Monday News: SDCC info dump and one other thing
Well, SDCC is officially over and while the various messageboards are turning trolling into a temporary marathon event, I’m trying to warp reality with my mind so that Hasbro will put up their con exclusives either today or Wednesday as opposed to a day where I have to work. If they spring up tomorrow, things do not look good for Jinx (and maybe the Masters of Evil; anybody just want Tiger Shark or Radioactive Man?) but I hope that 2 previous years of missing the Joe exclusives will finally work in my favor. Probably not. But a lot of stuff happened this weekend, including the internet finally having its desire of a Deadpool video game fulfilled, complete with clever lines like “Suck it, Wolverine” in the trailer! Of course, this is about my wish fulfillment so I’m not going to be discussing that. I don’t know if anyone should start anticipating it to be as good as the recent Batman games apparently are, but there will no doubt be equivalent coverage of it.
– Guillermo del Toro has fascinating interview, gives awesomely subtle verbal bitchslap to interviewer
Anytime you can hear Guillermo del Toro talk, it’s interesting. The interviews on the recent Mimic: Director’s Cut blu-ray are a treat and his hilarious Blade II commentary has been discussed on the show several times, probably appearing most recently in me discussing the store next to my hotel in Paris. There’s several new articles involving del Toro discussing Pacific Rim but my current favorite is this interview over at Deadline, where he relates a story of how much effort it took to watch War of the Garguntuas; it’s 1000% more interesting than hearing Harry Knowles yak about how his Dad owned some secret print of whatever old movie and that’s how Harry knew he was special blah, blah, blah whatever. Especially great is the moment where del Toro quickly shuts down the inteviewer’s comment about old Kaiju movies as cheesy. Good for you Guillermo, and credit to the reporter for leaving it in. Anyway, if you want to hear some tidbits about Pacific Rim and get some insight into why The Hobbit went ahead without del Toro directing, check this out. There’s even a little bit about why At the Mountains of Madness stalled, though I’ll admit to there being no mention of Hellboy III, something that apparently popped up here and there over the four day con. [Source: Deadline]
– Unico Kickstarter succeeds, now firmly in the realm of Stretch Goals to my wallet’s further terror
Well, I was wrong about the second license being The Amazing 3; instead it was Atomcat which was a later sequel/remake/alternate take on Astroboy starring a cat rebuilt by aliens according to the thoughts of a boy who reads the Astroboy manga. It’s short and they’ve already received enough to publish it, so the next goal is Triton of the Sea. I won’t lie: Atomcat sounds cute but it’s a one-shot, with Triton actually being two volumes long. I dig that we’re getting shorter works (I still hope for some anthology releases of Tezuka’s shorter stuff) but Triton is a longer one that’s still not really well known. The longer and obscure Tezuka stuff that gets licensed is usually his stuff aimed at adults (like The Book of Human Insects), so this is relatively unique in that it’s all-ages but not domestically popular on the level that even something like Princess Knight is. Digital Manga Press needs $47,000 to pull all this off and they’re currently about $10,000 short of that goal with 5 days to go. It’s worth a look if you’re down with this sort of thing, though I hope with the current level of success DMP and other publishers consider this route in the future especially if it’s for something like The Three-Eyed One or Rainbow Parakeet. [Source: Kickstarter]
– Winners of the Minimates fanpoll announced at SDCC panel, I jump for joy while messageboards go wild with bitching
Thanks to anyone that went and voted in the Marvel.com fanpoll to decide what characters would end up in the 50th wave of Marvel Minimates; I basically cleaned house with Baron Zemo not only getting a slot but his father, Heinrich Zemo, occupying the variant slot. Of course, there’s a lack of X-men characters, outside of Onslaught, so you can already see messageboards lighting up with flame wars, mostly in relation to Songbird making it in. Whatever guys, Winter Soldier’s going to make it in eventually and Falcon’s probably coming with him; I want Banshee too but half the characters he’d accompany in the “All-New” X-men look pretty dated so I’ll wait for that to happen. Anyway, the characters who made it in, that aren’t the huge triumph of superior comic loving taste that Zemo represents, are:
– Songbird *
– Danny Ketch Ghost Rider (the look that the recent Marvel Legend had, from Jason Aaron’s recent storylines)
– “Cyborg” Spider-Man (from Revenge of the Sinister Six) *
– Onslaught
– Nova Corps Centurions *
All the above with asterisks are characters I voted on, so I’m extremely pleased with how this turned out. Zemo makes it for me and everyone else is just icing on the cake; sure, I would’ve preferred Iron Man 2020 over another Spidey (even if it is a unique look) and Black Knight over Danny Ketch, but hey, can’t win ’em all. You can check out the whole presentation from the minimates panel, and revel in my victory as well, here. [Source: ToyArk]
– Mattel annihilates Hasbro with SDCC reveals, to my combined pleasure/despair
There was a lot of toy news at SDCC, almost to the point where it overwhelmed a lot of the reveals in other arenas (I’m looking at you comics publishers, who didn’t really bring anything). Fortunately, most of it was great with the reveals at Mattel’s Friday panel probably being the the most impressive. Along with Club Infinite Earths FINALLY delivering on completing the main Metal Men and Doom Patrol members, the reveals of characters like Elongated Man, Larfleeze, the Phantom Stranger, and Monsieur Mallah make next year look extremely appealing; even Constantine’s reveal was a nice surprise, even if it could only happen by awkwardly folding him into the post-Flashpoint DCU.
The MOTUC were the most impressive for me, but I’m also game for just about anything in the whole line. I’ll take a cool looking one-off character like Procrustus over a funny looking gimmick character like Hit Monkey, the not-even-popular-with-Deadpool-fans Deadpool villain that will make for the first “build-a-micro-figure” in the 2013 Marvel Legends lineup.
At least maybe I can get some extra guns if his arms come with the three figures I plan on getting in this wave
The fact that they hinted Rocket Raccoon would be a “safe bet” for similar treatment during the year makes the presence of Hit Monkey even more irksome for me. Fortunately, he comes in a wave mostly made up of characters I couldn’t care less about, so I don’t have to worry about having to buy the Protector or Sentry. Anyway, there’s tons of pics of the different panels and displays to see: Mattel DC and MOTUC with Hasbro Marvel. You can read individual reactions to the figures (in anticipation to me and Jaysun blabbing about them on the show next week) over here at Poe Ghostal’s POA and here at IAT [Source: Toyark, Action Figure Pics, Poe Ghostal’s Points of Articulation, and itsalltrue.net]
Well, it was hard doing the news this week since I don’t want to cover what we’ll be discussing on the show on top of there being very little that happened outside of the massive convention. I guess I could have linked to the articles that link to the articles reviewing The Dark Knight Rises but it’s not like they’re anything different from what you expect; there’s already comments like it making the Marvel films look “vapid” which is a ridiculous comparison in the first place and more than a little lazy from my view. It’s lazy in the way that a lot of critics have been this year but at least it’s good to hear that screening audiences haven’t burned down any theaters in a rage induced case of hype-letd0wn.
If you’re stalking Hasbrotoyshop.com like I am, a fun way to pass the time would be to read the last week worth of articles! Won’t that be a fun way to take a break from clicking the refresh button over and over? I think so too. Plus, look! I included specific indicators as to who wrote what, so if you want to visit the site but not read anything from me, it’s that much easier! Yay!
– Monday News: Please, complain about your glamorous lifestyle (by me) Rants! Everyone likes rants, right?
– Tuesday: 5X5 Totally Tubeular (by Mike) Mike watches some YouTube videos… and stuff!
– Wednesday: Episode #96 People besides me actually watch the summer movies you’ve all probably seen already!
– Thursday: Mattel WWE Elite Series Sin Cara review (by Jaysun) Sears actually sold something and Jaysun is the one who bought it!
– Friday: The top 5 MOTU Classics 2010 edition! (By Jaysun and I) Read about why we like Cat Guy and Eyeball Dude!
That’s all from me. I’ve got to go do non-job related things on my non-job related day!
Planned Banter 
Wait, Monkey guy is a BAF? Lame.
Apparently so. Still, I bet there won’t be any short supply of pieces for him floating around. Heck, you can have any I get if Fakeeyes doesn’t want/need them
Groovy. I’ve never collected Legends aside from the odd piece here or there and while I wanted to get into them when they relaunched, most of the waves didn’t hit here. So I just gave up on that quick.
But I need a monkey in a suit.