Minimate Customs: The Question

Anyone that knows me knows that I collect action figures (and, if you didn't: I collect action figures). Superhero action figures only, though. There are many reasons, but I suppose that it comes down to the fact that I like to hold a three-dimensional representation of these characters in my hands. There's something satisfying about that. And, these days, it's more satisfying then the comic books that spawned the toys.

One of the little subsets of my collection are Minimates. These are little block figures, not unlike Legos, that stand about 2" tall, but have multiple POAs (that's points of articulation, or moving joints). Minimates are way cool, in that they pack an exceptional amount of detail into a small body. And, in the last few years, that detail has been ratcheted up considerably, to the point that I'd stack Minimates up against any so-called "deluxe collector" action figure.

Minimates are also one of the few toys that have characters from multiple comic book companies, movies, and tv properties in a uniform style. The flagship property for Minimates is Marvel Comics (and the movies based on those comics), but Minimates have been made for DC Comics, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, and Battlestar Galactica, to name a few. Honestly, unless you go back to the old Mego World's Greatest Super Hero! dolls, you're going to be hard-pressed to have Batman standing seamlessly next to Spider-Man in your collection-- never mind Jean-Luc Picard, Peter Venkman, and Gollum.

But what really puts Minimates over the top, for me, is the ease of customization. For the uninitiated, customizing is the creation of a brand-new figure from the scraps of others, using paint, modelling clay, whatever. It's not very easy, and good customizers can produce figures indistinguishable from commercial releases. I've always wished I could customize, but it's always proved to be beyond my skill set. But not with Minimates. Because their parts are all interchangeable, it's extremely easy to pull a few apart and create something new. Moreover, coloring and detailing can be achieved successfully with something as simple as a Sharpie marker. Yes, the better customizers also use paints, puttys, and even printed decals; I am not one of those customizers. Yet.

Anyway. One of the reasons I wanted to start this blog was to show off my meager works. I've cobbled together a few dozen customs, mostly from DC Comics, because 1.) DC Minimates suffered a premature end, and 2.) I like DC better then Marvel. So, without further ado, I'm going to start this off with one of my favorites, the Question.


The Question is a pretty darn easy custom to do. All you really need are a shirt/tie torso, coat, and hairpiece with a fedora. Moreover, many of the pieces you see here were provided by the official Question release. So what makes this a custom? Well, the official release was for the Modern Question, a.k.a. the female Question, a.k.a the sucky Question. As soon as I saw her announced, I knew that she would never have a home in my collection in place of the classic Question. So I took her nongendered parts and created one of my own.

Actually, I cobbled a Question together several months before the official release. The shirt comes from a BSG Gaius Baltar (a Minimate that has proven very useful), though there was not shortage of other options. The hat, however, was a different story. It took me a while to find a Minimate with the proper hat, but finally I stumbled upon him: Tiger Jacket Rocky, of all things. I've never been 100% thrilled at how the hat's cocked, but I've grown to like it. There's a better hat out there now, from the Spirit, but I haven't been able to make the change. I've grown accustomed to your hat....

Oh, and the head, of course, is just a random head turned backwards. Nothing hard about that. I also gave him a little folder to hold, which I apparently didn't photograph. Oh well. Anyway, the Question is, I think, a perfect Minimate custom; easy to do, and looks as if he came right out of the package. They aren't all like that....

Heady Time to be a Phillies Fan

Here's a link to something Tom Verducci wrote on SI.com last week about the Phillies becoming the closest thing to the Yankees in the NL. Basically, they've become the team for which every other contender must account. This was as it was first emerging that the Phils were aggressively pursuing Roy Halliday-- a pursuit that looks as if it has come to fruition.

If you're a longtime Phillies fan, this new, elite-level Phillies franchise is a little hard to wrap your head around. After all, it wasn't that long ago that stars like Curt Shilling and Scott Rolen were looking to leave Philadelphia, because they were convinced that management wasn't committed to winning. And who could blame them? I saw Curt Shilling pitch a lot of games, and I can't tell you how many wins he lost because of the inferior Phillies bullpen. One year, it seemed like every game Shilling pitched, he took a lead into the eighth, when Steve Schrenk would inevitably be brought in-- and, also inevitably, he would blow the game. Shilling, clearly, felt that his only chance to win in those days was to throw a complete game. He was probably right.

But Rolen, as it turns out, probably should have been a bit more patient. He was actually the beginning of a youth movement that has become the core of this Phillies team. Rolen was soon followed by Pat Burell and Jimmy Rollins, and later Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Cole Hamels. Again, if you followed the Phillies for awhile, this is still hard to accept. I grew up going to Phillies minor league games in Reading, and let me tell you, if ever a farm system was bare, it was the Phillies in the '80s. I recall only one even remotely impact player from that era, part time first baseman Ricky Jordan. Ricky Jordan!

But now the Phillies look to be contenders for a long, long time. Their core is still young, and already has a World Series title under their collective belts. The farm system remains deep, meaning the team will continue to get better either from within, or by parlaying their prospects into players, as they did first for Cliff Lee, and now for Halliday.

But....

I don't quite understand the mechanics of this trade. Basically, the Phillies are getting Halliday from Toronto, and shipping Cliff Lee to Seattle; in addition, the Phillies are sending prospects (reportedly outfielder Michael Taylor and pitchers Kyle Drebeck and J.A. Happ) to Toronto, and receiving prospects back from Seattle. I don't know anything about them, but reportedly the Seattle package is not as good as the Phillies prospect package, nor as far along.

This prospect package is essentially what the Blue Jays asked Philadelphia for over the summer (with the substitution of Taylor for Dominick Brown, who may be better ultimately but is not as far along as Taylor). The Phillies decided this was too high, and went and got Lee for a package of good, but inferior, prospects. Drebeck, in fact, was considered untouchable.

So why make that deal now, when you'll actually be getting less out of Halliday? What has changed? If the Phillies have decided that they need another elite starter to compete with the Yankees in a possible World Series rematch next fall, then yeah, they're right. After all, Lee was the only starter that proved capable of beating the Bombers, and you just can't be sure that Cole Hamels will regain his 2008 form. So adding Halliday, even at such a steep price, seems like a reasonable idea.

But....

Why trade Lee? If the idea is to make your rotation lights out in October, Halliday/Lee does that. But just Halliday puts you back at square one. Granted, Halliday is an upgrade over Lee, but Lee is an upgrade over Hamels or whomever else the Phillies will plug into the rotation. Plus, now you've lost Happ, and Drebeck, who would probably be pitching in Philadelphia by the end of the summer. Who will pitch those innings? Pedro Martinez? Kyle Kendrick?

I understand that the Phillies thought that they couldn't lock up Lee long-term, but they can Halliday. Fine. So why not keep Lee for the year? If the goal in trading Lee for prospects is to restock the farm, then the two draft picks the Phils would pick up if Lee signs elsewhere as a type A free agent after next season accomplish that. It just doesn't make much sense. I would understand if the Phillies were shipping Lee to the M's, then sending Seattle's prospects to Toronto and thus keeping their own farm system intact, but this seems like the worst of both worlds.

Oh well. Roy Halliday's a Phillie, or about to be, and it's hard to complain about that. The Phillies have shown that they have no intention of being satisfied with a two or three year run, and are looking to be the team to beat in the National League for a long time. Considering where they've been, they get a pass.

For now. It doesn't take long for fans to go from suffering to spoiled; just ask the Red Sox.

UPDATE: So the trade was finalized today, finally, and did not include Happ, but a catching prospect that I haven't heard of. So that's certainly better, although the Phillies have now traded two catching prospects in the last six months. I hope they really do like Ruiz.

So the Phillies rotation would look to be Halliday/Hamels/Blanton/Happ/Moyer or Pedro. Not bad, but they are really counting on Hamels to rebound, and Happ to be the real deal. I think both those things will happen, but I'd feel a lot better if Cliff Lee was in front of Cole Hamels, or Kyle Drabeck was waiting in the wings.

Oh: I misspelled Kyle Drabeck's name. Knew it was one or the other.

DC Drops the Other Shoe?

My buddy James beat me to this a bit, but I still wanted to sound off a bit on the big news that DC Comics (or, as I like to say, Detective Comics Comics) will be starting a series of ongoing original graphic novels this summer under the brand EARTH ONE. Essentially, these books will be skipping the middle man by telling a continuing story, but without serializing the story first in standard comic book format (or "pamphlets" or "floppies" or whatever trendy euphemism for comic books we're using this month).

This is, indeed, a big deal. But is it as big a deal as it should be?

DC's basic strategy here is to take their two biggest characters, put high-profile creative teams on them, and launch new series with "fresh" continuity unencumbered by the characters' 70+ respective years of history. This is a laudable idea, but one that feels less then fresh, considering that DC just did the same exact thing four years ago with the ill-fated ALL-STAR line. Those books are really an interesting case study: they both sold a ton, one was a tremendous critical success (I'd say it's the greatest Superman story ever told), and the other probably the most controversial comic of the decade (I'd say it's the worst Batman story ever told). Yet, you can't really call ALL-STAR a success, because it didn't spawn a series of other books. Unlike Marvel's similar Ultimate line, it didn't create a fresh new universe. It just, inexplicably, went away.


And this failure, I think, is what's driving DC's decisions here more then anything. Because the books didn't fail in the traditional sense (again, they sold), but in a more intangible way: they took so long to complete, and shipped so haphazardly (AS BATMAN, I believe, went a calendar year between issues at one point, and remains unfinished as of this writing) that they lost a ton of momentum and pretty much killed ALL-STAR as a viable brand. Keep in mind, also, that there were several other AS projects that were announced (I want to say Adam Hughes doing All-Star Wonder Woman...) that never saw the light of day and are presumably still unfinished.

So, I suspect that the EARTH-ONE line is in essence a non-continuation continuation of the ALL-STAR line. But then... why not just continue the ALL-STAR line? Why not just announce that these are ALL-STAR volume two (or season two, as we so sillily say these days)? I feel pretty comfortable in predicting that both AS SUPERMAN and BATMAN, despite their initial problems getting to the stands, and ignoring the fact that AS BATMAN is Godawful, will now remain comfortably entrenched on the list of "perennials", the books that remain among the best sellers year in and year out. You've already established a brand, and most importantly at the book store, where DC's focus with this material should be.

The biggest drawback, I suppose, is that they are essentially unfollowable. ALL-STAR SUPERMAN (though I believe originally designed to be ongoing, with a new creative team after Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely finished their run) tells a complete story that doesn't leave much room for more. And Frank Miller's Batman in AS BATMAN is so ill-conceived, so poorly written, that I can't imagine anyone wanting to follow him. At this point, I think DC editorial is content to let him finish the book whenever he and Jim Lee finish the book, count their money and call it a day.

So I think the existence of a pretty similar previous attempt to do the very same thing mutes my excitement for this. And then there's the fact that the creative teams for the latter books aren't quite as exciting as the former. Okay, Geoff Johns and Gary Frank is pretty darn good, but is it better then Frank Miller (writer of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and BATMAN: YEAR ONE) uniting with Jim Lee (artist of BATMAN: HUSH) to do Batman? No. Oh, I have no doubt that the final product from the Johns/ Frank team will be better (how could it not be?), but the Miller/ Lee combo was a wet dream for most of the fanbase. As for comparing J. Michael Straczynski and Shane Davis to Morrison and Quitely... I mean, who the hell is Shane Davis (yes, I know who Shane Davis is. He used to draw TEEN TITANS. My point is... who the hell is Shane Davis)?!

And then there's the brand name... EARTH ONE. I know (or suspect I know) why they went with this: it has a deep meaning in the history of DC Comics, and represents a fresh start. The thing is... the deep meaning trumps the fresh start. DC, very recently, reintroduced the multiverse into their omniverse; it's too hard to explain here, but basically the name "Earth One" is very much in play within the core continuity they are trying so hard to distance themselves from with this "fresh start". DC writers, editors, artists, janitors, et all will be asked time and time again if this new EARTH ONE is meant to represent "Earth One" in the multiverse. And if it is, then it's not a fresh start. And if it isn't, why even raise the possibility?

Ultimately, I just don't think this new project addresses the question many of us have been asking in recent years: Why not just publish trade paperback collections and skip the comics alltogether? This doesn't mean why not publish new hardcover graphic novels starring Superman and Batman with a new continuity, but rather, why publish Scalped as a monthly comic? Or Air? Or Ex Machina?

See, those series are already free and clear of the continuity stigma, and I'll let you in on a secret: all of them (as well as pretty much every Vertigo and Wildstorm property) do much better as trade paperbacks relative to their comics sales. These days, Vertigo and Wildstorm books are lucky to debut above 15k, and most quickly fall below the 10k threshold. But they do well as books, both in the direct market and at mass retail. In fact, there's rumors that some book collections outsell their first-run comics. In other words, the comics cling to the bottom of the sales charts, but the books are among highest selling titles upon release. So why continue publishing the comics? Why not just make Vertigo a serialized book publisher, following the strategy that has made Manga the dominant comics publishing genre in the US?

Until someone (not necessarily one of the Big Two) is willing to make this very logical leap, comics will still be stuck with a dinosaur publishing model. It's amazing to me that one company, First Comics, actually announced a plan to suspend their monthly titles in favor of continuing them as OGNs nearly 20 years ago, and no one has followed suit since (First, by the way, went completely belly-up before their plan could be put into place).

I've no doubt that these new books will be successful. I'll probably read them (at least the Batman one); and I'm curious to see where the line will go from here. Probably, we'll see the material intended for the ALL-STAR line repackaged here. But I don't think this announcement quite represent the revolution that we are waiting for. A nudge in the right direction, yes, but one still delaying the inevitable.

Top Five Side One Track Ones

This topic is, of course, the one Jack Black gives John Cusick in "High Fidelity", and I thought it would be a good one to kick off what I hope to be a regular feature here at the ol' blog without a clever name. Keep in mind that these are not merely my opinion, but actual fact; you are welcome to offer suggestions of modifications, but I have the final say, as God intended.

So: top five track ones. I think that a great opening track is one that immediately makes you say "yes, I will like this". It should really set the tone for the whole album, kind of like taking the opening kickoff in for a touchdown (never mind the fact that I think the second half kickoff is far more important, and were I an NFL head couch I would always defer). And these songs do that; they kicked down the doors of my ears and said "listen to ME!" Doors of my ears... yes, that's the simile I want.

I think it's really pretty awesome when this happens, and in fact, it just happened this morning, when I listened to Metric's "Fantasies". I had downloaded this album ages ago (shhhh) but never burned it until last night, and the first track is so kickass that the baby and I have listened to it five times already. I even thought about putting it on this list, but that seems premature. It gets an honorable mention, though.

Yes, this is a very rock-heavy list, and Indie rock at that. Sue me, it's what I like. I thought about putting on things from other genres, like "Linus and Lucy" or "Bombs over Baghdad", but that would be disingenuous. Like Cusick putting "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his list.

Couple more honorable mentions go out to U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name", which I might even argue is the greatest opening song ever, but I guess I'm over U2, so it doesn't make the cut, and Belle and Sebastian's "Lazy Line Painter Jane", which is brilliant but the opening track to an EP, not an album. It feels weird to not have any Belle and Sebastian songs here, but most of their albums don't really start out at top speed; it's the later tracks that are most memorable. Anyway, the list:

5. "Bittersweet Symphony", The Verve (Urban Hymns). This doesn't really fit the criteria I mentioned above, because it's more a great song that happens to be Track One. Still, it's a great, great song. It's a shame that this was the Verve's only true hit, and that they are often considered a one-hit wonder, and that they didn't see a dime from it.

4. "Writing to Reach You", Travis (The Man Who). My friend Travis bought their first album because he saw them open for somebody (Oasis?) and they had his name. I listened to their first album and thought it was all right, but this one... whoa. This song is just so pretty, and so sad; it may be the perfect Britpop song, and it's definitely the perfect Travis song.

3. "Twin Cinemas", The New Pornographers (Twin Cinemas). This song just kind of explodes out of the speakers. Travis (again) saw them open for Belle & Sebastian, said I would like them, burned me a copy of this cd, and I knew after about five seconds that he was right.

2. "Caring is Creepy", The Shins (Oh! Inverted World). This album was recommended to me (by... uhhhh... Travis... look, we just have similar tastes in music); we got a used copy in at my old record shop, so I popped it on and said "yeah, that's for me". You'll note this song is on the Garden State soundtrack, but is not the one Natalie Portman oh-so irritatingly says will change your life. That song was "New Slang" which is only the song Hillary and I dance to at our wedding. Damn you, Garden State!

1. "Reverence", The Jesus and Mary Chain (Honey's Dead). This is the song I want played at my funeral. It won't be, but it's the song I want played at my funeral.

On a Certain Popular Vampire Book which shares it's name with an old U2 song

I find it amusing that Twilight fans have somehow become the bottom feeders amongst nerd culture fan groups. There's a big, big backlash at Twilight out there, almost all of it, I suspect, stemming from this summer's San Diego Comic-Con. There thousands of Twilight fans essentially took over the first day of the con, camping out for days- if not weeks- outside the San Diego Convention Center to get into the Twilight panel. That's right, a panel: a little hourlong chat that would be widely available as a podcast. The vast majority of those people in line, by the way, never even made it into the hall for their oh-so important Twilight lovefest.

But their effect was felt. The talk for days after Comic-Con was that Twilight "ruined" Comic-Con, which is fairly preposterous. After all, it's Hollywood that ruined Comic-Con; once all these non-comics TV shows began using the con as a platform to reach fans, it was inevitable that one would come with a large fan base that could give a whit about Spider-Man's marriage.

Of course, the real objection is not to Twilight itself but to the assumed demographic of the fans: teenage girls. It must have been quite a blow to all those former and current high-school outcasts to see the object of both their desire and derision finally at Comic-Con... but for some stupid vampire romance thing. To be fair, I don't know if teenage girls do in fact make up the majority of the Twilight fan base; the one that I know reasonably well rolls her eyes at it, although sources indicate that she was into it not all that long ago. Teenagers, they be a fickle beast.

(As an aside, if the majority of Twilight fans at Comic-Con were in fact teenage girls, and this meant that their parents shelled out for con tickets, made travel arrangements, booked transportation and lodging, and either allowed their daughters sit for days outside of the San Diego Convention Center alone or held a place for them, all so that they could squeal at some actors for an hour, that's some !@#$ed-up parenting there. I can say that, no, when my daughter comes of age, we won't be doing anything like that. It reminds me of those stories of parents pulling their daughters out of school to go see that Hannah Montana movie that played for a week a few years ago. I understand not wanting to disappoint little Kaley, but you've got to draw the line somewhere.)

Really, what's extraordinary here is that Twilight has become big enough that it's fans can be lumped together as a unique nerd-culture group. This is not as easy to do as one might think. For example, I don't really think there are Transformers Nerds are GI Joe Nerds; most likely, they would be general Toy Nerds, and would cross between the two. Oh, I'm sure some would argue otherwise. But I don't think there's enough people that are exclusively or primarily fans of one of those properties to identify themselves as such to the exclusion of anything else.

Likewise, I doubt that there are many Battlestar Galactica Nerds, as any fan of the show is almost sure to be a Sci-Fi Nerd in general. But there are, no doubt, Star Wars and Star Trek Nerds that are devoted only to their particular property. They would, of course, make up two of the largest and most vocal nerd communities, though there are many others. There's Toy (or Action Figure) Nerds, and Comic Book Nerds, and the aforementioned Sci-Fi Nerds, and Gaming Nerds, and Video Game Nerds (and no, those are not the same thing). And Furries, I suppose, but that's really more of a fetish thing, and besides: we don't want the Furries lumped with us.

I myself am a Comic Book Nerd. I would not classify myself as an Action Figure Nerd, despite my home being literally littered with action figures, because I basically only buy comic book related figures. So this collection is really more of an extension of my Comic Book Nerdom (or Nerdhood). My friend Kevin would be both a Comic Book and Action Figure Nerd (among other things), because he collects comic books and action figures like GI Joe. See the difference?

I doubt that Twilight will have the staying power to become a permanent Nerd demographic, but one never knows. It's already made a name for itself in Nerd culture circles; after all, I don't recall anyone ever accusing Harry Potter of ruining Comic-Con.

Goodbye Curb

If last night was, in fact, the last episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm-and, considering that Larry David has been something of a bald, Jewish Brett Farve in the past when it comes to ending the series, I'm still not 100% convinced that it is- I would certainly say it's time. It's not that the show isn't funny anymore, but it's always funny in the same way, episode after episode, season after season. Larry runs afoul of someone; sometimes he's in the right, sometimes he's in the wrong. Never really matters. There will be some kind of minor thread weaved throughout the episode, which seems unimportant but will somehow tie in to the resolution, in which Larry will most likely end up with egg on his face. Over and over and over.

Considering that this same basic formula was also applied to most every episode of Seinfeld, it's pretty remarkable that David has been able to do so much with such a narrow view of what it funny. Plot was never very important to Larry David-- which may be why his only movie effort, Sour Grapes, is almost unwatchable. Observation is, and by and large those observations are spot on. David is also the one comic that's been able to make jokes about the bathroom without resorting to toilet humor, for which I applaud.

I also appreciate that David tackled the elephant in the room since Curb began, the Seinfeld reunion, in the same fashion he did other season-long arcs like his ill-fated restaurant and Broadway appearance in the Producers. That is to say, it remained the backdrop, but never dominated the season. Unfortunately, that meant we didn't get to see much of the Seinfeld cast; a shame, because all were excellent in the famed Curb improv format. Jerry Seinfeld, in particular, seemed to be having a ball. I would have greatly preferred to see more Jerry then, oh, Mocha Joe. Let's just hope that the DVD set has a longer look behind the scenes.

I don't have too much to say about the finale. Like most of the season, it had its' moments without being particularly memorable. Seeing Larry attempt to fill Jason Alexander's shoes as George Costanza was one of the highlights of the series, but the episode's sub-plots (Larry's feud with Mocha Joe, and his attempt to find out who put a stain on Julia Louise-Dreyfuss' coffee table) were tedious. Did anyone else notice that, at the same time that Mocha Joe was threatening to have Jason Alexander's beloved dogs destroyed for attacking him, Jason Alexander continued to buy coffee from Mocha Joe? Yeah. It's time to end it.

I am a Bad Blogger

No, no, it's true. I think that, having not posted since July, it's fair to say that I have not kept up with this endeavor. Thing is, I want to have a little place online to express my thoughts, dreams, and what not, but the mechanics of actually doing it are... sucky. But I'm going to recommit to doing this thing, and God knows when I commit to something... it doesn't mean a whole lot. So we'll see.