Comics Borrowed Recently

Just borrowed these from the library today. I may need to visit another library as the selection does not seem to be too good.

Haul of the Day - 29 Mar 2008

Went on a toy hunting trip with shaun and also met up with a cool fellow 1/6th collector/customizer Mizu who came along. She brought a couple of unpainted 1/6th head sculpts that she bought recently. I think she might be a little disappointed when shaun could not recognize any of them. Shame on him.

Marvel Legends and Transformers haul courtesy of shaun.

Transformers
Transcanning Optimus Prime from Takaratomy.




Premium series.


Iron Man Movie


Skipped the snap-on armour Iron Man and the 12" Iron Man, due to the lack of articulations.

Marvel Legends

Variants of Marvel Girl and Hydra Soldier.

Toy Review - Spider-Man 3 GITD Venom

After hearing news that Hasbro will take over the production of Marvel related toys from Toy Biz, I knew we were screwed. And when they announced the Spider-man 3 movie figures, we were screwed. These came in the size of 5", one inch short of the usual Toy Biz and their own Hasbro Marvel Legends figures. This completely blows the whole scale thing. To make up for this shortfall, Hasbro decided to produce a separate movie line for collectors. But sadly, they are not up to the mark compared to Toy Biz. Anyway, good to hear that the other movie lines for Iron Man and Incredible Hulk will be back to 6".

A few days ago, I broke down and bought a 5" movie line figure, the Glow In The Dark (GITD) Venom.

Packaging


Since Hasbro said that these toys are targeted at kids, I am surprised that they still spent some effort on the packaging. The paper inserts and not just a single piece, but a few pieces pieced together.

Contents

A catalogue, the figure and a net, which is quite useless. The sticker advertised on the top of the packaging is missing though.

Figure

Front


Rear


Side

Articulation

• Ball jointed head
• Ball jointed shoulders
• Double pin jointed elbow
• Cut wrist
• Swivel chest
• Ball jointed hip
• Combination of swivel and single pin jointed knee

Even though the head is a ball joint, its range of movement is as good as a cut joint. The shoulder articulation does not have a cut at the bicep, so the whole arm rotates with the shoulder. Similarly, the hip job only allows a limited range of movement, but if you turn the ball joint 180 degrees, you can get a splitting stance.
Overall, you can only have a limited number of poses, and not too many dynamic ones.

The eyes and teeth are painted with glow in the dark paint, but I did not take any pictures.

Action Poses

Double pin joint range.






Flying/leaping poses.







Invert hip joint 180 degrees to achieve this pose.

Scale

Comparison between Marvel Legends and Marvel Legends Showdown.

Overall
If you have extra cash, use it for some other figure.

Picture of the Day

Walking tall.

Haul of the Day - 21 Mar 2008

Picked up Takara's Microman Movie Superman (for shaun) and comic Supergirl from Comics Connection, at a fantastic price of S$14.90 (these are retailing at 1300yen) each.

Haul of the Day - 20 Mar 2008

Picked up some TF Movie figures, courtesy of shaun.

Star Wars


Transformers


All repaints though, and from previous Cyberton series.

Comics Borrowed Recently

Just borrowed these from the library today.

Haul of the Weeks

Stuff I got over the last 3 or 4 weeks.

Transformers




Includes Revoltech HotRodimus and Starscream, movie real gears and loose EVAC, Encore #08 Jazz and whole set of Henkei.

Fraulein

#003 Asuka

Medicom Real Action Heroes

Finally FMA Roy Mustang came in, after months of waiting, together with Darth Maul.

Misc


A bunch of miscellaneous stuff from flea market, CSC, Metro and Comics Connections.

And I finally got rid of the old ball mouse that could not move left or right without having me to whip it around, causing me much anguish, with an optical one from the same manufacturer, for just S$9.

Comics Read Recently

Watchmen

Finally managed to pick up this trade from the local library and read the story. I never wanted to buy the trade because I was never a fan of writer Alan Moore or artist Dave Gibbons, even though this series was groundbreaking and critically acclaim.
After reading it, I was not too sure what was the hype about. This series was produced in 1986, so probably the issues addressed in the story could be radical then.
Anyway, it is a nice read, and I just want to say that HEROES (the TV series) is a rip off from Watchmen.
Now, it will be interesting to see how they will pull this off as a movie, as most of the comic were flashbacks.

Top 10

The first thing that attracted my attention to this comic was the doberman in a Hawaiian shirt and straw hat by Alex Ross, but not enough to buy the comic book. So when I came across the first volume in the library, I took a shot at it. Partly also because the comic was written by Alan Moore, and drawn by Gene Ha (a very detail artist), with layouts by Zander Cannon. (Zander Cannon is a great artist, who started with his own comic The Replacement God. Check it out. You will see a plug for this in the first issue of Top 10.)
Overall, it was a good read, different from the mainstream superheroes comics.

Secret Wars

I borrowed this book just because of the artist, Gabriele Dell Otto. This Italian does very good dynamic painted scenes and poses. If you like painted art, do pick this series or the trade. Note that the trade does not do justice to the art, as it is quite dark sometimes to see all the details.

Superman: Birthright

Birthright is a retelling of the origins of Superman, but I was not interested in the story, only the artwork, by artist Leinil Francis Yu. His style is clean, much reminiscent of Travis Charest's earlier works.