Child Sized Coffin

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.