I’m With Cap! I’m With Iron Man!

The two stars of the much talked about Civil War storyline made some waves over the past week or so.

With Iron Man 2 so near, Marvel’s doing a ton to push the movie. You’ve got the action figures, the movie-themed variant covers, the video game, sound tracks and now, there’s a motion comic. I’m sure you’ve seen it, but here it is anyway:

They’re doing the motion comic for Warren Ellis and Adi Granov’s extremis story arch. Doing this would be great, since a lot of people still can’t tell the difference between the Extremis armor and the suit before it. There are a few key differences, check them out:

The armor on the left is the Extremis, and the armor on the right would be the one before Extremis, the one shown flying in the trailer of the motion comic. It is normally referred to as the Modern Armor, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. To tell the difference, you have to look at the the shoulder pads first. The Extremis armor has smooth shell-like shoulder pads while the Modern version has these circular knobs on them that look like pivot points.

Another tell tale sign would be the golden parts of the armor. The Extremis has smooth golden plates while the Modern armor has lines going across them, as if they were flexible. The gauntlets are also essentially different, with the Extremis having the smaller version and with less lights.

The toes, too. Extremis has toes, the modern one does not. Anyway, there’s that. Just, you know, be aware.

The other buzz words these days would be Chris Evans and Captain America. Some dudes over at Film School Rejects came up with these mock-ups of Chris as Cap. Check it out:

This is obviously based on the Ultimate Captain America designs, of which I am not a fan. Give me 616 cap or give me death, motherfuckers! I would totally love to see a mix of the two styles, but just get rid of the corny stuff on 616, like the leather belt and the brief over the pants. Give him the pouches, but for the LOVE OF GOD, KEEP THE WINGTIPS!

Chris Evans doesn’t have the muscle mass yet. If he gains a bit more, maybe we can see something similar to those. His personality still needs some work, but I am eagerly hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Chris Evans as Cap?

It’s pretty much old news, Chris Evans will be playing Captain America. So, what’s the buzz? Some personal friends of mine have been shitting on this idea. A few of them are saying that he doesn’t have the acting chops to be the guy to lead RDJ, Sam L. Jackson or Ed Norton. Actually, I agree with them to a certain extent. Chris Evans does not have the history to give us any confidence of a performance worthy of Captain America.

I just checked his IMDB page, and yeah, I can see nothing that stands out. Can the Human Torch really be Cap? It is painfully obvious that he seems to fit Torch more than he will any other character, least of all Captain America, right? I am envokingthe Heath Joker parable.Everyone was all “That dude from that knight movie as Joker?! FAIL!” and then after they saw The Dark Knight, everyone was all “HEATH IS THE GREATEST JOKER EVAH!”

So, Chris is casting more doubt over the quality of the role than Heath as Joker ever did, but let us all be optimistic.

3.75" Iron Man 2 Comic Series War Machine Review

This is the first video review from Comicology. I know the light is shitty, and the camera is shaky. Sorry about that. Don’t worry, though, I’ll make sure to improve that eventually. I’ll invest in a good tripod and some lights, if ever I do this again.

Thanks for watching, guys!

Iron Man 2 Figures Unboxing: First Appearance and Hypervelocity

First Appearance

The most iconic armor of all gets a reboot and is perfectly captured in 3.75″ form.

Straight out of the box, the figure already looks like it’d be a favorite in the armory. Look at how ominous that thing is - it embodies the intro of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man. It feels a little lighter than the Mark I, but it’s much heavier than the other figures. For some reason, weight on my figs has always been a good thing.

It comes with a weird orange dildo, which is probably a repulsor blast or fire, the base, the cards and the figure. From the toy to its accessories, everything is minimalistic. Rightfully so, because it is the very first armor of Tony Stark. Or is it? Some folks over a forum I frequent thought the figure was inaccurate. They’re right, of course, if the figure was a direct copy of the armor used in Tales of Suspense #38. 

It isn’t. This is a figure more of Adi Granov’s redesign. Click here to see Adi’s redesign. It’s pracitcally the same, except that it has more joints and more plates that make it look more flexible. It’s an updated version that retains the FA Iron Man’s clunkiness and antiquity. 

Deceptively simple, the sculpt has a lot of small details that might get overlooked. Did you notice there was a dent in his left knee cap? Yeah, it’s there. It’s in all the figures. There are rivets all over his arms, legs and body, too.

The paint is, like the Mark I, impossible to fuck up. Amputated monkies can paint this figure well. Thankfully, mine was done skillfully. It’s rusty and dirty. The mixture of some orange tint/wash and gray bits make it look like worn iron.

Joints are great - tight where they should be but not too tight. It’s got ball neck, shoulders, single joint elbow, wrist swivel, arm swivel, chest, ball joint hips, double knees, and foot swivel. His foot is too big for anything, so the foot swivel may just be for aesthetics.

“C’mon, let me poke you with my large orange repulsor.”

Even with all those joints, its bulkiness doesn’t make it such a good figure for dynamic poses, but the beauty of this figure is that it doesn’t need them. It is a bulky, clumsy machine made of pure power. It doesn’t do earth-smash poses. It just blows shit up.

“Hey! Nothing you can say! Nothin’s gonna change what you’ve done to me! Now it’s time to shine! I’m gonna take what’s mine while you’re burning inside my light!”

Imagine that thing, coming out of a cave, gunning for your ass. I would think you’d need new shorts.
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Iron Man 2 Figures Unboxing: Stealth and Mark III

Strap in, because this is going to be a long one. 

We’ve gone through the Mark I, II, IV, VI, the classic red and gold, and the Power Assault figs. Today we’ll go over the Stealth Ops armor, the Mark III, the First Appearance armor and the Hypervelocity. Okay, enough dilly dallying, let’s get started.

Stealth Ops

I forgot to take a shot that shows off all the contents of the package but it’s practically all there. A yellow dildo, a stand, the figure and the stand. There really isn’t much to this figure. It has the same sculpt as the classic red and gold, and it probably has less paint because it’s all blue, and it doesn’t have that blast off stand. So, what makes this figure so special? It’s fucking Stealth Ops armor.

However I reviewed the classic red and gold armor is the exact same thing I can say for the Stealth Ops armor, except for, of course, the paintjob. It’s all just dark blue. It’s almost purple, even. It’s really beautiful because it’s still shiny. I like the classic red and gold a little bit more, though.

Joints are pretty tight, and like the red and gold, they’re better than the movie sets of armor because they’re just a lot more poseable. The sculpt is great. Again, I’m a big fan of sculpted hands, so the figure looks great. Almost all of them have amazing detail.

The repulsor dildos look horrible, and they don’t really fit as well as I would like them to, but in some angles, they’re okay. I like how poseable these figures are. You can do a lot of things with them.

The only color you can really see are the eyes and mouth, the chest piece light and the repulsors on his palms.
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Iron Man 2 Figures Unboxing: Classic Red and Gold, Mark IV, Mark II

This is a continuation of yesterday’s unboxing post. Too much awesomeness contained in a single entry might damage your retina and cause your brain to ooze out from  your sweat glands. You guys can thank me later.

So, like I mentioned last time, these items were acquired over at Megamall during the Iron Man 2 action figure toy launch, courtesty of Cybertron PH. I should seriously feature those guys here. They’re awesome and they deserve the props. I got 11 figures, 10 of which were already opened and displayed in my mini-armory. I really have to find a way to fix that thing up. It looks uninspired right now.

Anyway, I am posting the unboxing pics and mini-reviews in the order in which I opened them up. In this post, we’ll be looking at the Classic red and gold armor, the Mark IV, which was the replacement armor for the battered Mark III, and the fan favorite Mark II.

Classic Red and Gold Armor

This is probably the image of Iron Man most old comic book fans get in their brains when they of him.If I’m not mistaken, this is the armor he wears in the 60’s cartoon. “Tony Stark makes you feel, he’s a cool exec with a heart of steel.” Appearances of this armor in the comics here and there are always welcome, even if they are just in the covers.

Everyone’s pretty much packaged the same way, so this image doesn’t really change across the board. It doesn’t look like much in the box, but when I took it out, I can’t believe it would be legal to make something so gorgeous.

It looks great, it’s shiny, it’s poseable and it comes with more accessories than the others. It has a red dildo repulsor blast, a blast off stand, a regular stand and the armor cards.

The sculpt looks absolutely fantastic. There was an MU version of this armor that came out in the 2nd or 3rd waves, but this one clearly dominates that in every aspect. The MU one looks so thin that if someone stepped out of it, he’d be a lanky 14 year old girl with an eating disorder. The classic armor from the Iron Man 2 movie line is buff enough for it to look like Tony Stark could fit inside. The sulpt of the whole body looks like it jumped out of a comic book page.

Besides it being built like a god, it is shiny where it needs to be shiny. The paint is so simple on this thing that it will take actual conscious effort to mess it up. “Oh woops. My clumsy fingers dropped four pints of paint on it. Sorry.”

I’ll show how posable this thing is in the next images. It seems to have more poseability than the other movie version sets of armor. It has ball joint neck, shoulder, wrist twist, single joint elbow, chest, ball joint hips, double jointed knees and swivel ankles.

It looks utterly ridiculous with the red “repulsor blast,” so I decided to pose it without that damn thing. I am a big fan of sculpted hands, and this figure proved how awesome those are. Those hands show so much more than they let on. Simply moving them around changes the emotion the figure expresses.

“I AM IRON MAN!”

The blast off platform is quite useless or maybe I haven’t figured it out yet. It only has one peg so you can only secure one foot at a time. Because of that, the figure becomes quite unstable. To shoot this pic, I had to be really quick.
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Iron Man 2 Figures Unboxing Mark 1, Mark VI, Power Assault

About a week ago, I posted about my latest geek acquisition. I know the spending will bite me in the ass sooner rather than later, but hey, very seldom do I splurge these days. I can honestly say that each figure from this line is well worth the 450 bucks. Okay, they could be a little cheaper, but they are made of awesome and happiness.

In this post, I will show you how unboxing pictures of the Mark I, Mark VI and Power Assault armor, without the actual unboxing, because that would take up too much space with too many pictures. The order at which I do is the order with which I released them from their plastic cages. Mel helped me take pics and unbox.

MARK I

The Mark I is a really nice figure because you can’t fuck up the paint on this thing. You can ask a child with a minor learning disability to paint this thing and it will still look like Mark I.

 It slipped out of the packaging quite easily. Well, they all did, in fact.

Mark I came with what I think should be a flamethrower, but it actually is just a cannon with a fire-colored missle. Same thing happened with the 6″ one. They should come out with a way to attach a Zippo on one of those things. I especially liked those armor cards because you can mix and match them with other figures. You can came up with some weird shit. Try putting the classic stealth arms with Mark III legs with Mark I’s body. It is a freak.

All the joints on Mark I were tight except for the wrists, which I really didn’t mind so much. At least they didn’t feel like they were going to break if you forced them to move. The bits that needed to be tight were, and the rest were moveable and fun to play with. It’s got shoulder, elbow, wrist twist, some torso twist, ball joint hips, twist head, peg feet and single jointed knees.

Mark I has incredible detail. I mean it. It has some of the best and most intricate detailing on all the figs from this line. The motor at the back, the things over the arm, the big chest plate, up the gears at his side - they’re all there. It’s a beautiful figure.

Mark I can swing his gigantic orange dildo machine all day.

Here it is with the flame thrower, which surprisingly doesn’t look half bad. It still looks cooler without it, though. Check it out.

Mark I says, “I will punch you… IN THE FEZ!”

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Comic of the Week: Justice League: Rise and Fall

For the longest time, I kept wondering if Cry For Justice was canon or not, because it was just so far out there with huge changes. People were losing limbs, characters were dying, and whole cities were getting assrape destroyed. Normally, when cities take a hit as large as Star City did, it’s usually in a DC-wide event, like Blackest Night or some crisis. So, when Cry for Justice started coming out, I was left wondering if it were all in continuity. If it was, then goddamn, it’d be awesome.

I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I did enjoy Cry for Justice. The art was great and the direction was bold and new, although a lot of it didn’t make one lick of sense and a lot of people were out of character. I have a friend calling it Gay for Justice, but still, I stand firm with my opinion - Cry for Justice was a solid read. I absolutely loved the direction they were going to take with Green Arrow and Rise and Fall just got me even more excited.

Written by J.T. Skrull
Pencils by Diogenes Neves, Mike Mayhew, Fabrizio Fiorentino
Inks by Mike Mayhew, Vicente Cifuertes, Ruy José
Colors by Nei Ruffino, Andy Troy
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Iron Man 2 New Trailer

So, this has been out for about 24 hours now, but I still wanted to post it here so I can easily find it. I will watch this thing until I’ve memorized every line, every sound effect and every little scratch in between scenes. It is just mindblowingly amazing. This is probably the most spoilery of all trailers I’ve seen but the more Iron Man I see, the better.

So, what can we tell from the trailer? A ton, actually. That Silver Centurion armor from the toyline is apparently that thing from the last bit of the trailer.I actually thought it was quite ugly, but I’ll get it anyway since it’s in the movie. Well played, Marvel. Well played.

Anyway, the trailer, despite being fueled by awesome and raging epicness, gave away too much. We know that Black Widow will infiltrate Tony Stark’s inner circle, just like she did in the comics, to destroy or steal Iron Man tech. She could be initially working for Whiplash or Justin Hammer.

We also find out that Whiplash very likely becomes the Crimson Dynamo thanks to Justin Hammer. Oh, and we find out how Tony deals with Whiplash at the race track. I feel like it’s something that they should’ve kept under wraps so we get a little surprised, at least? I feel like it’s a FUCK YEAH moment we were robbed of.

We saw a lot of War Machine, too, and how that came about, sot of.

Oh, and something I didn’t notice the first 4 dozen times I watched it is at the end, it says IMAX. Fuck yes.

Iron Man 2 Toy Launch Haul

Launched this morning, the Iron Man 2 toy line set the Megamall Basement Activity center abuzz with geekgasms and willingness to spend. The crowd was really excited for the new toyline and almost everyone was happy to give away their hard earned money in exchange for small plastic figures. The event itself wasn’t much at first, but it everyone who attended didn’t seem to mind, and it did pick up eventually. Everyone was there for the Iron Man toys anyway.

I ran into Slangards and Martin there. Good to see those guys again.

Like a dumb motherfucker, I didn’t bring a camera. I totally regret that decision, especially when the most hardcore group of cosplayers graced us with their awe inspiring presence. I want to spread my legs as wide as I can and punch my testicles as hard as humanly possible.

The cosplay group had Mark IV Iron Man with light-up eyes, a War Machine with a gatling gun that fucking SPINS! Oh, and a Hulk Buster. Yes, a HULK BUSTER! As expected, there were more grown-ups than kids. In fact, I saw some dude push a kid away for a photo-op.

Items launched include 3.75″ figures, the new 10″ Mark VI’s (Mark V seems to be the War Machine), 8″ War Marchine and Mark VI Iron Man figures, Iron Man masks (one is a simple mask and the other has voice) and some old stock Marvel Universe toys. The Hammer Files MU’s were nowhere to be found.

The 8″ War Machines were fucking HOARDED! I saw this MOTHERFUCKER who had a basket FULL of them. Whoever you are, you little shitfaced motherfucker hoarder, I hope a second shipping comes in and your hoarded 8″ figures become WORTHLESS and you’re left with overstocked CRAP, you MOTHERLESS CUNT!!!  GAH!

Before I go on to describe my haul, here’s some good news for you collectors out there - Marvel Universe toys have been marked down. From P549.75 or something they are now P449.75! That’s P100 less!

I haven’t unboxed these newly bought babies because I want a good photographer with me when I do. Here’s my haul.

Mark I

From what I can see through the packaging, which is quite good because you can see the figure, its accessories and the cards clearly and with little obstruction, it’s got the best paint apps in the series. Why? Because the Mark I is supposed to be dirty. Almost all the figures have horrid paint apps, and you really have to be careful when you pick out your figs.

It comes with a missle launcher that should resemble a flame thrower, three cards and a stand.

They were abundant. (more…)

Iron Man 2 Toy Launch

It makes me fucking sad that I haven’t posted anything in a week, when there’s so much shit going on in Comicdom. Anyway, the Iron Man 2 toy launch is happening in about an hour or so at the Basement Activity Center over at Megamall. I’m assuming it starts as soon as the mall opens.

See you bitches there.