Emma Frost, Exclusive Diamond form statue by Bowen.
One of my favorite Marvel characters, Emma Frost is (or at least, as far caught up on reading comics as I am) co-leader of the X-men. And she can turn into diamond.
For more pictures, visit the Emma Frost Diamond Statue page on my collecting wiki
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.
At the end of 2007, there was a little thing called New York Comic Con. Mattel thought it would be cool to make a couple of the harder to find figures from the ending DCSH line available as exclusives at that con - Specifically, Black and Silver Superman (wave 5), and Knight Shadow Batman (wave 8), along with a new Mr Freeze (repaint of wave 3 figure). I had just started collecting the line, and had been lucky to get Knight Shadow Bats and BS Superman pretty easily, and for some stupid reason, that I do not recall, and absolutely cannot fathom, I didn't think I needed a Mr Freeze figure. Now, Batman and Robin was a HORRIBLE film, a travesty like no other in the Super Hero genre, but Mr Freeze is one of Batman's most interesting villains. He's had several great episodes in Batman: The Animated Series (I'm still trying to get a new review up, I swear), and the first full length film from BTAS featured Mr Freeze. My point is, I love the character, but I didn't take advantage of the opportunity I had to get a new figure of him when it came out (through other collectors I know on SWAN, who lived in the area and were going to the con).
I have regretted it for two years now, as the price for the figure on eBay went up to 3 times retail. Sure, I could have gotten the DCSH Wave 3 version for roughly retail, but the NYCC version is FAR superior. Dubbed Tech Suit Mr Freeze, the NYCC Freeze has a much better paint deco. Predominantly black, with electric blue detailing and red accents, this suit looks much more technological, and like the modern comic book styles that I prefer. The wave 3 version had odd coloring on the lower torso of the figure and the forarms, that was nearly the same color as Freeze's skin, so it looks like he's wearing a high-cut shirt, exposing his midriff (rather like Supergirl). Understandably, it looks odd to me, and I wasn't keen on getting it. I set my sights on Tech Suit Freeze, and wondered how I would justify paying over $30 for a single figure.
Things started looking up, when Fwoosher Poe Ghostal made me an awesome trade and I was able to acquire the 2007 SDCC Exclusive Man-Bat figure, it gave me hope that someday I would get Tech Suit Freeze for less than $30. And last week, it happened. In what seems to me to have been a fluke bit of bidding, I won Tech Suit Freeze in an auction for the piddly amount of $18. Another auction ended less than 24 hours later went for $32. I Win.
My cousin is a big fan of Marvel Comics, so we've discussed them at length. He has recommended that I read the Joss Whedon run on Astonishing X-Men, and hey, I'm a Joss Whedon fanboy, so I was interested. It was also recommended to me to read Grant Morrison's New X-Men, if I liked Grant Morrison. I do, I have his run on JLA, and have read half of his Batman stuff, leading up to Final Crisis, So, I picked up the 3 of the 4 Astonishing X-Men trades, New X-Men Vol 1, and since I'm always looking to finish my JLA and Justice League of America collection, I got JLA vol 9 and JLoA Vol 3. I believe I got the following 6 books for about $25 on eBay from various sellers.
Since I've had these for a couple of weeks now, I've read all the X-Men books and one of the DC books. I enjoyed the first of the New X-Men books (E is for Extinction, story by Grant Morrison, art by Frank Quitely). I think Grant Morrison writes good stories, certainly they're often confusing as hell, and this one also featured a bunch of characters that I'm only marginally familiar with, if that. But even his confusing stories have really cool elements to them (remind me to talk about JLA Vol 3: Rock of Ages sometime), so I can still enjoy them, and I did this one.
However, the art is crap. Quitely's art sucks, and I hate it. Everybody is ugly. Cyclops is ugly, Xavier is ugly (okay, he's also an old man, but he looks really old and ugly), Wolverine is REALLY ugly. Emma Frost is freaking supposed to be hot, not look like a fat, ugly 10 year old dressed up like a skank. She should have things like cheekbones instead of baby fat cheeks. I read comics firstly for the story, then I'll reread them later to notice the art more. I usually don't form opinions about the art in the first read through, because I get caugth up in the story too much to notice it enough. Except when it's really awesome (such as Jim Lee in Superman: For Tomorrow or Tim Sale in Batman: The Long Halloween), or when it's really horrible, such as Frank Quitely's art in this book. And unfortunately, he does the art for the first 4 or 5 books. Ugh. When I expressed this opinion on The Fwoosh, there were a few people who said they liked his art, and I think they were referring, at least in part, to stuff rather than the people, but they're SO UGLY that it was really distracting in a lot of places. Jean Gray is by far the most attractive person in the book, but she was still fat of face, and she had no bloody expression on her face. There was one page where she was talking to Scott (her husband) about the way she felt their relationship had been deteriorating, and in three panels where she talked about the different ways she felt (excited to be alive and with him, and then upset at the distance she felt from him). She didn't look like she was concentrating on the 8 things she was levitating, nor did she look happy, nor sad. She looked absolutely bored. But at least she wasn't ugly.
John Cassady's art in Astonishing X-Men, on the other, is awesome, and I should talk about that more at length, but I'll do so in another post (someday). Also, Joe Benitez's art in the second chapter of The Injustice League is also kinda crappy, excessively stretched and exaggerated. It's strange looking.
And finally, after three or more weeks of looking, including a huge 7 or 8 hour trip hitting around 10 Walmarts, I have at last found the Walmart DCUC 5 pack. Huzzah! Praise be to Darkseid!
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