Diamond Comics

I used to have a penchant for sifting through the obligatory 25-cent bin at just about every comic shop I could find. I wasn’t seeking lost, valuable treasures as much as I was seeking out a great story or inspiring artwork. Anyone hoping to stumble into a comic shop and walk out with an unrealized treasure is in for a sad realization, because they just don’t work that way. I’ve always leaned towards the eclectic, so someone else’s junk comic may just be an ideal find for me.

Usually, the comics just plain old sucked – but it’s hard to go wrong for a quarter. There’s a level of suck that can be reached that cyclically runs back around into the scope of ‘unintentionally awesome’.

Back in college, I picked up a few stray issues of The Puma Blues that I found in one such bin. After reading a whole lot of Sandman in high school, I became a fan of Michael Zulli’s artwork, so I was excited to find a whole comic series illustrated by him. While I couldn’t make much sense of the story, due in equal parts to missing issues and a storyline that was thick with dreamlike weirdness and shifting through time, it was only recently that I realized the significance of this series in the larger world of comic books and how they are distributed.

It all comes back to Cerebus’ creator Dave Sim, the Angry Man of Comics. The Deranged, Frothy Man of Comics. The Misogynistic, Unapologetic Man of Comics. Either way, he’s notoriously controversial and he takes comics very seriously, love him or hate him. It’s this seriousness, overblown or not, which changed the face of comics and how we collect them.

Initially published under Sim’s ‘Aardvark One International’ imprint, The Puma Blues moved to Mirage Comics after ‘The Puma Blues Distribution Incident’ of 1987. Sim’s own Cerebus comic was a very popular title at the time, so when Sim decided to not use Diamond Comics Distribution Services to distribute a Cerebus graphic novel, Diamond retaliated by arbitrarily deciding to also not carry The Puma Blues anymore. Because Diamond is now, and has always been, an almost monopolistic force when it comes to comic distribution to your neighborhood comic shop, this was a noticeable blow to both parties.

This battle led directly to Sim orchestrating a series of meetings to establish The Creators Bill Of Rights, which was established in 1988 by a handful of prominent independent comic book writers and artists. While this hasn’t completely stopped Diamond Comics from butting heads with small creators and shops, it marked an important landmark in the treatment of comics as a valid creative medium. The establishment of these ideas were instrumental in the formation of Image Comics in 1992, when many creators walked away from mainstream publishers Marvel and DC Comics and their questionable contracts to focus on original creations. Image has since established itself as the fourth largest comic book publisher in the United States, which is impressive when you consider that they’ve been around for only a fraction of the time that Marvel and DC have existed.

So, The Puma Blues is the little comic that changed the way that we collect today. And I found it in the back of my closet.

Since the scope of Toy Fair is larger than what any one human brain can sensibly absorb, here’s a summary of everything else worth noting from the halls of the event. Click back for a few weeks’ worth of recollections.

First, BanDai! BanDai’s strongest presence is in overseas markets, where they make all manner of tiny (and large) awesomeness, but their US branch is not without its awesomeness also. I’d like to note anyhow that they’ve always been one of the friendliest companies I’ve had regular communication with, and have always been willing to make time to see me when I come a-callin’. This years licenses include a return to Dragonball Z, and the continuation of Ben Ten, Power Rangers and Tamagotchi items. Unfortunately, there was no photography allowed in the showrooms.

Tamagotchi continues its online presence with the new Version 5, which my niece was pining for last time we went to Toys ‘R’ Us. With this new version, you play caretaker for a whole family of digital creatures, who evolve into different types of families depending on their treatment (until you inevitably forget about them in your backpack and they take their UFO back to their home planet). In addition to this new ‘family’ aspect, the game interacts with an online presence via a collection of passwords that can be exchanged between the game and the website, used to obtain new items & stuff. Finally, a chance to construct a family that doesn’t yell every word that they say and doesn’t let the dog lick the dishwasher clear. Seriously, guys, even hillbillies know better.

Ben Ten’s neatest item is the Alien Creation Chamber, a device which contains a collection of alien parts that are mixed and matched at the press of a button, with additional Alien Combination Figures sold separately. Making your own misbegotten alien creatures is a hobby of mine. And while I don’t claim to understand Power Rangers, (Red Ranger – TRIDENT WEAPON! Yellow Ranger – … dumptruck hands?), I love kaiju stuff. The neatest item to come out of the Rangers this year is the Jungle Fury Mission Helmet, which is a wearable role-play item that transmits secret missions, lights and sounds into your kid’s spongey head. Not only do you get secret, fun missions to play, but the device can be hooked up to a computer to download more missions, so the play value is constantly renewable. Clockwork Orange-style brainwashing is highly unlikely. But would be gnarly.

Huckleberry Toys is a relatively new addition to the action figure field, and their first products are a set of McDonaldland toy reproductions from the days of old. They’re expanding upon this original line of toys, though, with additions of various Ronald McDonalds, Mayor McCheese, Birdie, FryGuys, Chicken McNuggets, The Hamburglar, The Professor, Captain Hook, Big Mac, and even an upcoming Mac Tonite figure, who no one seems to remember but me. He was the piano-playing guy with the moon head, and he was BEAUTIFUL. I’m glad to see these pop cultural artifacts, especially in a world that’s embracing such an anti-fast food attitude. I grew up watching these brightly-colored, character-driven commercials, and I even ate McDonalds food occasionally (though I’m a Wendy’s guy myself), and I didn’t get eight kinds of heart disease by the time I was eleven. All things in moderation – especially fried foods and action figures. I’m working on the latter.

Shocker Toys is a well-known name in the world of action figures, though mostly for the notoriety that their fearless leader, Geoff Beckett, has brought to the entity. The company takes a very modern stance of ‘radical transparency’, which means that they openly talk about and reveal every step of the figure making process – something that the collecting public hasn’t been properly familiarized with. This open discussion of contracts that have fallen through, revealing unfinished figures, and the huge lead times between when a product is conceived and actually released has created some ill-will from collectors, who have yet to see any full-sized figures released from Shocker.

Where Marvel Toys’ Legendary Comic Book Heroes struggled in the mass market and failed after two waves, the far smaller Shocker Toys is trying to continue the existence of a line of similar figures from other independent comics and creators called ‘Indie Spotlight’. The first wave of their efforts was on display, with a potential release date of early June. This set will include fan-favorites like Scud, Katchoo, Shadowhawk, Kabuki, and The Maxx. In addition to these 6” figures, Shocker also has a line of ‘Shockinis’, another entry into the crowded world of mini block figures. These also address the same properties, along with The Tick and other things I’d love to see sooner than later. Here’s hoping I can play with these soon, Shocker!

McFarlane Toys also made an unexpected appearance at Toy Fair, after not attending for at least six years. They had a handful of 2-ups, or double-sized figural sculptures, on display – including a few figures from their upcoming ‘Warriors of the Zodiac‘ line, which consists of dynamic, bizarre interpretations of the various zodiological icons, like the sultry Virgo, and the warrior-like Scorpio. Don’t even ask about Gemini, which is some kind of double-ended tooth-worm. McFarlane isn’t exactly known for their subtlety. Their long-running Dragons line has ended after eight sets, and has given way to a follow-up line called ‘Legend of the Blade Warriors‘, presumably figures from what happens after the Dragons have been eliminated from the ancient landscape and humans begin to dominate. McFarlane’s revolutionary figures usually come with stories packed inside, but they’re so fraught with grammatical problems and cliché that it’s usually best to not partake. Let the figures be figures, not overwrought characters from some high school fantasy novel.

And we can’t forget about Diamond Comics, who produce and distribute a large number of modern science fiction licenses – mostly notably, Star Trek. While they continue to produce 7” figures from the original Star Trek movies, their Next Generation figure line will be ending shortly, after a fairly basic run addressing the main command crew and many variants of each – leaving us without neat aliens or any kind of real ‘enemy’ characters in the set. Diamond will, however, continue their new Deep Space Nine set, hopefully addressing the myriad aliens that pass through the space station in addition to the main crew. Can I have a Ferengi family, some Dabo girls, Morn, Gul Dukat, and a whole mess of Klingons, please? Diamond will also be continuing a series of Borg figures that Art Asylum started many years ago, and these will come with parts to build a light-up regeneration chamber. Which is almost enough to make me forgive them for giving us a Reginald Barclay, but not a Q in judge’s robes.

These Trek characters will also manifest as Minimates – tiny little blocky guys that are both cute and universal – meaning that your Captain Picard Minimate can go and meet your Professor X minimate and they’ll be in the same style and size. You can relive those awful pages of Star Trek meets X-Men that we’ve all tried to block from our memories. The Minimates don’t end at Star Trek, though, with Diamond picking up strange movie licenses for films like Desperately Seeking Susan, Platoon, Rocky, Silence of the Lambs, and For a Few Dollars More. It seems like a pretty obvious move by Diamond to obtain a ton of fun celebrity semi-likenesses which can then be dissected by fans to make characters and situations from other movies, since Minimates are so easily pop-apart-able.

Diamond will no longer be producing Marvel polystone items (like busts and statues), leaving the main license for that with the impeccable Bowen, but Diamond will still be producing their ‘Marvel Select‘ line of figures – slightly larger versions of Marvel Legends, produced in far smaller numbers. In this line, Hulk and Iron Man were on display – tapping directly into movie fever.

TV geeks will also enjoy the Jack Bauer figures from 24, both in 12” scale and as Minimates. If you’re into that kind of thing. Also, Diamond will be releasing Mego reproductions from Planet of the Apes and the original Star Trek, and 7” figures from Battlestar Galactica (modern) and Stargate Atlantis… you geeks. To add to the greatness, most of Diamond’s figures come with bonus parts, which you can build vehicles and scenery from. Who doesn’t want a massive Stargate? Besides people with girlfriends?

So, Toy Fair is over, and I’m just recovering from the annual wallet-splosion that it tends to be. The allure of seeing untouchable toys only serves to aggravate my desire for them, so go out and stimulate the economy with me, folks. That big ol’ tax refund announcement didn’t coincide with Toy Fair just by coincidence.

Any good convention will have its material rewards and souvenirs, in addition to that whole ‘life experience’ thing. New York Comic Con 2007 was no exception, and had a fair share of exclusive and unique items to motivate attendees to storm the booths and spend their hard earned student loan repayment money. What’s one more week at a soul-rending job if it means you can have that new Stargate figure that you can’t get ANYWHERE else? Depending on how hardcore you are, the tradeoff might seem minimal.

Check out the photo gallery of everything that the Con had to offer here!

Since NYCC is still in its nascent years, it does not yet have a significant number of exclusive items allotted to it like the Wizard Worlds and San Diego Comic Cons do. Some companies create exclusives for a singular event, and some create items that are sold throughout the entire convention season at multiple events. If you can’t attend an event, there’s a minimal chance that you’ll ever be able to obtain the item in question without paying inflated secondary market prices. A few companies have heard the frustrated outcry of collectors who can’t complete their collections due to this exclusivity and have created special ‘collectors clubs’, which allow dedicated fans to purchase these items after a small membership fee. Rainbows sprout from the foreheads of unicorns, pixies enchant small children into their glens, and everyone chills out.

NYCC saw at least three exclusive items at the Diamond Comics booth – a Spider-Man Icons bust in black, a Venom Icons bust (both numbering only 600), and a Star Trek Nemesis Geordi LaForge figure. Only 1,701 Geordis were made and were hand numbered. Were I a capitalist and had a pack mule with me, I’d have stocked up on these items, as they’re now selling at almost triple the convention price on the secondary market… but then, what kind of person would I be?

Mezco was not offering any new items, but they did make available their 2006 exclusive items which had not sold out yet, including a Family Guy Herbert figure and a Comic Hellboy with Japanese Floating Heads, neither of which are any longer available through Club Mez, their online collectors club.

And while many booths were selling insanely heavy statues and busts, one must question how many they sell to the already weary traveler whose arms are already full of nerdaphenalia and has a long trip back to their parents’ basement to still make. By way of tiny collectibles, Wizards of the Coast had the right idea. For every game demonstration that you watched or participated in, they’d give you a promotional miniature piece. I walked away with a Naboo Starship, a Star Wars Mistryl Shadow Guard and a Dreamscape Freakazoid, none of which are available at retail. Additionally, I got a scorecard checked off at each demo and finally, at the end of the booth, I got to roll a giant, foam d20. I rolled high, and won a free (discontinued) copy of Betrayal at House of the Hill, an absurdly fun, complex board game distributed by WotC, retail value of $36. WizKids, unrelated to Wizards of the Coast, were offering a Vlad the Impaler HorrorClix miniature.

Other tiny collectibles included an array of free pins at the DC Comics booth, and a collection of (not free) blind-boxed art toys at the Toy Tokyo booth (who also had some art toys exclusive to NYCC). When you’re carting around a convention’s worth of awesome, small is key. And it never hurts to ask if the retailer can either hold the larger items for you until the end of the Con, or even have them shipped to you. Of course, pre-payment to an unknown entity that decides to pack up and go home early is always a risk that one must take for maximum personal mobility, and some sellers are very, very ornery and want those dang kids offa their lawn as soon as possible. Dagnabbit.

Comics are relatively easy to carry, if not deceptively weighty. By the end of NYCC, I’d purchased a copy of Spiral Bound, Mutation (which has a neat Bruce Timm style to it), and four signed comics from King Tractor Press. Of note is ‘Family Bones‘, the true story of a elderly couple of serial killers, made notable by the fact that the story is written and illustrated by the couple’s nephew, who had spent his summers on the same farm where the murders took place, unbeknownst to him. I’m a sucker for surreal, biographical tales, and hope that my support for indie publishing will one day karmically come back to me when I start publishing my own work.

I’m always amazed by the tenacity of those conventioneers who bring wheeled carts full of 50-pound longboxes full of old comics into convention centers, hoping to get a vast array ofbooks signed by creators and taking out the shins of everyone who threatens to get in the way. More sensible was the gentleman who’d brought a backpack full of comics, alphabetically arranged and tabbed by artist and author so as not to miss a signature, or suffer the penultimate embarrassment, handing a book to a creator that he had nothing to do with. No distance that you can retract your head into your body can protect you from that, and I always get an irrational moment of panic when I hand something over to be signed, just in case I make a similar faux pas.

The aforementioned Bill Plympton was kind enough to sign my Mutant Aliens DVD and give me a free sketch of his Guard Dog character on a postcard. Of course, when I told him I was a huge fan from back in my junior high school days, and he asked what of his I’d seen, my brain froze and I probably said something like ‘my mom cooks bacon in the microwave!’ Unfotunately, and despite a table FULL of things he’d created right in front of me, I failed to mention ‘The Tune‘, the well-known ‘Your Face‘, ‘Plymptoons’ or his contributions to The Animation Show. Regardless, he was easy to talk to after that and showed a marked interest in his fans. Coincidentally, I work with one of the camera operators that he’d used for many of his earlier animations.
In my overexcited haze, I surely missed out on a good deal of free and exclusive items. Please feel free to comment below and let me know what egregious omissions I’ve made, and please stay tuned for tomorrow’s NYCC 2007 conclusion.

About a year ago, toy collectors got the tragic news. ToyBiz, the company that redefined action figures with their collection of super-articulated and masterfully-sculpted Marvel Legends action figures, was getting a divorce from Marvel Entertainment. For the remainder of 2006, they’d be dividing up their stuff. ToyBiz would get to keep the recliner, the plasma TV, and the rights to make Curious George geegaws, while Marvel would take their collection of beloved characters with them. Yes, even Paste Pot Pete and Dazzler. The Marvel Legends line, darling of the toy aisle, would be coming to an end, along with the X-Men, Spider-Man and Fantastic Four spinoff lines.

The rights to create 1/12 scale (also referred to as ‘6-inch scale’), articulated Marvel action figures would go to Hasbro, who are known primarily for their much smaller, much less articulated Star Wars figures. Character licenses are tricky things – while one company may get exclusive rights to produce 1/12 scale action figures of a character, another might retain the exclusive rights to 1/12 scale statues of that same character, and the rules that govern these items are very specific. If those statues show a hint of articulation or poseability, a problem arises and exclusivity has been breached. So, us collectors usually end up with a wide variety of varying collectibles, all of differing quality, while everyone’s trying to uniquely cash in on The Hulk craze at once. You know, before Ang Lee made him a total whiny spaz-bag and made him fight Hulk Poodles. Yeah, that happened in the movie, and Batman had rubber nipples on his suit, and no one is ever going to care about Elektra or her sizeable big-screen rack.

The license year is running out, and this week, the toy shelves are bursting with ToyBiz trying to expunge all Marvel product from their warehouses ahead of schedule, not unlike like a spurned lover burning all of the stuff that their cheatin’ significant other left in their apartment. As a result, the final two waves of Marvel Legends have hit the shelves ahead of schedule, causing a total collector blowout. Usually spaced out by at least 3 months between releases, the last hurrah has happened, and it’s happened with a total of 21 must-have collector figures (nine of them being exceptionally rare), spanning waves fourteen and fifteen of the Marvel Legends series. Collectors know these waves as ‘Mojo‘ and ‘MODOK‘, respectively, because if you purchase the six main figures from each wave, spare parts in each package will allow you to create a seventh character that’s otherwise too large to fit into the packaging.

The Marvel Universe has a lot of disproportionate bad guys, so the last few waves have given us a huge Sentinel, Apocalypse, Galactus, and Onslaught, as well as hero Giant Man. ToyBiz seems to have known that the end of their reign was nigh, and for the final two waves of figures, they chose the most bizarre, inconsequential, ridiculous characters they could possibly think of. An obese slug from the television dimension, and a deranged giant floating head. Neither character has ever really had an impact or a memorable role in the Marvel Universe, except for unintentionally providing a hearty ‘WTF?’ and discrediting comics as a valid literary format. Touché, ToyBiz. Incidentally, Mojo and MODOK are two of my favorite Marvel characters ever for those same reasons. Sentimentally, the original Mojo figure was probably my first Marvel action figure, as well as the only other time that Mojo was ever an action figure, snapping robot scorpion tail and all. It was only recently that I acquired a MODOK from an older Iron Man series of figures (also by ToyBiz), but these Legends figures are eons ahead in their ability to capture just how greasy and disgusting a malevolent slug-man can really be.

The sudden release of these is setting collectors atwitter. They’re being found on the shelves of retail establishments like Toys R Us and Wal-Mart before they’ve reached specialized comic shops, which is unusual as far as collectible toys go. While comic shops order through a large distributor monopoly known as Diamond Comics, retail chains order directly from the distribution centers that ToyBiz uses. Usually, this means that comic shops (who need significantly more financial help that Wal-Mart) will get product first, getting prime selling time and real estate, and the retail juggernauts can fulfill whatever needs are leftover. The role reversal on these final two waves has been both disconcerting and rewarding for someone who does most of their pre-ordering online. Distribution is a sketchy and heavily debated topic at best, among all toy companies.

So to ToyBiz, who will never again produce another Marvel figure for us, I say unto you that you’ve done a wonderful job. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Jesse Falcon, toy developer and sometime-improv actor for UCB, who excitedly walked around the ToyBiz showrooms to point out the clear goggles on Green Goblin’s mask and other details that a real collector would appreciate. Before ToyBiz brought the Marvel Legends to life, toy collectors either settled for excellent sculpting or a high degree of poseability. Sure, it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but cities have fallen, people. Crumbled. To. The. Ground. Or, at least message boards got really heated and swear filters have overloaded. ToyBiz found an exceptional mix between the two opposing factions, and from wave one, I’ve been hunting these down every few months, and more often than not, foiled by opportunistic toy scalpers or collectors who were willing to sacrifice their dignity to get to them first.

But the tale of Barry, the Greasy Hat Man, and the thrill of the chase, will have to wait until next time. Allow me to conclude on a completely unrelated note. Sideshow Toys is having their annual Spooktacular sale, so click on the banner below to be transported to a world of extremely discounted monster collectibles, and if you’re lucky, completely free swag. Click the right place at the right time and you could walk away with your very own Hunchback. Last year, I won a Darth Vader statue valued at 350 dollars, so have fun!