Child Sized Coffin: 2019

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Marvel Legends: Thanos

Man, Byron was right: April really is the cruelest month. What with Star Wars Celebration, numerous birthdays, the start of the NHL Playoffs, the winding down of the Spring semester, and this year, Avengers: Endgame to end not only the month, but the current cycle of the MCU. In honor of that last piece, let’s take a look at Marvel Legends Thanos, in his comic book, and thus best, appearance.

Grave Considerations: Star Wars Celebration 2019

Last week, my wife and I had the incredible experience and massive pleasure of attending the official Star Wars convention, Celebration, held in sweet home Chicago. The five day festival honors and . . . celebrates . . . all things Star Wars.

What a great time.

The last couple of years have been real rough to be part of a fandom, almost regardless of which fandom it is. Star Wars has had its share of bitching, as has Marvel; sports seem like they’ve been horribly toxic for many years already; the gaming world has always been full of jagoffs. Things really have felt bleak at times; but not Celebration. Star Wars Celebration was a joyful event that focused on all things positive and Star Wars, even though that is redundant. The atmosphere was amazing and universally positive and welcoming, proving that Star Wars really is for everyone. I personally have felt real nerves before both Celebration and last months’ C2E2 specifically because I’m not interested in the full diapered tantrums of haters and the ignorant, and am just hopeful that those people won’t attend conventions devoted to things that they clearly hate, but who can tell, really. The world is full of all kinds of people, even those who would attend an event just to be negative about it. For some reason.

Franchise mainstay C-3PO does not make for the most exciting or impressive entry in the Black Series line, but is a necessary one. It was this view that kept him out of the Coffin collection for such a long time, only being welcomed a few weeks ago. The Walgreens exclusive version is the Original Trilogy 3PO, with the silver leg, not the general release from The Force Awakens, with the red arm.

Marvel Legends: Thor

In preparation for the Marvel Comics event “War of the Realms,” let’s have a look at Legends Thor, as she appears in Jason Aaron’s spectacular Thor run dating from 2014 until just last year. Spoilers ahead, for those who don’t know who this Thors’ secret identity is, so proceed with caution.

Apparently, Down Force is the second member of the Intimidator group to be released, not Last Chance, to correct a previous mistake. No matter; regardless of release order, Down Force is the FansProject stand-in for Dragstrip, the loveable psychotic six-wheeled race car member of the Stunticons.

Star Wars: The Black Series Padme Amidala

Taking a minute before we leave for our second day at Star Wars Celebration 2019 to take a look at one of the most recent Wave of Black Series figures, Padme Amidala as she appears in Episode II: Attack of the Clones. It has been stated at some point in the not too distant past that the line would take time in 2019 to focus on the Prequels, since this year marks twenty years since The Phantom Menace was released. (I think we will talk about The Phantom Menace in the not too distant future here as well, just not right now. –mr)

Ju-Jiang Jet Commander JJ-02B: Jet Harrier

Jet Harrier, or “Harrier,” as he will be known hereafter, is the second member of the “Third Party”/upsized KO Combiner Wars Aerialbot team, known as Slingshot or “Quickslinger” in Hasbro parlance, and the first of the limb figures of the set. Roughly Masterpiece size, Harrier is the same height as MP Sideswipe.

Grave Considerations: So, That Happened. . . .

I had a run in, ever so briefly, with the anti-Last Jedi crowd on Twitter, and I kind of felt the desire to talk about it. They apparently have a whole hashtag movement going on, lashing out not only at Star Wars, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well, driven further to madness apparently by “Captain Marvel”. I’m fairly certain that this was my first personal encounter with this crowd, where I've actively interacted with them, and not just laughed at them from afar.

A night or so ago, I got involved in a Twitter spat between one of these anti’s (which is what I’ll call them in lieu of anything more solid, since I don’t really know what they’re against, since it seems to be everything –mr) , and by ‘got involved,’ I mean I made a stupid comment against one of their responses. This was liked by another Twitter user, and when I checked out their timeline, I found out they were one of those fans. I responded to a tweet that they’d retweeted, and suddenly I was pulled in to a whole bunch of pretty disturbing stupid. I know, I know, it was my doing to reply to a tweet, so we can all say I brought this upon myself. But fuck that, you know, because I am who I am and sometimes that means I’m a lot smarter than my temper allows me to be.

Star Wars: Archive Pilot Luke Skywalker

The Archive series is a thing that has been hotly anticipated around here, offering reissued Black Series figures from earlier portions of the line that people such as I had missed the first time. Excellent. The first Wave is comprised of the three other Empire Strikes Back bounty hunters and pilot suit Luke Skywalker, all of which were missed the first time.

Back in October, I had decided that my TFCon 2018 hunt list would include members of the Unique Toys Abominus team, named Ordin. Mere days before the convention, I found and won an eBay auction for the entire set. So, that was pretty easy. Let’s take a look at the first figure in the set, Troll, a Third Party version of Terrorcon Blot.

Grave Considerations: C2E2 2019

This past weekend marked the tenth anniversary of C2E2, which bills itself as “the funnest weekend of the year.” That claim is never too far off, as the yearly sign of Spring’s arrival is met in our household with great anticipation and excitement. We only attended Friday this year, because Star Wars Celebration will grace our fair city in the next three weeks, and in the interest of finances for that far rarer and far more personally important convention, we made the unhappy but totally correct decision to limit our C2E2 temptations to a single day.

Star Wars: The Black Series Rebel Fleet Trooper

If there was a let down about this figure, it would be the most obvious thing about it: this is an army builder background character, a guy that literally stands in the background of scenes unless he’s being directly murdered by Darth Vader. But, that one rogue point may not be a bad thing per say, but rather a new hopeful glimpse at the direction of the line in general.

To say that I have a complicated relationship with the live-action Transformers movies would be something of an understatement. Quite literally exploding on to the scene in 2007, the movies started out acceptably before taking a very sharp, very fast nose dive into the trash, culminating, for now, kind of, with 2017’s abysmal The Last Knight, a movie that took an already exceptionally loose narrative and tossed it on top of some totally nonsensical pabulum, creating a movie that I honestly do hate. Bumblebee is the first spin off/reboot/recalibration for the franchise, depending on what Hasbro is thinking this week, and in full disclosure, I had no interest in seeing it at all. I know, as my wife will be quick to point out, that I’ve said that about the last three live action movies, and yet we have seen them all, The Last Knight at my wife’s urgings, as it was a summer afternoon and we had nothing else to do. How does Bumblebee fair? I guess the first main difference is that we saw it on a winter afternoon where we had nothing else to do.

Perfect Effect: Beast Gorira

This figure represents a couple of Coffin firsts. It is the first figure from Perfect Effect that we’ve ever looked at; and, it is the first Third Party Beast * era figure to make its way into the Coffin collection. And let me tell you, it’s just a prime example of how good such a piece can be.

Beast Gorira is a pretty gigantic Third Party version of Optimal Optimus, or Transmetal II Optimus Primal, from beloved Transformers series Beast Wars. An updated official figure for the character was released in the Power of the Primes line last year, but even photos of that toy prove that it can’t compete with this. Beast Gorira is exceptionally screen accurate, and is also very accurate to the original Hasbro toy from the late 90’s, as well. A quad changer, the figure can convert between robot, gorilla, car/tank/truck thing, and jet-type vehicle. It comes with one accessory, a nicely molded and painted blaster, and has no other removable parts, which basically means that it lacks the missiles and removable forearm armor that the Hasbro original has. That is absolutely fine, as 3P figures rarely come with missiles and the arm armor was basically just partsforming kibble anyway.

Marvel Legends: Magneto

Mutant activist Magneto is perhaps one of the most problematic villains in comics, seeing as he really is responsible for some horrible atrocities, but also is a staunch advocate of Mutant rights . . . that often transgress into genocidal ideas. So yeah, problematic.

Long, long ago, we covered Masterpiece Bluestreak, then a Toys R Us exclusive in the US. That figure was a repaint of Masterpiece Prowl, who recently received the Takara Cartoon Accurate repaint itself, and is here rereleased as MP-17+, another in a growing sequence of Masterpiece figures getting a touch up, conceivably so as to allow them to mesh with the new direction of the line being more cartoon accurate without needing to be redesigned.

The more and more of them that I collect, the more and more and more and more Black Series vehicles I want. And this size class and price point is terrific for them. Not enormous pieces like the First Order TIE Fighter, but larger than the Speeder Bike, this $60 plateau is turning out some excellent, excellent toys. Even things that seem generally bland like Luke’s Landspeeder end up being fun and engaging and worth the price.

Now that we’re done gushing, let’s talk about the Dewback, and its contribution to the line.

The second and third of the MakeToys Seekers, Skycrow is a straight up black and purple repaint of the excellent Meteor, and Lightning is a light blue version of the same. You know who they are supposed to be.

Star Wars: The Black Series Imperial Patrol Trooper (Solo: A Star Wars Story)

Stand alone films Rogue One and Solo have, if absolutely nothing else, given us a few new Imperial units, such as the Deathtrooper, Shoretrooper, and this Patrol trooper, which is essentially the highway patrol officer of the Empire. Briefly (real briefly) seen pursuing young Han as he races the streets of Corellia, this is, like the other two mentioned newbies, an excellent addition to the Imperial ranks.

Viewing Hours: Justice League (2017)

A new semester well underway, approaching its tumultuous midpoint. Chaos reigns. Time is at a great premium. What to do? Start up a new series on the Child Sized Coffin, of course! Sure, that makes sense.

Welcome to the inaugural Viewing Hours, a hopefully fun and exciting new segment on the Coffin where we talk about movies, good, bad, or indifferent. There’s a whole slate of movies lined up for consideration, but let’s start with one that had long been on the viewing list around here, missed in theaters and then picked up this past November as part of a Black Friday deal: DC and Warner Brother’s 2017 Justice League.

2018’s Solo brought some new characters to the Star Wars universe, and tried to answer some not too frequently asked questions about existing ones, such as, how did the Millennium Falcon get the best navigation system in the galaxy? Look, no one was asking this; we all just took it as a given, because Han says it at some point in the Original Trilogy. But, the answer is here, in the form of L3-37, a feisty droid partner of the young Lando Calrissian who gets wrapped up with the Beckett Gang and their Kessel heist.

Mass Burial: Immortal, Northern Chaos Gods

Following All Shall Fall in 2009, Immortal once more went on a hiatus, with Abbath releasing another solo album in 2015. Again embroiled in legal matters, the band name would end up with Demonaz, who along with steady drummer Horgh, released what is probably the most Black Metal Immortal album since Pure Holocaust.

MakeToys: Wrestle

MakeToys has slowly but steadily become a real Coffin favorite company, thanks to fantastic figures like Contact Shot, Quantron, Despotron and others, and as a result have earned a place on the permanent shopping list around these parts. TFCon 2018 offered a chance at Wrestle, a Masterpiece Grapple-alike, and thus it was added to the collection.

Star Wars: The Black Series Target Exclusive Ach-To Luke Skywalker (The Last Jedi)

It sure feels like we’ve been paying a lot of attention to Star Wars figures the last few months: I have a pretty sizable backlog of Black Series figures to examine, and the list has been growing. It also feels like it’s getting close to time that we finally talk about The Last Jedi and Solo as movies, now that the climate of nuclear takes is in remission, aside from those die hards who are still infuriated by either or both. Those talks are coming, but for now, let’s get some exposure to another Black Series figure, the Target exclusive Episode VIII Luke Skywalker.

Following the hiatus which would result in both of the bands’ major figures solo albums, 2009’s All Shall Fall is the follow-up to Sons of Northern Darkness, and is an album that treads very, very much the same path. But, while Sons mimicked the best parts of its predecessor, Damned In Black, to marvelous results, All Shall Fall is a little too much of the same to competently stand on its own.

Ju-Jiang Jet Commander JJ-02A: Jet Concorde

Preface: I’m super excited to talk about these figures.

This is going to be the first entry on a real exciting batch of figures, the oversized Combiner Wars Aerialbot KOs from Ju-Jiang, a (sorta) Third Party company that makes upsized knock off versions of official Hasbro Transformers. My overall knowledge of the company is very limited, but up for review here is Jet Concorde, the upsized version of Combiner Wars Voyager Silverbolt, Aerialbot commander and eventual Superion torso. But to call these KOs and leave it at that would do a massive disservice to the figures themselves, as they are so, so much more than KOs and, as we’ll see as we progress through the set, are in many facets greatly improved versions of their original inspirations.

Ah, the live album. An opportunity to relive a concert, or to experience one vicariously. A chance to assemble a “greatest hits” type package including all of the intensity and spectacle of the live setting. Usually, live albums are very hit-or-miss, dependent on ones’ enthusiasm for a band and the selectin of songs being performed. Personally, I like live albums quite a bit, although my hunger for them ebbs and flows. The Seventh Date of Blashrykh should have been a hit, as it depicts Immortal playing a true selection of hits with an emphasis on tunes from Sons of Northern Darkness, which I would argue is the bands’ high water point. But man, I really hate this album.

Star Wars: The Black Series Skiff Guard Lando (Return of the Jedi)

Completing (for now) the Lando Trilogy (for now. . . ), skiff guard Lando presents the great character in his temporary Return of the Jedi Jabba’s palace guard appearance. There’s a tiny bit of cross over potential for this figure, as the removable helmet fits on Tobias Beckett from the Solo sequence of figures, so it could be possible to kitbash an in-disguise Beckett from his movie, but we’ll touch on that later on, whenever we get around to Tobias Beckett.

Iron Factory: Tyrant’s Wings Amethyst

A few weeks ago there was a huge reveal of future Iron Factory releases, and once again, they seemed to catch some part of my interest in a way that probably does need to be addressed. Sure, I’ve pondered changing collection gears to more of these Legends scaled figures, already owning a couple and honestly liking pretty much every one that I see. But we’ve talked about this before, you and I, and something about making such a huge (lol) shift in my collecting slightly frightens me; I don’t want to add another line, for lack of a better word here, to my shopping list, but I am growing more and more of an interest in these figures. This is certain to be a thing that will drag out for quite some time until it is finally resolved, and in the meantime, here’s Iron Factory’s Amethyst, a purple repaint of Clone, which is itself a repaint of their Starscream.

Mass Burial: I, Between Two Worlds

The real shame of Demonaz’ March of the Norse solo album is that it isn’t very memorable or strong aside from it being a Demonaz solo album. The real shame of Abbath’s first solo salvo is that I was a one-off project.

Between Two Worlds is not going to try to be an Immortal record, or even a Black Metal one, really. This is more of an open road driving kind of album, I guess more Black n’ Roll than anything, but it is a great and tragically underappreciated release.

Demonaz’ solo album is more Black Metal, or more Immortal, if you will, than Abbath’s of the same general time, but it is also more of a by-the-numbers affair. That shouldn’t be misread as a knock, only as a primer statement.

Chicago spent the last few days in the grips of the polar vortex, and what better time to take in some more of Immortal’s brand of frosty, frigid Black Metal? Why not make that an extra shot of what is probably Immortal’s most “Immortal” record, Sons of Northern Darkness?

Star Wars: The Black Series Han Solo and Princess Leia Hoth boxed set

A second day of the 2019 Chicago Polar Vortex makes me think taking a look at this is a pretty good idea.

A European convention exclusive, this really gorgeous boxed set is one of those very rare occurrences where something in the Coffin collection stays in the package, without even intention of opening it, depicting Han and Leia in the halls of the Rebel base on Hoth. Both of these figures have been released already, and should be pretty readily available, but this box was simply too beautiful to pass up. And, your boy Moby almost did . . . .

Mass Burial: Immortal, Damned in Black

Here’s a hot take for a cold January morning: Damned in Black is the album where Immortal really started being Immortal. Following the truly different At the Heart of Winter, Damned returns to shorter songs that chug along with a feeling of canned ferocity that is clearly trying to capture the actual ferocity of other Black Metal bands and records, resulting in something that feels like prefabricated, check the boxes Black Metal that is never the less totally satisfying and enjoyable.

Star Wars: The Black Series Zuckuss

Last of the three Disney Store exclusive Black Series figures, Zuckuss is the first actual new one, and the first one that adds actual value to your collection. Zuckuss is the last of the Empire Strikes Back bounty hunters, and with the first batch Archive series figures just about to be delivered, this means that you could finally complete your bounty hunter collection.

In order to talk about this figure, it’s important that we remember an idea that’s been floated around the Coffin for quite some time now, and that is that sometimes, figures are better as part of a team picture than they are individually, and that logic is 100% applicable to Zuckuss here. On his own, this figure is not really much to get worked up over. The head sculpt is nice and insectoid, and the figure comes with a unique blaster, which on its own is usually pretty cool. There is a lush mythology and cast in the Star Wars universe, and it’s easy to think of figure accessories as “just” parts for that figure; but in reality, or the reality of a fictional universe, they are artifacts of that fictional universe. Just like in our reality, not all accessories are the same, and the world has a vast array of weaponry and such in it, as sad as that is on a metaphysical level to say. But aside from the head and blaster, Zuckuss is not much to crow about.

FansProject Intimidator: Last Chance

Last Chance is the second installment in the very first set of Third Party Stunticons, now that apparently they and their Aerialbot nemesis are the hot 3P focus, and is the Dead End stand in. We covered the basics of this figure, in terms of size and build and all of that, a few months back with Car Crash, before shelving the set until the new year in order to try and finish off a bunch of other Coffin articles.

Last Chance, right away, is a gorgeous figure, with that Dead End maroon color just bursting out at you. The robot mode is very interesting, unconventional in places, and it and vehicle mode are nicely stylized in a way that makes the Intimidator team similar to the Warbotron team in that three of the figures are realistic and accurate, while the other two take some risks and wind up being cooler for it. The transformation is real simple, not unusual for a figure of this size, or from this particular set of figures.

Star Wars: The Black Series X-34 Landspeeder and Luke Skywalker

Well, it’s January, so it’s the perfect time to be thinking about warmer, sunnier climes as well as still trying to march through all of the toys I got last year but never got around to examining. That is a long list, kiddies, and I arrived at the realization a few months ago that I could not and did not need to adhere to any particular chronology with my articles, which was a literal blog life saving realization. Anyhow, as predictions of a fair amount of snow come barreling towards Chicago, let’s look at the ’93 Chevy Cavalier of the Star Wars universe, the 6” scaled X-34 Landspeeder.

Oh, right. There’s a Luke Skywalker figure included in this as well.

Mass Burial: Immortal, At the Heart of Winter

Considered by many to be Immortal’s finest work, for some reason, At the Heart of Winter is an album that nevertheless signals a fairly large shift in the Immortal trajectory, trading the short and sharp Black metal attacks for longer and more plodding fare. That adjective choice is not intended to be a slight or signal of disapproval; it just so happens to be accurate. I have personally always fought the notion that this record is an outlier in the catalog, or the “different one,” as future Immortal records will lean heavily on things learned from At the Heart of Winter, but it certainly is the one album that marks a transitional stage in the band.

Star Wars: Black Series Battle Damaged Captain Phasma (The Last Jedi)

When Toys R Us closed, the status of multiple store exclusive figures was tossed into chaos. Almost all of them would be picked up by other venues, and some of them just ended up at online sources. Black Series Toys R Us exclusives were rescued by the Disney Store, and so were not missed. The second of three, this battle damaged Captain Phasma depicts neo-Boba Fett as she appears in her final scene in The Last Jedi, where she again is imperiled and for the time being presumed dead, because unless a filler comic miniseries is coming from Marvel to smooth over this one, it’s hard to see how she’s going to escape an exploding Star Destroyer and return for Episode IX.

But we all know that she will.

Star Wars: The Black Series Dengar

One of the bounty hunters that stands around as Vader talks about not disintegrating the crew of the Millennium Falcon, Dengar is one of those figures that wound up in my collection somehow, and now, on the eve of the release of the first wave of Archive figures, containing Boba Fett, Bossk, and IG-88, ended up being totally necessary to have, as the Empire bounty hunter team is about to be complete. Or, is complete, if you’d been buying them since the beginning.

Warbotron: Warbotron

Happy New Year everyone, and here’s to the hopes that 2019 will be a good, healthy, stable year for all of us. Let’s start the Coffin’s New Year with a real challenging question, that being what the combined mode of the Warbotron Combaticons is called? We’re going to go with “Warbotron,” as it sounds good and sensible, but really, you could most likely call this monstrosity anything you like.

And I meant ‘monstrosity’ in a good way.