Toys!

My toy collection has been steadily growing of late. I've managed to amass a decent number of Battlestar Galactica fighters, only needing to resort to eBay to get the Cylon Raiders (more still on their way, darn the slow mail). I've been surprisingly lucky finding the Vypers in-store locally.

I felt the squadron was missing something, so I add the Silver Surfer to help them out

This was custom made from an Eldar Harlequin 6mm figure from the Epic 40,000 wargame.

I cut off the gun, sword, sash, and mohawk thingy, and made the board out of 0.2mm plastic card. The Cylons don't stand a chance ;)

This weekend past, the new Justice League and First Apperances ranges from DC Direct arrived here, I picked up 3 figures.

I'm not sure I remember Blue Beetle having a 'stealth mode' (figure on the right), but oh well, it looks cool. I wanted the Black Canary figure since it was her current costume, I only have one in her old costume. Speaking of which, it took my mother to point it out, but there's a major difference between the 2 figures.

The Alex Ross-designed figure on the right actually has hips, and some meat on her legs, unlike the new model. While the new costume is a lot less, umm, personally dangerous (in an embarrassing slippage sense ;)), the older figure looks better. I do like the head on the new one though.

Week in review

I spent $170 on trades and comics this week, thankfully most of that was covered as a birthday present. Here's the monthlies I got:

Blue Beetle #17

Yay, we got two pages of Brenda this month. Her scenes are always fun. This book deserves to be one of DC's top sellers.

Exiles #96
First of all, I'd like to know why noone told me 96 issues ago that there was going to be a comic starring Blink. She was by far the best thing to come out of Age Of Apocalypse, and I remember being gutted when that series ended because, well, no more Blink. So I noticed this comic with Spider-Man 2099 on the cover, so I had a look, and did a double take. It was ok, this sucked though:

You remember that, Blink? So do we, because it only happened 6 pages ago. Geez, Claremont likes to state the obvious, doesn't he?

Ultimate Fantastic Four #44

Ouch! Another so-so issue, this storyline is moving a little slow, and isn't really that interesting to be honest. Only two more issues to go before I can drop it though, so that's good.

Hellblazer #234

Nice story John, thanks for sharing. Ok, I'm on board for this arc now, if for no other reason than I want to see how the various story elements end up relating to each other.

Starlord #1
My favourite bit:


Silver Surfer Requiem #3
SS vs Star Ships is always a good time. I liked this issue. When he was listening to the two leaders about their planets war, you just knew he was going to kick their asses.

Art in close-up: Aquaman #36

An abridged version this time. Just got this in the mail from Canada, and had to share.

Page 14 from Aquaman #36. Breakdowns by Leonard Kirk, finishes by Andy Clarke. I love this page. It has most of the key players from SubDiego, a nice big shot of Officer Malrey, and several shots of Arthur and Lorena. Even Aquachimp, heh. Andy Clarke's work is awesome. Probably the most detailed of the 14 pages I have. Along the edge of all the shading, he puts small hatching, and at the end of each of those lines, a small dot. He uses lots and lots of dots. Check out this close-up of Aquaman's chest

Around the light parts on his costume, the scales are drawn using dots rather than full lines. Awesome effect, must've taken ages to do though.

I also love the way everyone's hair is done, giving it a sense of motion while the characters are static in panels 3 & 4. I framed this as soon as I got it, replacing the Mark Buckingham Ghost Rider 2099 page that was over my bed.