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Hasbro announced last month that they were canceling their "Droid Factory" line of figures that were due out sometime this year. They said that the addition of the droid parts would have driven up the cost of the figures even more. Them saying this kind of put a kink in my thinking of a few months ago that Hasbro was aiming at selling their action figures to the adult collector rather than the kid who will open up and play with the figure. Still with the average cost of a Star Wars Action Figure running anywhere between $8.99 and $9.99 they made a good call. Although if Hasbro really wanted to cut their costs, they could remove the silly card and die that is in with a figure of their other lines, and shave a dollar or two off the MSRP. It would decrease the weight of each figure, make shipping costs less and let kids use their imagination when it comes to playing with the toy. When did action figures have to have some other incentive other than getting the action figure to get kids to ask for it? Do not fret though collectors, Hasbro will be releasing the figures that would have been in the Droid Factory line in a line that is, according to Hasbro, "on par with the Vintage Collection in terms of quality and pricing." Look for that new line to be part of the fall releases of figures. The Vintage collection is also going away at some point this year and I am glad. I'm getting tired of looking at the same five or six action figures from The Phantom Menace on the pegs at my local Target store. This means they will be put on clearance and be gone for good. Although if they have not sold by now, why would I think they would sell any faster with a 30% mark down?
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It seems that last month, the television show The Big Bang Theory caused some people on the internet to get their underpants in a bunch over one episode. It appears that they objected to the stereotype that girls/women get harassed when they go into comic book stores. What they were basing this on was a twenty second clip that was put onto the internet from the episode in question.
I watched the episode in question and they handled it somewhat correctly. Yes, there are going to be the guys in the store that are so old school that they stare when a woman comes into a comic book store, but I like to think that we have gotten past that as a group. The only women who get leered at when they are in a comic book store or at a convention are dressed scantily, or in an outfit that they want to get attention in. The part that I did not like was that the store owner tried to sell them a high dollar back issue of Fables #1 when they could have gotten the first trade for a whole lot less. When Penny expressed interest in Thor the owner should have aimed her at a good jumping on point for the book than the latest issue. The whole thing about debating whether or not Red Hulk could not pick up Thor's Hammer if Thor was holding it seems kind of silly. It is a sitcom though, so silly is part of the script. There were also a host of other errors in the show that I will not get into here, but let's just say you don't leave your keys in a Toyota Prius for someone to steal. Let me just say that most of the comic book stores that I have gone to at one time or another that had female employees or customers were the best ones. I'm pretty sure this was because those women would not take anything from anyone in terms of sexist nonsense. Titan Comics, the comic book store I most recently solicited had two young women working there and they were not seen as objects to be leered at. One of them really knew her stuff in terms of what was out week to week and tried to get customers to look beyond the usual Marvel and DC stuff they would get. The other was the owner's daughter and I really did not know what to make of her or what she knew about comics. The times I regularly went to Titan Comics, I would occasionally walk in when there was a woman in the store along with some other male customers and they did not think twice about it. There was no Bevis and Butthead "Heh . . . Heh, Yah . . . Yah" going on when they were in the store. This may be because Titan's customer base skews towards the over 25 crowd who know better than to try to pull this stuff on a woman.
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In January, Guillermo del Toro was scripting and hoping to make a reality a Justice League Dark feature film, I thought I would give my top five ideas for non-superhero movies that could be made. These are based on the New 52 and not on the old books.
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I was looking around on e-bay the other day, as I am want to do, and came across a whole slew of auctions that had "Fine Art" and had Star Wars related themes. There were the usual drawings and paintings of the characters that were good enough to hang in your home, but there was one for a Micro Machines (anyone who was a child in the 1980's and 90's knows what those are) Boba Fett head playset that had been painted kind of Jackson Pollack style in similar colors as the original. They were asking for something on the order of $25,000, or best offer, for it. Then I come across another auction that has a piece of original sculpture called Mellinium, 2012 that the creator is asking $250,000 for with 10% of that price going to water.org. The Mellinium piece just looks like they took one of the more modern versions of the Millennium Falcon and cut it in half horizontally and mounted it in a plastic box that was a similar color to the plastic the toy came in. I think that fine artists need to know that you cannot slap the name Star Wars (or anything vaguely Star Wars sounding) on any of your works and that automatically makes it hundreds or thousands of times more valuable than one of your normal works. It does not work that way. I know that some artists want to get rich quick by making that one big sale, but those sorts of things happen very rarely in the art world, or at least not while you are still alive. You are going to have to go out there and make a name for yourself before you can ask for and get the amount of money that you want for a sculpture or a painted toy. It boggles my mind that something that I used to do as a kid to a toy that was broken or had lost all its parts (like the Boba Fett head) could be worth something like that. Actually, I know it would not be worth something like that because the artists asking for the obscene amount of money for these works probably know that they are not going to get it, and that is why they throw in the "or best offer" option on the auction. They could also be stubborn enough that they get some reasonable offers from bidders on e-bay that is close to what the real price should be and they reject them. Why do they reject them? Maybe pride, an overinflated ego or just unreasonable expectations. I know when I was going through the drawing classes, a lot of the questions to the instructors when we would finish a project was, "How much do you think it is worth?" The instructor would take the high road and say "whatever you think it is worth" but I don't think people would pay a lot for drawings from students in a freshman drawing class unless the student really did an outstanding job with it. To me the two things mentioned above are not art. Art should be about making a statement with your work and not trying to make a fast buck by using stuff that has been already made, and just repainting them or mounting them on a plastic box to be put on your wall. Take the Boba Fett head for example. I would call it art if the artist took the toy and painted it and then pressed a piece of canvas against it and transferred the paint to it. That may not be as easy as just painting a toy, but it would probably fetch a bit more than what you would get for the toy.
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Last month I mentioned that the greatest writer of an X-Factor Book, Peter David, had a stroke and was in the hospital. Well on his blog here his wife and sometimes Peter himself have been blogging about his recovery. A stroke is a hell of a thing to happen to a person and to read about his recovery up to this point gives me faith in both Peter David and the Medical Community that he will get through this. I mean back on January 18th he went out for a short jaunt to the bookstore not too far from where the rehab facility is. I don't think that we will be seeing him on the convention circuit any time soon, but to know that his recovery is going along better than the doctors predicted means a good thing for comic book fans. If you want to help Mister David defray the cost of the co-pays and other things that come along with medical insurance, then click on the link above and buy something from his web site in either e-book or paperback; or you could go to Amazon and buy them there. As always you could donate to the HERO Initiative, its tax deductible (on your 2013 taxes not 2012). Lastly you can also help out by simply plunking down the $3.00 at the comic book store on a copy of X-Factor, and put it on your pull list for crying out loud. If I had one I would put it on there and it would be the second Marvel book on the list along with Hawkeye. Peter, I drink a tall glass of water to your continued good health and recovery. We're all pulling for ya' and know you'll be out of rehab soon.
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I have been known to drop by the comic book resources web page from time to time, and while I only go there to read the Comic's a.m. entries and the Bookshelf Porn I have been known to click on other articles from time to time. I clicked on the She Has No Head article from January 21, and found it to be a screed to the new all female X-Men team that is coming out in the "Marvel Now!" reboot. I was livid that an article writer on a comic book web site had the ovicular fortitude (I got that from Mick Foley) to say that one book was better than another with only solicits and what the writer of the series has to say on Twitter. She even says it in this quote from the page: "Some may think we can't know yet if this book will be any good since all we've seen are the pitch/solicits/interviews/etc. While that is true on its face, it's also true that I knew long before Marvel Divas came out that it was not for me, the same way I know that Wood's X-Men will very much be for me." So let's review. You are writing this article about your love of Wood's all female X-Book based on interviews, solicits, Twitter posts and nothing else? Yet in the same breath you say you knew that the Marvel Divas comic was not for you based on the same thing? What happened to the media being unbiased and impartial? You know, actually waiting for the comic to come out and reading it before making proclamations on how good/bad something is. First off let me say this; I'm all for all female comic books. It's about time comics got away from the sausage fest that is most superhero books. I have read Gail Simone's Batgirl in the New 52 as well as some of her work in the pre-New 52 Secret Six and found it to be enjoyable; so enjoyable that I would like to pick her brain if I ever got the chance about becoming a better writer. I had absolutely no preconceived notions going into these books whether or not I would have liked them other than my older brother talking about Ms. Simone when I would mention I was looking for something to add to my pull list. Second, I know going in to reading a comic book very little about what the creative team has done in the past. I don't really pay attention to solicits or what one of the creative team has to say on Twitter or Facebook. I generally only buy comic books that look interesting to me and that I have the money for. Buying all trades makes this a little easier because I get a complete storyline in one book and if the writer has an off issue for some reason then it is not going to make me think twice about getting the next issue next month. This not knowing goes back to when I was much younger and I only got Previews to see what was coming out the month after next and to look at the toys. I would just look at the comics though and make sure that everything I wanted to get was still coming out. If it was a character that I liked then I would buy the book, no matter who was writing it or drawing it. I think this stems from the on again off again artist circle that the Marvel GI Joe comic had. Internet writers, let us read what is coming out in the comic book world before making judgments of how good or bad something is. That is something that I have come to learn over my years on this planet. Go in with no judgments in your head about something and you will be pleasantly surprised on how good something is. I did this with the first New 52 Action Comics trade and found myself liking the trade and did not want it to end.
That's it for this month. Any comments, ideas, links and so forth on what I have written can be directed to the e-mail address below and I will take them under advisement.
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