Minimate Customs: Best of 2010

So some of the guys over at the Minimate Multiverse are holding a Best Customs of 2010 contest, and I've decided to enter my wares.  Some of my entries will be guys I've already shown here, but some are not, and seeing as how I needed to host my photos somewhere in order to send them in... here are my entries in the Best Customs of 2010 contest!

You've Gone Too Far, Conan

Look, I've been a Conan O'Brien fan for a long time.  I've been on Team CoCo long before we were calling it Team CoCo.  And sure, I never watched a minute of his "Tonight Show", but I was still outraged when he got hosed for Leno.  And, even though I haven't watched his new show, I'm glad it's there.  But now... now I'm not so sure.  Because Conan... you have crossed the line.



Now, let's overlook for now Conan's rather baffling inclusion of longtime Flash nemesis Captain Boomerang on a list of super heroes that suck, or his declaration that the guy who came up with a magic ring that turns the bearer's thoughts into solid-light constructs was "mailing it in that day".  No, what's really stirred me up is that Conan had the audacity to call Bat Lash- Bat Lash!- lame.  And that is something for which I shall not stand.


Bat Lash is a western character (please note I said western character, not super hero, which should automatically disqualify him from Conan's list.  But I digress) created by Reuben- award winning cartoonist (which is the highest award a cartoonist can receive, not, in this case, a sandwich) Sergio Argones.  He briefly had his own series in the late '60s, written by Argones and Denny O'Neil and beautifully illustrated by Nick Cardy.  Lash was a character very much influenced by the popular James Garner tv show Maverick, and his adventures were quite unlike any other western series comics had seen.  Though short lived, Bat Lash is remembered as one of the high points of the Silver Age, and widely regarded now as a classic. One of the first things I did when I started buying Silver Age comics was put together a complete run of Bat Lash, and I was not disappointed.  They are great comics, very sophisticated for the time and well worth reading.

In short, Bat Lash does not suck.  He is awesome.  You know who sucks?  Conan!

Conan's entire argument against Bat Lash seems to revolve around the fact that he looks like a bit of a dandy.  Now, I will grant you that the illustration that Conan showed (by Dave Gibbons, which I can't seem to find online) is not the most flattering, but come on.  Just because a man appreciates the finer things in life, it doesn't make him gay!  That's like saying that recently deceased NFL Hall of Famer Cookie Gilchrist wasn't a tough guy because he answered to the name "Cookie".  And Cookie Gilchrist was plenty tough.  Tough as nails.

One of the things that's always kinda bugged me about Conan is that he's obviously a geek, but he often ridicules geek culture for the sake of Joe Six-Pack.  He's like a geek minstrel.  It's just sad.  Well, I for one am not going to take it any more.  You're dead to me, Conan.  Dead to me!  From now on, I'll stick with a geek who remembers his roots: Stephen Colbert.

I'll give you Space Ranger and Ultra the Mulit-Alien, though.  They do suck.

Wrapping Up Ex Machina

So I just read the last volume of Ex Machina, which has been out for a little while, but being frugal I waited until I found a copy for a price I could stomach on Amazon (boy, that must drive comic book creators nuts.  They already hate that we wait for the trade, and now they've got to deal with us waiting for the trade at a discount).  This was a bit of a milestone for me, because Ex Machina is the first comics series that I bought and read entirely in trade paperbacks as they were being published.  I've read other series entirely in this fancy new format, but that was always after publication had long begun (and, in some cases, finished) and it was just easier to buy the books.  But this was the first time that a new series was published, and I said nope, I'd rather have those as books, I'm gonna wait.  Now that's become standard practice for me, but at the time I remember it being excruciating.  I'd see the new issue on the shelf, and want to read it, but I'd pull my hand away like Stimpy with the History Eraser Button:

Minimate Customs: Two Face

So here's my first Minimate custom for the new year.  I'm jumping ahead quite a bit by showing him, but I'm so happy with him I just can't wait.  When DC Direct broke the hearts of children worldwide by electing to end DC Minimates for no good reason, there were several huge omissions from the DCU.  Perhaps the biggest was Two Face, in that we had most of the other major members of Batman's rogues gallery (Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman), but not  Two Face.  Moreover, Two Face's unique appearance was a test for any customizer, certainly one with my mediocre skills.  So I figured that the only way I'd ever get Two Face was to commission him, leaving a hole in my collection... and my heart... big enough for two.

The end.