More New Toys and Comics

As I sat down to write a post with the new toys I've received over the last two or three weeks, I realized there was an uncompleted post from before Halloween, that I apparently forgot I was in the middle of it. So finished up the photos and posted it. You'll have to wait a few days (or weeks probably) before I get around to write up a new one with the latest stuff.

Let's start with books. I started re-reading The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, because there are 11 or 12 books out, but I've only read 8 or maybe 9, despite owning all of them (I think). I've really been enjoying it, reading the third book in 2 or 3 days. But when I went to start the fourth one, I couldn't find it! Oh noes! Turns out, last Christmas my brother was reading the books, so I gave him our copy of books 4 and 5. Curses! Of course, it took about three weeks to receive them from eBay/Amazon, and my local library had all the books EXCEPT 4. I had to steal my cousin's library card to go to the good library, that had three or four copies of the entire series. Anyway, point being, I bought books 4 and 5 of The Wheel of Time, slowly converting our paperback collection to hardback.

Comics!

I'm endeavoring to acquire House of M and its tie-ins, along with Civil War, the newest arrivals are 5 Civil War books (Road To Civil War, Peter Parker Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, New Avengers, and Heroes for Hire) and 2 House of M (Amazing Spider-man and Uncanny X-Men (not pictured) ). My daughters were helping me take pictures. Also got a few JLA comics, one in particular that I've been trying to get for a while (without paying too much for it): JLA: Ultramarine Corps, for two reasons, the first being it's drawn by Ed McGuinness, whose art I LOVE. I generally read comics for the stories and then the art, but I wanted this one purely for the art, and merely hope the story is good too. But, Grant Morrison wrote it, and I'm a fan of his work in JLA and New X-Men, and what I've read of Batman, so I'm pretty confident it will be good.

Also, the 6th book of the aforementioned Grant Morrison New X-Men books (still lack the 5th) and for whatever reason I bid on and won Ultimate X-Men Ultimate Collection volume 2, which really only consists of Ultimate X-Men vols 3 and 4.

Toys!

Some Silver and Blue Batman figure from Legends of the Dark Knight, whose name I have completely forgotten at this moment.

Inexpensive Aquaman figures in armor: Justice Armored Aquaman and DC Armory Aquaman. Lots of people weren't big fans of the Armored figures in the Justice line, but I think armor is cool, so I like them. Plus, they were only $6 each.

More Misc Marvel Figures! Stealth Iron Man and Sharon Carter 2 pack! White Hand Ninja and Dum Dum Dugan (SHIELD Agent) 2 pack! Planet Hulk and the final piece to the Annihilus Build A Figure! Marvel Select Diamond Variant Emma Frost! Spider-man Classics Carnage!

Misc Marvel and DC Figures: Scarlet Spider, Marvel Girl, Earth 2 Alex Luthor, Red Son Wonder Woman!

More Wonder Woman! I finally broke down and bought some Wonder Woman figures I've been look at for a long time, the previously shown Red Son WW is from the Superman story Red Son which is one of my all time favorite comics, and definitely my favorite Superman story. Instead of landing in Kansas and being raised by the humble farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent, Superman's ship lands him in the fields of a Ukrainian farmer, where he is raised as a loyal member of the Soviet Socialist Party (Communist). It's a great story, and it's fun to see the characters we know and love in a Communist orientation. Superman is the Soviet symbol for Communism, and spreads Communist rule throughout the world, and Wonder Woman also believes in Communism.

Anyway, going back to Wonder Woman, I also finally got the JLA Classified Wonder Woman, based on Ed McGuinness' art (see the above JLA Classified comic). I'm excited for the new Ed McGuinness figures coming out later this year, or next, I'm not sure. And finally, I got the Justice League of America series 2 Wonder Woman. I like them.

And finally, my first taste of the Masters of the Universe Classics line, Teela. MOTUC is an online-only line by Mattel. There is a new figure every month, and they cost $20 each, plus shipping. You begin to see why I've never bought them before. Also, while I saw the show and played with the toys when I was a kid, He-Man holds no real nostalgic value for me. But one can never have too many female figures, so when I saw they were going to release a good looking figure with lots of cool accessories, how could I pass it up?

Teela comes with an alternate, helmeted head, a snake headdress, a snake staff, a sword, shield and a bird (named Zor or something like that, as if I care). She's a bit bigger than the DCUC line, about the size Big Barda could have been, but she's quite cool, and I think she was worth the price. If Mattel ever gets in to some She-Ra figures, I might have to buy some more.

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A Moment of Silence for our departed friend...

The long nightmare is over, once again I have a computer. My several years old laptop (a Dell Inspiron 9100) crashed a couple weekends ago, and refused resuscitation, leaving me without access to my games, the many, many pictures I had taken for posting here, and without my programming projects. It was a horrible nearly 2 weeks until the replacement machine arrived, but it's here now, and thus begins the long procedure of reinstalling everything, and getting everything set up to my liking. Hopefully I'll be able to revive the Inspiron for just long enough to copy the entire contents of the hard drive over to the new box.

And here it is.

It is a Dell Inspiron 15, which makes for my third Dell Inspiron, though this one cost about $1000 less than the last one I bought, and is at least 3 times as powerful. So far, I like it, though I haven't yet played any games on it, nor done any programming (that's where I get really picky about how the computer works, keyboard layout, shortcut keys, mouse behavior, and so one). The screen is very pretty though, and it's nice as fast (the previous laptop had only 512 MB of RAM, and with Windows XP that's not nearly enough). It has 3 GB of RAM, an Intel Core 2 Duo, a 250 GB hard drive, and the extra nice screen (1600x900 resolution). It also weighs half or less than the 9100, which was a beast that could be used to bludgeon a moose to death. I could probably kill a cat with this one, and though there are cats in the neighborhood I wish death upon, I'm not going to use my shiny new laptop to do it.

Now that I have computer with which to write blog posts, and to edit photos with, I can take pictures of the stuff I've received lately, this covers about the last 3 weeks or so. I sold a few Star Wars items a couple of weeks ago, and with that money I went on a little spending spree, mostly for comics, but I got a fair number of toys as well. Let's start with the toys.

My growing interest in Marvel comics is causing me to pollute my collection with Marvel toys. I still have little to no interest in toys under 6", so I'm not touching Marvel Universe (or DC Infinite Heroes for that matter), and I'm by no means interested in acquiring all the past Marvel Legends figures (how ever many hundreds that is), but there are a few I'm trying to get, and now I'm watching current/future releases with interest. To start out my Marvel toy collection (not really, but who cares?) I'm starting out where I started my Marvel Comics collection, with Astonishing X-Men (I've only read 3/4ths of the books Joss Whedon wrote, but they're some of the best comics I've ever read). At the moment, I only have the cheap figures: Emma Frost (Diamond variant), Cyclops and Beast. I really want to get Colossus and Kitty Pryde, but they're the most expensive ones to get. Blarg. I'll just have to be patient.

While I was in Las Vegas last weekend, visiting as many Walmart and Toys 'R Us as I could, looking for DCUC Imperiex wave and Marvel Legends 2 packs wave 2.5, I got frustrated with not finding anything. So I made an impulse purchase (somewhat fulled by a similar purchase the week before), and grabbed Scorpion Venom. And I'm glad I did, because it's an awesome figure. He'll go nicely with Iron Spider-man (last week's impulse purchase), and it prompted me to try to get the various Carnage figures, a regular Venom, and Spider-man 2099 (the only one of which I have managed to win on eBay).

Speaking of Marvel Legends 2 packs, I've been trying to get the recent ones, particularly Nick Fury/Red Hand Ninja and Maria Hill/Iron Man. My cousin had extras of a couple of them though, so he sold me the Ninja and Maria Hill, still need to find Nick Fury. And earlier this week, ToysRUs.com put the variants up for order, so I ordered 2 each of the Sharon Carter/Stealth Iron Man and Dum Dum Dugan/White Hand Ninja, they should arrive soon this week. My cousin and I made a huge toy run this week, hitting 14 Walmarts, again looking for the blasted Imperiex Wave. We found nothing, except a couple of clearanced Marvel Legends: the Cannonball/Domino and Marvel Girl/Cable 2 packs, and Nova variant Human Torch. I happened to have won Marvel Girl on eBay for a good price, only the day before, so I left that 2 pack, but picked up the Domino pack. She looks pretty good, although she has a severely distended left knee, due to the posing in the packaging. Not being the slightest bit familiar with Cannonball, he's going to eBay. And that covers new Marvel figures, for the time being.

In a rare purchase, I picked up a couple of Star Wars figures. I wasn't entirely sure I would keep the comic pack, but I can't find the receipt now, so I guess it's mine. The comic pack is based on the Legacy comic series, which I was a big fan of, for the short time I bought monthlies. Someday I'll pick up the trades and read the whole story. Anyway, the Imperial Knights design is nifty.

I finally purchased a couple of Witchblade figures I've been looking at for the past couple of years, Ian Nottingham and Sara Pezzini (the Witchblade). They are of comparable size to Marvel Legends, and are nicely detailed, if not terribly pose-able. There's a black dress variant of Sara I'd like to get eventually, and a white suit variant of Nottingham. Someday.

And finally, a DC purchase. Barbie Supergirl, which I just barely missed the first time it showed up on ToysRUs.com on clearance a couple of months ago. She doesn't match with anything else in my collection (size- or style-wise), but she looks really good, so I'll probably keep her, until one of my daughters steals her from me.

On to comics. Let's start with misc stuff. Elektra: The Hand (which was really good, despite not being about Elektra at all), Tales of the Witchblade, and Checkmate: Chimera.

Some Superman and Supergirl comics: Superman: Man of Steel vol 2, Superman: True Brit, Supergirl: Many Happy Returns, and Superman: For All Seasons. I've previously read For All Seasons, it was a good story, though the art's not my favorite. I LOVE Tim Sale's stuff in Batman: Long Halloween and Dark Victory, but I don't think his style works as well for Superman. Plus, the guy's the size of a house, with a chin that Jay Leno must envy. I look forward to Supergirl, I really like Ed Benes' art, and True Brit was written by Kim 'Howard' Johnson and John Cleese of Monty Python, so it should be fun.

Got a bunch of JLA and related comics: The Tenth Circle, Seven Caskets, The Obsidian Age vol 1 (vol 2 was on the way, along with 52 vols 3 and 4, Justice vol 2 and more, but it looks like they're no longer coming, deadbeat seller), Final Night and The Tornado's Path (both of which are extras, and will go back to eBay), New Frontiers vols 1 and 2, and both the hardcover and softcover versions of Matt Wagner's Trinity (one of them will go to eBay, though I don't know which to keep), and Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC/Marvel Crossovers and Justice League: New Beginnings.

And I picked up most of the remaining Grant Morrison New X-Men books, 2-4 and 7, with 6 on the way, just need to grab 5. I still hate Quitely's and Kordy's art, but the stories are mostly pretty good, and the final book was drawn by Marc Silvestri, whose art is gorgeous. I've also been trying to pick up the House of M and Civil War series', and have started off my collection with House of M: Avengers, House of M: Civil War, Civil War: X-Men and Civil War: Iron Man. I look forward to reading them, once I have the complete sets.

And that is everything, that has arrived. There's a few more things on the way, but I'll deal with them when they arrive.

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