August is still a couple of months away, but as we all know, certain places have pre-production figures from The Pursuit of Cobra already, and the latest one to catch my eye was the Toys “R” Us Exclusive Spirit Iron-Knife. Not having a local TRU only made the choice all the easier, and I’ve posted my review in the Pursuit of Cobra Review Page. Of course you can also check it out directly right here.
A short while ago, I paid tribute to a new run of Devils’ Due era Red Shadows parts that Tri-Gate Creations was pre-ordering, because I thought they had the potential to be pretty cool. Well, I’ve since gotten some of the actual parts in my hands, and I am truly amazed. The sculpting and detail is absolutely phenomenal.
However, I didn’t want to post too much about them until I had a chance to get some paint on them, and I haven’t yet had time.
heretic, over on The Terror Drome, though, has had time, and posted a small sampling of his updated Red Shadow army right here. And damn does it look nice. I swear these things fit in seamlessly with the modern era G.I. Joe line, and I absolutely gotta get some time to put some of these figures together. Fantastic work by Tri-Gate getting these out there, and equally great work by heretic already putting together a nice squad of the Devils’ Due Shadows. Really love what I’m seeing here.
A big thanks to Jamar Miller for pointing this out to me as well.
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Hmm…this kind of came out of left field. We’ve all heard the rumors about what Sideshow has in the works, and hell, we’ve heard it from Sideshow themselves. Zartan, Destro, Crimson Guard, any of the females…there are plenty of characters on the docket that are screaming for some high end Sideshow greatness. So, when they debuted their latest release yesterday, it kind of took me by surprise.
Is there really enough demand for a Red Ninja figure to warrant a $125 release as a high end collectible? I’m not convinced.
Don’t get me wrong, from the small snippet we see here, the figure looks amazingly well-crafted, and I’m eager to see the final reveal, but this just seems like a strange choice when there are so many other iconic characters waiting in line. Granted, Sideshow has to take advantage of part tooling and part creation, and this likely allows them to get more mileage out of their Storm Shadow parts, but I was still a bit surprised.
According to Sideshow’s Website, a full reveal will be launched on June 8th in their production blog, with pre-orders beginning June 10th.
The last JoeCanuck newsletter gave us a peek at the artwork for the first figure in the Canadian JoeCon Exclusive set…and now, the second figure has been posted on the JoeCanuck forums! Click the thumbnail below to head over to JoeCanuck.com and see the full artwork.
Very interesting looking figure, to be sure. I really like how the Cobra characters are following Black Ice’s color scheme, and they’re adding little design flairs to make the characters unique. The thin little scar over this character’s right eye adds just a touch of something…
Really looking forward to seeing what else is there!
It amazes me that it really took this long for someone to dream up a real life, full fledged “film franchise” based on existing characters and an existing universe. Throughout the years there have been television series, films, cartoons, and a wealth of media for comic characters, but never once has someone really tried to weave it all together.
Well, Marvel Films, buoyed by the success of their Spider-Man and X-Men franchises finally bit the bullet, created their own movie company, and decided to finally tell a tale that crosses between films and creates a whole new universe in Hollywood. And so far, I’ve been loving it.
The Incredible Hulk was really the film that kicked it all off, featuring a cameo by Robert Downy, Jr as the enigmatic Tony Stark. This, of course, spiraled into the Iron Man film, with another nice little cameo of Nick Fury. Then, as we all know at this point, that catapulted into Iron Man 2 where the whole Avengers Initiative really started to evolve, and we got a peek at Thor’s hammer as we ramp up for Thor in 2011. Of course, Cap’s trusty shield made it’s own appearance as well.
I’ll be honest…I was pretty worried about how “The First Avenger” would be treated in Hollywood. The Hulk is a big green monster… Iron Man is a guy in a high tech suit of battle armored plate. Those things can transcend comic pages and make a nice impact in the “real world” look. Well, Captain America really doesn’t. On the comic page you can see a guy in blue spandex, and it doesn’t look all that out of place. But making that work in Hollywood? Yeah, I was having a hard time seeing how they would work it in. After all, in the 70’s we saw them give it their best shot, and that really wasn’t all that pretty.
Well, thanks to JoBlo and Aint it Cool News, we have some artwork of what promises to be the actual costume that the film version of Captain America will wear. And Good Lord is it awesome. It certainly seems to use the Ultimates uniform as a base (which is no surprise, considering how much the Hollywood Marvel universe seems to at least sort of follow the Ultimate logic) but it looks like it will translate nearly perfectly on a three dimensional real world plane. Yet, it also manages to pay perfect homage to the actual uniform appearance in the comics as well. They really seem to have captured the best of both worlds.
During my formative years collecting comics, Captain America was one of my favorite heroes. I had nearly an entire run of his books from the 60’s through to the early 90’s before I moved away from comics, and I still have a place in my heart for Steve Rogers. I was thrilled to see that Marvel Films is trying to hard to keep these characters grounded in reality, yet still pull so much influence from the printed page. Awesome stuff.
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They’re the A-Team, and we have their brand new 12 inch figures, 4 inch figures, and vehicles in stock right now! Also new at the movie theaters this summer is Prince of Persia, and we have the 6 inch figures from McFarlane Toys available now. Don’t miss these and then wish you could turn back time!
The final new in-stock items are two beautiful Bowen Designs mini-busts, Blazing Skull and Wolverine Logan, each standing over 6 inches tall and ready to liven up your shelf.
We’ve also got three new lines you absolutely can’t miss available for preorder right now. First up are DC Direct’s recently announced Arkham Asylum figures based on the hit video game of the same name. The lineup includes Batman, Joker, Harley Quinn, and Scarecrow.
Next up are new preorders for Series 2 of the Black and Silver Vintage Star Wars figures.
And finally we’ve got lots of the new Lego minifigures available for preorder. Don’t worry about tracking down the one you want in stores, and instead guarantee yourself that Zombie, Robot, or Clown minifig you’ve been wanting by preordering right now.
G.I. Joe: Origins #16
Chuck Dixon (w) • Alex Cal (a) • Tom Feister, Cal (c)
The Origin of Zartan, Part 1: Who is Zartan? You may think you know the murderous master of disguise but you don’t know the whole story! A hired killer under the command of the Baroness is dangerously compromised. He’s offered the protection of COBRA and sent on a risky mission that ends with a scene that will have Joe fans talking for years. This one is 100% guaranteed to shock!
*2 regular covers will be shipped in a 1-to-1 ratio.
FC • 32 pages • $3.99
To avoid revealing too many spoilers, I’ve posted the review after the jump. Click the “Read the rest of this entry” link below to check out the review, and be warned, there ARE spoilers within!
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The IDW G.I. Joe world has been a roller coaster, and thankfully things have been on the upward trend as of late. In that way, I’m glad it took them a little while to get to exploring the character of Zartan, because he is one of the coolest and most central characters of the G.I. Joe mythos, and I’d rather see him done right than done early.
So far we’ve got a short snippet of the G.I. Joe: Origins issue featuring his back story, and so far, so good. A pretty fast-paced, thrilling introduction so far.
G.I. Joe: Origins #16
Chuck Dixon (w) • Alex Cal (a) • Tom Feister, Cal (c)
The Origin of Zartan, Part 1: Who is Zartan? You may think you know the murderous master of disguise but you don’t know the whole story! A hired killer under the command of the Baroness is dangerously compromised. He’s offered the protection of COBRA and sent on a risky mission that ends with a scene that will have Joe fans talking for years. This one is 100% guaranteed to shock!
*2 regular covers will be shipped in a 1-to-1 ratio.
FC • 32 pages • $3.99
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August is only a couple of short months away, and we all know what that means in regards to the Asian market. Over the past few days quite a number of products have started showing up across the web, and while I’ll refrain from linking to specific auctions, I did want to mirror the updated images and point out that these all come courtesy of The Terror Drome. To date, we’ve got some nice pictures of Pursuit of Cobra City Strike Beachhead, Jungle Assault Duke, Desert Battle Storm Shadow, and G.I. Joe: Resolute Scarlett and Baroness.
In the past I’ve jumped on some of these auctions pretty quickly, to be totally honest. But so far, I’m holding myself back on this initial batch. I grabbed Spirit pretty quickly when he appeared a couple of weeks back, but I’m just having a hard time pulling the trigger on $20 a pop when they should be hitting retail in about 6 – 8 weeks. The really weird thing is, for the Rise of Cobra figures, which were pretty inferior, all told, I was jumping on them pretty quick. But for these much better figures, I can’t bring myself to do it, at least not yet. Is it because of the price jump, which is admittedly, pretty small? Or is it my strong, iron clad moral core? Yeah, definitely not that.
Check out some of the images mirrored below.
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While I understand that many folks bemoan the G.I. Joe film, it’s tough to argue that both the 25th Anniversary line as well as the Rise of Cobra event have brought a bunch more Joe fans to the table, which is especially cool because that means a bunch of cool new G.I. Joe fan projects end up emerging.
HissTank forum member Jimmy McWicked is the latest fan that has really made me sit up and say “Wow!” with his strongly animated-influenced fan art inspired by G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Every time someone cries foul about the fact that G.I. Joe: Renegades might have animated influences, I see stuff like this and say “so freaking what?” This is some of the coolest, most inspired fan art that I’ve seen in a very long time.
Jimmy McWicked can also be found on Deviant Art where you can peruse more of his fantastic work. Check out some of the mirrored images below.
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