To say that the New York Comic Con 2006 was an unmitigated disaster would be an understatement. It would be like comparing a papercut to the fine, incisive mark of the guillotine. The memory made coming to NYCC 2007 a much dreaded, though still impossibly alluring, experience. I’m pleased to report an enormous increase in Con quality over last year.

The lines around Javits

While Friday’s opening ceremonies saw a handful of industry-only events, award ceremonies and a short speech by the amazing Stephen Colbert (who is also an alarmingly intense Lord of the Rings fan), I eschewed these things for participation in the heart of the Convention, occurring on Saturday and Sunday. And by ‘heart’, I mean ‘seventeen miles of entrails, wrapping obscenely around the entirety of the Javits building’. Yes, Saturday morning’s line was absurdly long, traversing the front of the building, around the side in February’s harsh winds off of the Hudson, and snaking back around into a lower level. Unbelievably, the line moved with relative ease and we were inside before too long, making nerdy friends along the way.

NYCC was divided up into a few distinct areas. We had the indie presses and artists around the backs and right-hand side of the main hall, enormous company kiosks and displays (including people playing Guitar Hero in the back of a tricked out car) dominating the front and central areas, and vendors spotted throughout the center and left-hand side. Upstairs was the narrow ‘Artists Alley’, where more mainstream artists were relegated to signing, and beyond them, a large room opened up into a tabletop gaming area. Around the edges of this were seated the cream of B-list celebrities, including the omnipresent Peter Mayhew (aka Chewbacca, who will be at every convention until the end of time itself), Gary Coleman (who became irate when someone took TWO photos of him instead of one), Hayden Panettiere, and the cast of Buffy.

My main objective for attending NYCC was to get Jeff Smith to sign my Bizarro Comics hardcover, so let me get this little negativity out of the way before I get into how fun the convention was as a whole. See, Jeff Smith’s booth was only a short segment of the aisle, and in the singular hour that he was signing, the line would constantly extend past the end of said booth. An angry man in a green shirt, clearly paid well to be angry and green, would yell at anyone who stood beyond the invisible point that marked the end of Jeff Smith’s signing space. In addition to that, the fine folks who owned the next booth over, Markosia Comics, we doing a great job at hurling epithets and insults about how we were ruining their business by forming a line in front of their booth. NYCC organizers, I urge you to perhaps allocate a smarter arrangement of space when you have a name as big as Jeff Smith signing comics. I gave up after the frustrating demoralization from both booths, but not before I was guilted into buying a comic from the people whose lives I was apparently ruining by standing there. I missed Jeff Smith’s autograph because of this instance of poor planning and my personal unwillingness to have someone yelling in my ear for an hour, and I may never get a chance to meet him again. I reiterate that the rest of the convention proved to be unexpectedly rewarding, but this was a dark spot on the rest of the day.

As a collector of original comic art and signatures, I much prefer interacting with the artist in question over later purchasing something that they had anonymously put their name on. The monetary value of the signature is the same, but the richness of the experience is incomparable.

Tim Biskup

The highlights, and unreproducible experiences, are always these people. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Evan Dorkin, Bill Sienkiewicz, Michael Whelan and a handful of other creators that have inspired me greatly over the years. This year, I happened to meet Sket One, the completely amazing Tim Biskup, Bill Plympton (who is a down-to-Earth guy and easy to talk to, and did a sketch for me), and the highlight of the Convention, and perhaps my life, Major Victory.

L to R : Feedback, Major Victory & Fat Momma

See, I’m a colossal Major Victory fan, even more so than being a fan of ‘Who Wants To Be A Superhero?’ He’s a real person who had presented this positive life-model that I found inspiring. While I was hanging out with some friends on Sunday morning before the con officially opened, Fat Momma brushed past me to get to the end of a line. Lo and behold, Feedback and Major Victory were right behind her. I was quickly reduced to a squealing girl, said something like ‘Oh sweet Jesus I’m your biggest fan!’, and Major Victory gave me a noncommittal ‘thanks’ and moved on. But it was enough. I’d met my personal hero through some amazing twist of fate… and I acted like a schoolgirl before I knew what hit me. I’d immortalized this guy in wooden robot form - what greater honor is there? I also took photos of him while he wasn’t looking.

And can there ever be such indignity as that which someone suffers upon meeting one’s idols and kinda wets oneself a little? I submit that there cannot be. But I don’t think I would have changed anything.

As far as ‘the people’ at the convention were concerned, the morning-until-noon stretch saw relative calm and mobility on the main floor. As the afternoons crept in, we were kinda forced into body-to-body shuffle-mode. I remarked to one booth-bound woman that I’d been inadvertently touched at the Con by more people in more places than during the entirety of my sexual maturity. I think that might have creeped her out a little, but it’s not like I was saying ‘How about one more, baby? I found a place that no one got to yet!’

Collectors’ Quest is offering a free DVD of NYCC highlights right here for the next few days, so get in on that! Stay tuned for more con reactions, a ton of new toy photos, and a five thousand word essay on how awesome it is that next year’s NYCC will be in April and I won’t have to carry my damned coat around.

I just added a pretty garnet ring to my jewelry collection that I’m pretty excited about. The stone is a deep, fiery red, a very passionate, dramatic shade. It’s not very big, but it’s quite pretty, in my opinion, and I got in a pre-Valentine’s Day 70% off sale so the price was decent. Why garnet? You know, I can’t really say. Ruby is my birthstone so I’m partial to red stones, I guess.

Most people associate deep red stones with garnet, but garnet can actually be brown, yellow, orange, violet, green and even blue.

Garnet was popular with Victorians and is actually found in a lot of antique jewelry, since the garnet’s rich color blended well with the elaborate designs of the age. Sadly, because the garnet was so popular with Victorians, the next generation found the stone to be dated and old-fashioned and after the turn of the 20th century the garnet fell out of favor. Fortunately, you don’t need to look far to find beautiful Victorian garnet pins, rings and pendants! Here are a few good sources:

Lang Antiques

Antique

I had the opportunity to speak both with Jeff Scanlon and Gary Lagestee about the Rummage Monkey marketplace.

So where did Rummage Monkey begin? What really set this in motion?

Jeff: We’re Foreign Exchange Sales Brokers working with many middle and small business owners and so while we — like others — saw a need for an affordable marketplace, we figured we’d also do better than the tech guys who started one because we had the business contacts.

I gotta ask it: How is Rummage Monkey different than eBay?

Gary: It’s not an auction site. Sellers ask a fair price, have the option to use the negotiation tool to accept offers, and no one has to wait for the auction to end to make the deal they want.

Jeff: And we offer options in buying, purchasing options, like escrow accounts, Google Check Out, PayPal, and standard merchant accounts — eventually sellers will be able to access and process their credit card transactions via Authorize.net. We’re still tweaking it all, but with our secure messaging sellers and buyers will be able to securely finalize their payment via messages.

Gary: And our fee structure is low. There are no listing fees, low fees for extra features like additional pictures, featured items etc., and fair final value fees.

Can you create your listing with images and photos you host yourself? You know, the old html insert…

Gary: Yes. But for those who need us to host those extra images we have the option, with a small fee of course.

Your fees are low… Many marketplace sites fail because they don’t plan long term with their fees, their server costs aren’t covered and they go belly up. Which leads to two questions: Are these fees you can live with, so the site is viable? Or are these temporary starter fees to get the site started and then they’ll be raised?

Jeff: We’ve planned our fee structure so that we can afford to run the site. For example, you’ll notice that on items $12 or less, we take a flat fee of 35 cents. This is because with what the merchant account fees are, we needed to be certain to cover that amount. These aren’t starter fees, in fact we just lowered them.

So the fees won’t be raised — I don’t mean ‘ever,’ but for the foreseeable future anyway…

Jeff: We’ve planned and calculated, the low fees shown are our fees — our goal with Rummage Monkey is to be affordable.

One of the major complaints about new marketplace sites is that they don’t have any real money put into marketing and promoting the site. No one shows up…

Gary: We’ve purchased and produced a commercial for XM satelite radio, have a strong Adwords campaign, and have banner ad campains at many high-traffic sites like MySpace.

Jeff: Also at Photo Bucket and power sellers groups.

I should make it clear here that Rummage Monkey is still in what you’d call ‘Beta,’ right? I mean you haven’t fully launched yet.

Gary: Correct. We’re still adding features, updating and building the site. Jeff is living and breathing this thing — we have to force him to step away now and then.

Jeff: And most of our advertising, including the radio commercial, won’t happen until we have more sellers — why pay to heavily promote the site, bring customers in, just to have them find there isn’t much for sale there yet? ‘Yet’ is the key part; we are working to get sellers and store owners now.

I’ve read that your planning to officially open & do the major promotion, at the end of March… Is that true?

Gary: We hope to launch the ad campaign at the end of March, or at least within 2 months.

Knock wood?

Gary: Yes, hopefully!

Jeff: Again, this is largely based on the number of sellers and items… Are you going to try it?

*This is when I went to the site and more seriously looked at the fee structures etc. The stores made sense to me — low monthly fees range from $5 (for 500 items) to $20 (for 1,000,000 items) with a middle package of $15 (for 10,000 items). More affordable than I would have guessed.

Can you have more than one store? So that each store has a theme? I believe in niche marketing…

Jeff: Sure. You’ll need a unique ID for each store, but email me and we’ll set it up right for you.

Wow, that’s service you don’t get at eBay. In fact, I’m just thrilled to see contact information on the site. Right there, on the site, there is contact information — physical address, a working email address, and oh-can-it-be-true? Yes! A valid phone number. That alone makes Rummage Monkey worthy of seller attention.

Jeff: Once more sellers come, the ads will run, the buyers will come — & they’ll find lots of goods to buy. Everybody wins.

***

At the FutureShop companion website, AuctionCulture.com, it reads, “Organizations that understand the new dynamics between the secondary and primary markets will strengthen their products inherently, and in so doing increase customer loyalty.”

So far, Rummage Monkey seems to be on it’s way to doing just that.

Toy Fair is such a monumental event that even after four days of exploration and thousands upon thousands of words of reminiscence, I’ve barely scraped the surface of its presence. So here’s the rest of it, in record time, with what are sure to be grievous omissions which I’ll apologize for later.

In the past few weeks, I’ve described the offerings of Hasbro, Mattel, DC Direct, Sideshow Collectibles, and a handful of others, as well as posted a large photo gallery of my findings.

Often while traversing the floors of the Javits center, we’d be easily distracted by some other luminous bastion of awesomeness between us and our destination. One such surprise was the Attakus booth, a company based in Montreal which specializes in large-scale statues of Marvel and Star Wars characters, as well as a few smaller statues of the ‘erotic’ and fantasy variety. I’d never seen an Attakus piece in person, since importing things from elsewhere is never a cheap endeavor, but their quality and scale was impressive. We spent quite a lot of time circling their booth, photographing everything, including the awe-inspiring Millennium Falcon replica that was in scale with Hasbro’s 3 3/4” scale figures. Of course, it was only a half-replica, cut down the middle like a spaceship-dollhouse for easy access, but it included every internal and external detail down to the Dejarik Holochess set, with the entire display set up to look like the Rebel escape from the Death Star in A New Hope, complete with the Obi Wan and Darth Vader duel. Reps from neighboring booths were constantly streaming over to take another look inside the Falcon. Our photos of their booth can be seen here.

We also visited Marvel Toys, formerly Toy Biz, and saw their wonderful Legendary Heroes license. They’ve decided that if they can’t do Marvel characters anymore, and DC has the licenses to their own characters tied up in themselves and Mattel, they’d dip into the quirky third-tier of comics and tap the independent publishers for characters, which they’d then execute in their notable, revolutionary style. The initial lineups include both familiar and unfamiliar characters to me, but the first two waves will continue the popular Build-A-Figure theme. If you collect all six figures, you can build a large, unusually complex seventh figure from the extra parts included - a gimmick that has done very well for them over the past few years in their Marvel Legends line. The first set will include a huge Pitt figure from Image Comics, and the second wave will include a Monkeyman (with one of the figures being his partner, O’Brien). People might recognize Savage Dragon, Judge Dredd and Witchblade among the figures, as well as a Conan the Barbarian, but many of the characters elude even a hardcore geekonerd like me. It’s like the 90’s exploded all up in there, but the figures are at least visually interesting enough to support the line. I’m all about Mike Allred’s Madman, this time. Scope out their wares here.

There’s been some contention between Marvel Toys and Shocker Toys, as both sought to pursue licenses from ‘indie’ publishers and creators at the same time, often butting heads and having contracts slip out from each others’ grasps. Shocker Toys has oft been at odds with the toy world in general, being the very apotheosis of the underdog toymaker, fightin’ his way to the top. Their PR model differs greatly from the tried and true traditions of the toy industry, as Shocker has been revealing their hopes and aspirations, figure sculpts in every stage of completion, and sending out brutally honest (and sometimes emotional) statements to the press. The usual model states that toy companies will only talk about things that are 100% secure properties and only show off near-completed items, but Shocker is more organic in their approach. In laying the process bare before any of his touted products have even hit retail, Shocker Toys’ owner Geoff Beckett has created some discomfort for everyone involved. In meeting with him at Toy Fair though, I found him to be a very amicable guy, enthusiastic to a fault about his work. On display were his own series of Indie Spotlight figures, including Scud : The Disposable Assassin, Shadowhawk, and Katchoo from Strangers in Paradise, as well as an in-progress sculpt of my personal favorite character ever, The Maxx. With any luck, I convinced him to include Maxx’s love interest, Julie, in the first set of figures and a Mr. Gone sometime in the future. While these items still have work to be done on them, it’s a good start to what can be a great companion piece to Marvel Toys’ stuff (especially since Maxx and Pitt once battled / teamed up). Shocker Toys also had their in-progress GWAR figures on display, and discussed their rights to make figures of both Metalocalypse and Venture Brothers figures. If they can pull it off, their licenses have more appeal to me than what Marvel Toys has announced. Time will tell if the figures match up to the hype. We have a few photos here.

Bif! Bang! Pow! was a complete surprise with their presentation of some purely beautiful Flash Gordon action figures, designed by photorealistic comic artist and Flash Gordon fanatic Alex Ross. Toy Fair marked the debut of this company and their products, well, anywhere, and they blew us away with these perfect figures, their rights to produce any character in the movie for future waves, and their 12” scale Big Lebowski figures. They’re still looking for more support, so if you want to see these Flash Gordon guys, speak out!

And speaking of 12” figures, we encountered the UK-based Product Enterprise also. The first question out of my mouth was about their Space Vixens line, which has been put ‘on hiatus’ for now, I was informed. Choking back tears, we explored the rest of their booth to see a heavy Dr. Who focus, including an awesome 12” figure of the Tom Baker Who, crazy-ugly scarf and all. In addition to that, they are producing a line of Daleks - or, Dalek-shaped figures as re-painted by a variety of designers, a la Bearbricks and Dunnys - including the urban artist who identifies himself as, coincidentally enough, ‘Dalek’. A desperately needed synergy between art and sci-fi has been reached. Okay, it’s always been there, but no one really talks about it. Character Options had their array of regular 6” Dr. Who figures on display also, representing characters from the newer incarnation of the show.

Finally, we wandered down the ‘urban arts’ / designer section of the Fair before we called it a day and encountered even more items from the growing world of artsy-cute plush things and cute-scary vinyl figures. Most inspiring was UNKL’s booth - a company that recently exploded onto the art toy scene with a staff of only four people, they’re a real inspiration to aspiring toy creators such as myself and my fellow photographer that day. Of course, it inspired talk of ‘let’s quit our jobs!’ and ‘damn the man!’ and ‘let’s go get a sandwich!’ for the rest of the day, but the truth is that they produce some clever little figures (check out their Unipos), and the booth chick was totally cute.

Of course, Toy Fair is only about 5% action figures, but you wouldn’t know it from how I go on about ‘em for the past two weeks. We were stopped by the excited owner of Potty Monkey, a professional pediatric urologist who’d written a book and created a doll to promote good toilet habits. He also offered us a banana, but we declined. That kind of inventive excitement and energy is what makes the fair really come alive. The appearance of the creepy-but-catchy Alien Creole Band bouncing through the main floor and playing music, taking our photos with Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, the life-sized Batman made of Legos, and the display of cleverly animated and assembled wooden kits were only a scant few of the great things that I wish we’d had more time to explore.

But there’s always next year, too.

New York Comic Con has begun today, but before any of that can be processed and photoshopped, organized, recovered from and foot-blisters gently soothed, there’s still a good handful of Toy Fair to get through, so expect NYCC coverage this Wednesday. If we manage to get in the doors, and if we aren’t ushered out by fire marshals, and if Peter David doesn’t start eating people at his booth. Which really isn’t that much hyperbole.

Mezco Toys has stood out in my mind for the past several years due to their completely flawless handling of the Hellboy figure lines, from movie figures and into the Mike Mignola designed comic book figures. Somehow, Mezco Toys (one of the smaller action figure companies) had managed to merge form and articulation in a perfect mix beyond what and major company was doing, and still went severely underappreciated. They are a collector company, staffed by incredibly talented fans and toy enthusiasts.

Check out the full Mezco gallery here.

Unfortunately, there are no future Hellboy products planned at this time except for the comic line’s Abe Sapien, which is a beautiful thing. Alas, it will be a San Diego Comic Con exclusive item, because (and say it with me), “Dammit, SDCC gets all the cool stuff!” We were told that it would likely also be available through Club Mez, Mezco’s online collectors club, which I’m still trying to justify shelling out 40 dollars for. Action figures for the next Hellboy movie have not been determined yet, and figures based on the animated movies are not being handled by Mezco. Though they should be. I’d trust them with pretty much anything.

They will continue with their popular South Park and Family Guy figure lines, which have thrived for a few years now. Bringing cartoon characters into three dimensions has always been a challenge for toy companies, and both the successes and failures could be seen throughout Playmates’ hold on the exhaustive Simpsons license a few years back. Mezco’s holding strong with unmistakable renditions of both core and auxiliary characters from both shows, with an Eric Cartman variation planned for every South Park wave. Admittedly, it’s a visually unappealing show that revels in its 2-D-ness, but the figures remain popular. Some excellent fan-favorite cameos of Family Guy’s Peter Griffin as Bionic Peter, Lando Griffin and Astronaut Peter are also planned, most of which appeared onscreen for about ten seconds total. Also included will be the creepy Performance Artist, Chris on a treadmill, Quagmire in a robe, the Black Knight, Bonnie Swanson and Diane Simmons. Creepy old man Herbert was released as a Club Mez exclusive this past year, to much acclaim (and griping that he wasn’t released to the general public). Mezco is also planning a box set of miniature figures in a Drunken Clam pub playset environment. They continue to bring animated characters to life with their upcoming Underdog line of figures, which has nothing at all to do with the regrettable live-action movie of the same name. Pure classic animation here, which will hopefully sell better than the failed Pink Panther line made by Palisades Toys before they folded.

What we also saw, but could not photograph, was a line of Goonies action figures, done up in realistic style, and featuring an enormous Sloth, and amazing renditions of Mikey, Mouth, Chunk and Data. Needless to say, we were giddy. More news and images will surely be forthcoming.

Mezco also dips liberally into the ‘horror’ end of things, being responsible for the popular Living Dead Dolls, the next series of which will feature the theme of ‘bad luck’. Collect all five and you’ll be able to assemble a creepy little charm! Also, that Texas Chainsaw Massacre babydoll thing is probably the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. Maybe not so much the idea that a small child could obtain a My Size working chainsaw and go on a killing spree, but that they’d have the concentration to be able to sew a mask out of their victims’ skin. In addition to that horrible fare, Mezco presented the usual array of 7” action figures of horror classics, including a tuxed-up Freddy Kreuger and various Texas Chainsaw Massacre figures. Add to that an array of mini-dioramas of horror movie scenes, horror character dolls, more 7” zombies (including a bowling woman and a guy who looks like a preacher, both covered in blood and brains), and you have Mezco.

NECA carries things in a very similar vein and quality, also addressing cult properties in both horror and fun varieties. The first thing that caught my eye was the display of Nightmare Before Christmas figures, which will be entering their 6th and 7th waves of four figures each. At this point in the evolution of the line, they’ll be revisiting Oogie Boogie (previously only available in a box set), Jack Skellington (this time, with his desk), and a third Sally (with cauldron), with the addition of a 2-pack exclusive Sally in Santa suit. Fans of the line will also note the Creature from Under the Stairs (which had three seconds on screen, literally), the Melting Man, and the Corpse Boy & his mother. As usual, these figures will be packed with great accessories. It won’t be too long before we see every single character brought to figural form. Can we see a deluxe Hanging Tree, guys?

The rest of the NECA gallery is here.

NECA has also just released the first four figures from the movie 300, again with the same tremendous attention to detail that they’ve shown the Pirates of the Caribbean line. While no future 300 figures were shown (and the possibilities for figures seem large, especially with army building characters), a few Pirates prototypes were shown, including a 2-up of Slo Feng from the upcoming third movie. Continuing with their movie properties, they’ll also be producing figures from the upcoming ‘Grindhouse’ films, which got the following reaction from me :

“Holy crap, does that chick and a … gun…. for a … leg?”

Yes, she does. And as far as the action figure goes, you can switch it out with her actual leg, which also comes with the figure. Which is a fairly powerful testament as to why I love action figures. As if I needed more convincing, there’s a Quentin Tarantino figure with an alternate head, featuring a gouged-out eyeball. Which I’ve wanted to do to him at least twice in my life, but now I don’t have to, because the action figure sates my bloodlust. This alone is enough to pique my interest in the clearly gory, pseudo-explotation film that this promises to be. And because it’s a natural progression, they’ll also be doing Harry Potter figures. None of them, unfortunately, will have their limbs replaced with deadly weapons, but at least the prototypes looked pretty scary accurate.

Finally, NECA continues to explore ‘classic’ items, such as David Bowie’s Goblin King character from Labyrinth, which is sure to be a ridiculous hit with the ladies, and should be followed up by a handful of Brian Froud-inspired goblins. The Player Select line will also continue to explore popular video game characters, such as God of War’s Kratos, and the ever-popular Lara Croft, all in the popular 7” scale. And all, of course, absolutely beautiful.

These are two companies who have taken figural quality to new levels and kept it there, creating interesting, accurate toys that appeal to collectors of both toys and movie memorabilia, spanning genres and audiences alike. So watch out for ‘em.