky soon enough.