NOT LIKE THIS!!!

My Marvel Legends Hawkeye figure has been being a jerk the last week or so, repeatedly jumping off the shelf where I keep my collection, presumably because he sees a Kree spaceship or something.

To teach him a lesson, I have placed him upside down in a glass mug surrounded by plush bunnies, Teen Titans PVCs, an Iz from The Maxx and a Hello Kitty painting on cardboard.

Note how I have placed his bow above him, just tantalizingly out of his reach, and located him near a portrait of himself in happier times. I fully recognize this belies a sadistic streak on my part.

Unfortunately for him, I don't have the Scarlet Witch figure, so he'll just have to wait this one out.

Five Marvel Legends I Want to Own

Last week I rattled off my personal favorites from my current collection of Marvel Legends, but since there are a great many I don’t own—and because it’s never to early to start shopping for my January 24 birthday—here are the five figures I covet most from this line…

HONORABLE MENTION: IRON MAN
The catch here is that for all the success Iron Man has seen over the past couple years, I’ve still yet to find an action figure that captures my idealized version of the character. Some of the more modern armors like the Extremis and movie versions have been captured pretty well, but my Shellhead of choice is the classic 70’s/80’s look with the striped iron underwear and big ass power discs on his hips—that incarnation was actually in the very first series of Legends, and it looks ok, but there’s always been something off about it to me. I kinda want the figure, but I’ve just never been able to take the plunge; woe is me.

HONORABLE MENTION: WEREWOLF BY NIGHT
He only comes in the “Monsters Gift Pack”; already have Dracula (as a Flash), don’t want Frankenstein or Zombie, must have Werewolf.

5. WONDER MAN
I do not know why, but I am captivated by the Marvel Legends Wonder Man figure in a way the character himself has never come close to capturing my attention. So many times I have found him at a convention going for a reasonable price, yet I’ve stopped myself with the rationale of “Surely there’s somebody I’d rather buy than Wonder Man.” Your grip over me is a mystery, Simon Williams, in your wacky wannabe pro wrestler costume with your creepy red eyes and klunky-looking vehicle, but goodness I wish to put you on my shelf. Oh, he also comes with a tiny little Yellowjacket—neat!

4. BLACK BOLT
Putting sentimental favorites like Nova and The Flash aside, Black Bolt probably has my favorite costume in all of super hero comics, for real. I think Jack Kirby was at his zenith in creating the look for the Inhumans and their visual appeal has probably sustained them for years longer than creators have had truly revolutionary ideas for them and inspired those same folks to work harder at keeping them a vital part of the Marvel Universe just so we don’t lose those wonderful designs to limbo. I don’t think it’s possible for Black Bolt not to look awesome with his neat blue/black palette, sharply energetic lines and of course those batwings; the folks who created this figure got everything right when it came to carrying those elements over to a toy.

3. NICK FURY
As TJ noted in the comments of my last Marvel Legends post, Nick Fury is one helluva figure. I think toy designers just like artists probably strive a little harder when rendering Fury so that a guy with no powers and greying temples can hold his own among an army of costumed demigods, but ol’ Nick is also a super spy, meaning he can out-cool most mutants or aliens his own damn self, and the boost just puts him over the top. The bright white belts and pouches stand out in nice contraste to that navy blue S.H.I.E.L.D. jumpsuit, and the jet pack accessory is tough to top, especially with the big ol’ smoke trail that doubles as a stand and provides a great pose. Factor in the perfect eye patch/scowl/cigar combo to polish things off and this guy’s a must-have.

2. CABLE
A glorious by-product of 90’s excess, Cable was more or less born to be an action figure, with his many guns, belts, pouches and other accessories made to order, plus a metal arm and glowing eye that make my inner child want to squeal with delight (which happens…pretty often). I dig that Marvel Legends embraces Cable the way he was meant to be, not going for any of the stripped-down, more streamlined looks he adopted while trying to break out of his comfort zone towards the end of the 20th century, but full bore slapping his gigantic shoulder pads and copious amounts of spare ammo on the figure for maximum awesomeness. There is no figure I have pursued more doggedly than Cable as I would love to have him and Deadpool standing shoulder to shoulder in my collection, but he’s really tough to find and expensive when you do (or was last time I checked), so the search continues.

1. DEATHLOK
Like Rickey and many other people I know, I’ve got a deep-seeded attachment to Deathlok and get super-excited whenever he shows up in a comic despite not quite understanding why, outside of the fact that he’s a zombie cyborg from the future who I think has tried to kill Captain America once or twice. Actually, Rickey does have some tangible reasons for his Deathlok fandom as I’m sure many of his other devotees like Mike Perkins do as well, but for me it really does come down to the fact that the guy looks like a bad ass to the Nth degree and every time I see his rotted skull and big ass eye I just assume there’s a ballet of violence to come. The Marvel Legend of Deathlok embodies everything I dig about the character, since I really know very little about what makes him tick, but love the fact that he looks like a death metal song come to life, as is made evident with his figure. The toy seems to take elements of the 90’s version I’m more familiar with as far as his costume, mix in some of the original’s facial features, then finish off with a clunky backpack to plug his giant gun into via a tube in his chest—a true recipe for success from where I sit.

My Five Favorite Marvel Legends (That I Own)

While my Marvel Legends collection doesn’t come close to rivaling my Flash figure army, I do try and grab one for the home team whenever I’m at a convention or see a sale at a toy store, a task made pretty easy by the fact that I really dig this line.

Though I don’t have the cash to be the completist I’d like to be when it comes to Legends, I’ve still got my favorites and the ones I either found cheap or can’t remember why I bought them (well, I got Emma Frost and X-23 for Megan because she liked them; I’m not sure why I have a Beta Ray Bill—oh right: BECAUSE HE’S A HORSE WITH THOR’S POWERS).

This is the part where I ask my friends who know way more about toys and how to write about them to humor me…

HONORABLE MENTION: NOVA
I’ll be honest: I’m not as over the moon about the Nova figure as I should be given that it’s a Nova figure, however, as I just said, it’s a Nova figure, so it’s still pretty awesome and thus gets an honorable mention. I also dig that they went with the classic costume.

HONORABLE MENTION: DAREDEVIL
I waffled a few times on whether DD was number five or not, but it ultimately comes down to the fact that at least 60% of what makes the figure cool is the neat stained glass window display I can hang him on my wall with, so it’s almost like he used a performance enhancer.

5. THE THING
You can’t pose or move The Thing around much, but you don’t need to because he’s a big, bad ass looking rock dude who stands out amongst your collection no matter where you plop him down. One of my favorite head sculpts of the whole series, as something about those eyes and that scowl really capture the character perfectly. Also, his broken wall backdrop is generic, but for whatever reason, it works.

4. CAPTAIN MARVEL
Despite no particular interest in the character himself besides a barely cursory one, I think Captain Marvel’s blue, red and gold costume is easily one of the best designs maybe of all time, so a figure that gets it right as this one does is a guaranteed hit for me. Little details like the starburst and Nega-Bands being just the right shade of gold to stand out but not overwhelm are the icing on the cake. I also like that he’s pretty easy to pose and you can go with either the arms akimbo or “looking off into space” look (I chose the latter).

3. BULLSEYE
Another great costume that thrives on simplicity, another translation Marvel Legends did seamlessly. You’d think a basic black and white color scheme would be tough to screw up and easy to ace, but the way the lines on Bullseye’s suit jump out rather than blend in, particularly around his neck and shoulder, show how the right craftsmen can use the simplest tools to make magic. That super-pissed off look is the biggest component to both making the figure pop and also infusing the character’s personality right in there; there’s an even angrier variant out there, but this one does it for me.

2. HAWKEYE
One of my favorite characters, another of my favorite costumes, and thus of course one of my favorite Marvel Legends (and among the first I ever got). Unlike some of the other figures I just mentioned, Hawkeye does have a lot of intricacies to his look, and the folks who made the figure are exacting down to every nook, cranny and piece of chainmail; something as seemingly trivial as using rubber for the flap that hangs off his tunic rather than a harder plastic really makes a difference—don’t ask me why. But the best thing about Hawkeye is, of course, his accessories, which include a full quiver of trick arrows highlighted by one with a tiny Ant-Man hanging off it. The one downside to Hawkeye is he’s a bitch to pose, but once you get the right one, if you just leave it alone, he looks great.

1. IRON FIST
As with most material possessions I value above other similar objects, I probably can’t tell you precisely why Iron Fist is my favorite Marvel Legend that I own, he/it just kinda is. Again, great costume, but not necessarily better than Captain Marvel’s or Hawkeye’s. He also has a cool pose—vintage Kung Fu—but not so much cooler than others. The flame fist accessory is a nice touch, but it’s no Ant-Man arrow (he also comes with more flames that I’m not sure how they fit on the figure, so they’re just lying around my house somewhere). Yet, for whatever reason, when I look at all my Marvel Legends, Iron Fist is the first one that catches my eye. Maybe it’s that yellow and green are such an odd and ostentatious color scheme? Maybe it’s that he’s got a big ass collar and giant v-neck? Who knows, but I know what I like, and I like this figure.

My Five Favorite Flash Figures

While I don’t own every Flash and Flash-related action figure ever created, I’ve done pretty well for myself over the years in that department…

Around when I got bumped up to my Staff Writer position at Wizard around 2005, I almost immediately set about populating my desk with as many action figures I could cram on that surface. It was an example set by our esteemed Editor-in-Chief, Pat McCallum, who had about every Marvel Legend created to that date plus a slew of DC Direct products crammed on the window sill behind his desk, and a tradition I felt proud to join.

While I amassed many figures of all kinds from Marvel to DC to pro wrestling to Mexican bootlegs I couldn’t quite identify, Flash had always been one of my favorite characters period, almost certainly my favorite character visually, and Nova didn’t have any toys (or so I thought until “Commander Awesome” himself, Jesse Thompson, proved me wrong), so Wally West, Barry Allen, Jay Garrick and their friends and foes became the dominating force on my desk.

After I left Wizard for Marvel in 2007, I figured my Flash collection probably wouldn’t blend in well at the House of Ideas, so I relocated it to a space of honor on one of our bookshelves here at the apartment in Saddle Brook and have continued filling said shelf since.

I tend to value my Flash collection in quantity over quality for the most part, but nevertheless, here are the figures I subjectively consider the best of the best.

But first, a pair of honorable mentions to two items that only I own…

Marvel Legends Dracula Flash
The aforementioned Sir Patrick McCallum surprised me one day by dropping this sucker off at my desk unprompted, because he was just that kinda boss. Seriously though: how fucking awesome would The Fastest Lord of the Undead Not Really Alive be? This remains one of my most prized possessions.

Justice League Unlimited Black Flash
Rickey made this beauty for me a couple months back and gave it to me for Christmas. Look at how much work went into this bad boy? My boy smothered this guy in black and gave it a creepy zombie look a line like JLU was never quite intended to have, but that’s what makes it rock so hard.

Ok, Top Five proper…

5. “The Batman” Shadowtek Flash
I dig the Justice League Unlimited figures plenty, but sometimes they’re a bit too streamlined for my liking; the toys that came out of the Shadowtek line from “The Batman” after the Justice League appeared on that cartoon presented kinda the next step up, adding a nice amount of detail to that template, but not so much you lose the bouncy energy of the animated style. I’m of course partial to the Shadowtek Flash, with a really neat face sculpt, the overblown upper body and those fleet little legs ready to kick it up to light speed.

4. DC Direct Super Friends Flash
The “Super Friends” cartoon was a bit before my time, and while I did catch the reruns on Cartoon Network later in life and watch the DVDs (worth it if for no other reason than to watch Geoff Johns geeking out in his Aquaman shirt on the extras) and certainly appreciate the fun and overblown innocence of the show, I’m no devotee. However, this figure is somehow instant nostalgia for something I have nothing to be nostalgic about and just makes me smile. And how could I not given that big toothy grin on Barry Allen’s face! It’s not the most well-sculpted or articulated job by any means, but there’s just something warm and welcoming about this guy.

3. New Frontier Flash
Speaking of fun and nostalgia, you’ve got this guy, from the second series of figures released based on one of my all-time favorite stories, Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier. I’m not the world’s biggest Barry Allen devotee, but I was a huge fan of Cooke’s romantic swashbuckler take on him and everything I liked from that characterization is transferred perfectly into this figure. The face is so perfectly Cooke, with the rounded head, bushy eyebrows and exaggerated smile, while the twist of the arms and his neat little backpack accessory (not pictured above) make it clear he’s ready to kick Captain Cold’s ass or run a bomb into a giant sea monster. I also like that the figure is lithe, so Barry really does come off like a true runner.

2. JLA Classified Flash
On the extreme other end of the spectrum, you have Ed McGuinness’ bulky, thick take on Wally West, bursting with muscles and not looking like he could do much speeding, but sure seeming as if he can kick plenty of ass. I love McGuinness’ art and the way he makes every character he works on stand out and seem to leap off the page, and a nice side bonus to that style has always been that his designs look great as toys, something DC Direct has clearly clued in on over the years, putting out dozens of figures based on his work. Is this a practical looking Flash? No, of course not, I believe I just covered that. Is it an awesome looking Flash? Hell yeah! Just check out how dope McGuinness gets the details on his costume and how perfectly that little smirk comes across.

1. DC Direct JLA Series One Flash
The 2006 JLA series of figures from DC Direct is one generally overlooked by my estimation, which is a shame, because in my humble opinion, it’s one of the most well-done lines ever and produced what I feel is the best Flash figure of all-time. Though it wasn’t hugely touted, the designs were based on the work of Carlos Pacheco, who did the box art as well, and the results were awesome. Pacheco is one of comics’ master draftsmen and has a degree of skill in his pure craft that is virtually unmatched, so the composition of these figures don’t look gimmicky or goofy, they just look right, Flash particularly so. Pacheco strikes the perfect balance between the thin Cooke Flash and jacked-up McGuinness Flash to create a Wally West who doesn’t look ready to throw haymakers with Superman, but clearly keeps himself in shape with those global marathons. Toss in a nicely-muted shade of red and you’ve just got a good-looking, well-done figure that looks great no matter how you pose it.

Check out my awesome Bootleg Moomin Action Figure!

A few weeks ago, before we all settled in for days on end of eating cookies and ignoring the internet for the holidays, Jami and I went to a Bavarian-themed "Kringlemart" set up in downtown Chicago by Daley Plaza. I'm sure you know the type – artisans come into town to set up a Christmas-themed craft fair in peppermint-striped shanties warmed by space heaters and sell everything from hand carved nativity scenes to Bratwurst. We were on the lookout for a Krampus tree ornament but instead found something even more inexplicable: our very own Bootleg Moomin Action Figure!


For those who aren't familiar, the Moomins are a group of Scandinavian children's characters created by cartoonist Tove Jansson for a series of illustrated novels and a comic strip. Read more about them here. I first discovered the series in 2000 when I found a bunch of the books on sale during my trip to Comic-Con in San Diego after my high school graduation, although they weren't on sale at the show. They were well stocked at a tourist shop that was part of the National Park/string of excellent Mexican restaurants north of the city. Go figure. These days, Drawn & Quarterly publishes a fine series of reprints of the original comic strips, which are great to buy for any kid.

The figure is pretty fun. If you place it on a slightly inclined surface, it walks all on its own and was on sale at a booth staffed by a Russian man also selling similar Father Christmas and toy soldier models. He had the thing labeled as "a hippo" though it's obviously Moomin character Snorkmaiden. The little card that came with the figure refers to it as a troll, which is closer to the actual Moomin descriptions of the books, but it still had no copyright notice for Jansson. LAME. The company that produced it is called Mazyuk & Metelev, though I could only find one site in English that made mention of them.

Do you think these things are popular in Russia? Does anyone know if any of the Moomin books are even published there?

In any event, I'm really happy to have it adorning my bookshelf these days, as I'm now able to have the Moomin/Bruce Lee crossover adventures I've dreamed about become a reality:

Sunday Afternoon Awesome: X-Cutioner's Song Toys

Wandering through Target in the Palisades Mall this past Saturday evening, my friends and I were congesting the aisle containing the actions figures per usual and causing the poor red-shirted employee who wanted to re-stock to wonder why a group of charismatic, handsome 20-somethings would be so interested in a Brave and the Bold: Batman/B'Wana Beast two-pack while their wives and girlfriends looked on impatiently.

Before I could answer this gentleman's inquisitive gestures (which I was not going to do), what should I spy with my little eye but the embodiment of awesome in adorable toy form...

...none other than a friggin' Super Hero Squad X-Cutioner's Song four-pack that included not only Wolverine, Cyclops and Jean Grey (or "Marvel Girl" as the packaging labels her) in their vintage 90's costumes as seen on X-Men: The Animated Series, but a cute and cuddly rendition of the Chaos Bringer, Mr. "Stab His Eyes!" himself, Stryfe! Let's take a closer look...

Before anybody asks (because these pics don't really show it), yes, on the top of the package it does indeed say "X-Cutioner's Song," so I'm not just coining it that because of the character assortment. TJ made the astute observation that this was a curious branding given that likely nobody born in this or last decade has any idea what that title means, but I surely didn't care as learning that we somehow were involved in the production of the this toy in 2009 made me tickled pink to be a Marvel employee.

Here is the long version of what "X-Cutioner's Song" was. The slightly shorter (or maybe longer, we'll see) is that it was a twelve-part crossover between Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Factor and X-Force that came out in 1992 when I was ten and in the midst of becoming a ginormous X-Men fanatic. Me and my buddy Matt Corley would ride our bikes to the comic shop each week to pick up the newest chapter then race home to take turns reading them (being one year older than Matt and playing the seniority card was awesome in this case).

The gist of the plot is that mysterious X-Force villain Stryfe poses as Cable, whom he is the identical twin of (but we didn't know why at the time), attempts to assassinate Professor X, kidnaps Cyclops and Jean Grey so he can take them to the moon and whine to them about how awful his childhood was, and also manipulates Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister and their various lackeys into assorted tasks that keep the X-Teams preoccupied. My favorite chapter was probably the fourth, where the X-Men and X-Factor hunt down X-Force, who didn't know where Cable was but were presumed guilty accomplices until proven innocent, and the younger team holds their own for a bit before getting demolished.

There were other free-for-all skirmishes throughout the crossover, as the X-Men also scrapped with the Mutant Liberation Front, Dark Riders, and various other henchmen types as well as going up against Apocalypse and then Stryfe himself. I remember one particular issue of X-Factor where Wolverine and Bishop went after Cable in a fight drawn by Jae Lee that at the time I thought was hideous, but looking back from a perspective that is able to tolerate not every art style needing to look like Jim Lee find quite stunning. The melees were broken up nicely by Stryfe's oft-over-the-top Shakespearean soliloquies and laments to Cyclops and Jean about how awful his life was and how it was all their fault. Throughout, obviously the implication was that Stryfe was the grown-up child Cyclops had once sent to the future, but it was never explicitly stated.

X-Cutioner's Song is a story I'm in no great rush to go back and read now, simply because I remember it through such fond childish eyes and would possibly be let down when it doesn't live up to my recollections. However, it was probably the single story that hooked me for certain as a lifelong comics fan, and hokey and bombastic as parts of it were, I will maintain it was fast-paced, well-constructed, and flat-out fun; it wasn't Watchmen, but it wasn't aspiring to be. It also had the artistic talents of the aforementioned Mr. Lee, Andy Kubert, Brandon Peterson and Greg Capullo going for it in tandem with the seasoned writing trio of Peter David, Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell.

Anyways, finding these toys 17 years later, in Super Hero Squad form no less, was a joy for me. Even better, the package and online listing for the product does indeed provide a brief if somewhat inaccurate synopsis of the story (Wolverine wasn't the one who had the necessary power to save Cyclops and Jean on the moon, it was Cable and Havok by virtue of Styfe constructing a forcefield that would only allow in people with Summers and/or Grey DNA; Wolverine didn't do much after tracking down Cable). That this info will not be lost to future generations is a tremendous relief to me.