...


I cannot believe the nerve of these guys - issuing entire toylines based upon the flimsiest excuses for a series or mini-series (much less an "event"...) in order to milk it for all it's worth - and they make sure to always include one, two or three variants of an umpteenth Superman or damnable Batman figure in the mix, just to make sure they break even over all...?

The worst of the worst is their OVERUSE AND DOWNRIGHT ABUSE of the word CRISIS! (Poor Thomas Paine must be rolling in his grave - he who produced actual GREAT literary works with that catchy word; The American Crisis, Supernumerary Crisis and The Crisis Extraordinary...!)

R.I.P. THOMAS PAINE!

DC's abysmal IDENTITY CRISIS had a series of figures done! Those included even Elongated Man! Sheesh! The equally pathetic INFINITE CRISIS got a line of its own too - a sorry excuse for one, with an unrecognizable (read: "updated for the new millennium") OMAC and throwaway figures (or, if you prefer, "why-the-hell-did-they-bother-making-these-for" action figures) to the likeness of Alexander Luthor, an "Earth-Prime Superboy" (one of those ooky variants, I tell ya...) and a busty Power Girl that neither qualifies as an "action figure" nor as proper "eye candy" - therefore, she's obsolete!!!


The kicker is what you saw above - the hat trick completed with a line of figures excerpted from the classic CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS - a 22 year-old twelve issue mini-series (though they had taken to call them "maxi-series" when they reached 12 issues in length and were still, officially, only mini-series... That was a bad omen for all of DC, in retrospect - as, pretty soon, their new series launched were considered "hits" almost if they survived long enough to attain six issues of publication!!! But that is another story...)

The odd choices for figures there boggle the mind too:
a Psycho-Pirate; but no Pariah? Pariah had to be there, dammit! Where i Pariah? I didn't see him anyway - he does have a propensity to vanish all the time, y'know! Seems to me, also, that they truly were equaly pathetic in that saga, the pirate and the pariah - is it not nearly synonymous and interchangeable even? You make one, you have to make the other as well! Also, they bothered with a "Weaponer of Qward" figure - when there was virtually ALL of the DC Universe to choose from! Literally thousands of properties to choose from - and they pick THIS GUY?!? And, again, they threw in a Superboy from Earth-Prime, a Golden Age Superman and a Modern Age Superman (*sic* - can you say "supersaturation" yet?) but no pivotal characters who made their FIRST APPEARANCE in Crisis, such as Lady Quark (whom they killed off some time ago) and the Blue Beetle (the one they also killed off, only more recently) - from what I saw of it anyway?!? This is ATROCIOUSLY PATHETIC as a selection process!





Paradoxically, DC will overlook meaningful characters all the time - but not the slightest -and flimsiest- chance to cash in on something. DC's eagerness to DIRECTLY milk for all its worth the marketability of some mere comic-book moment frozen for all eternity (thus, exploitable, they figured - pun intended!) is not only bizarre as it is, it's also quite despicable (as a fellow Warner Bros. property would proudly say...!)
Case in point: the KINGDOM COME AQUAMAN "COLLECTOR ACTION FIGURE" (below)...
Although I obviously am one of those who always saw the true merit of the character, I cannot applaud the issue of this blatant attempt at cashing in on something without substance! If they liked the look that Alex Ross gave Aquaman so much - maybe they should have expanded the character a whole lot more in Kingdom Come, so that he made more appearances sporting this regal "King Arthur from Atlantis" garb - he could have starred in a spinoff wearing this as well, which would in turn legitimize the issue of a collectible figure afterwards...
As it is, the action figure commemorates a stunning PIN-UP drawn by Alex Ross, where he stands looking majestic next to a queen who isn't even his Mera but the formerly taciturn and enigmatic woman known as "Dolphin" who has since become another's bride...
(What, in this alternate future, she divorces the other guy and a KING of AQ's stature takes her BACK - in place of his true majestuous queen?!? NO WAY! But I digress...)



Having thoroughly bashed DC and all - one must say that the Marvel-ous competitor is not any better itself. They stand guilty as charged as well of trying to make a fast buck off any sort of apparent novelty and eye-catching thingie there is to be found at any time in their sorry excuses for publications - banking on the fanboy-mentality of many avowed "comic-book geeks"...


In doing so, they come up with the oddest concepts of all... Two (or more) figures per pack nowadays seems to be the norm - and the way to go too! At the prices they go for, toys better give the kids their money's worth, and then some! Alas, oftentimes, better work and greater thought was given to the packaging than to the toy itself! Above, it seems that the "high concept" driving that overpriced thing is to pit Namor, the Sub-Mariner who wishes he was as regal as Aquaman (he needs more clothes for that) up against a HAMMERHEAD SHARK? You're supposed to be their champion, Namor-Bozo! What would possess you into fighting one of your own domain's denizens? (Ah - yes, of course! They are NOT yours - they are Aquaman's! And your frustration, that they love another master more than they ever could you, drove you over the edge, finally... Well, PETA will be on your case soon, pointy-ears! Sure, Aquaman was pitted against a Great White Shark in the late 1970s too -Roy Scheider wasn't available that day; or he'd lost too many limbs at that point or something- but that was DC trying to cash in on ANOTHER John Williams music-enhanced mammoth cinematic blockbuster: JAWS, duh! Their prerogative. Case closed. NEXT!)



Another problem soon emerges though, with Marvel;
The misuse of certain words!
It was annoying to see these same words being so carelessly thrown around in the wondrous (if absurd) world of wrestling: "icon" here, "legend" there...
You can imagine how ticked off the thinking fan can be to see these same words attributed to four-color characters whose only real attribute is the thickness of the paper they were originally printed on (and it is barely better than foolscap, most often! But I am digressing again...)


To see these prestigious titles being affixed to a cheap, diluted version of a totally bogus act, such as the Norse mythic deity of thunder, is quite very nearly unbearable I'd say... (Sure, there are far worse things out there in this world - but in the realm of toy thingies, this could take the cake - for now!) And now they came out with an ultra-muscled-up 12 or 13 inches tall version of that clod (Claude? I meant Thor - of course!) - surely to topple once and for all that inane Ken and conquer Barbie - the good ol'fashioned Norsemen way! (Which boils down to say: ravish her in a most barbaric way? Rape her and leave her for dead? It would not be beneath Thor, any Norse or Greco-Roman deity to do so, really - only I doubt the Thor doll is anatomically-correct! Not to mention the Barbies... More likely here, this is Toy Biz's way to show that Mattel's stuff is not up to snuff to their "taller than usual" toys - which is Mattel's niche, usually!)
The Captain America "ICONS/LEGENDS" edition (because ONE desecrated title is not enough; they had to be BOTH - at once!) shows a new side of ol' Cappo that no one had ever seen really... Unmasked, he appears so... Like the evil that he fought? He (totally fictionally) fought the Nazis - so why does he have such a Neo-Nazi/Aryan Supremaciste (!) air to him - eh?


Makes one wonder if his recent demise is not really A GOOD THING after all...
In fact, many believe that, with all the enemies they have been making for themselves, the end is near for the American Supremacy - I guess we'll see...

Maybe THEN - as in wartime past - resources will be put to BETTER USE than making such crappy overblown toys...!

UPDATE: oopsy-doo... Americana is not so deluded after all, not even in their comic-bookies; they just killed and buried Captain America! Just like that, he is HISTORY... Wolverine went through denial... Spidey through depression... Wow, they even know their psychology, the comic-bookie bookies; they went through all the phases of grief - to further milk it and make more bucks off a DEATH (100% bogus, but still - the concept is as reprehensible here as it was in the WWE "Vince McMahon was blown to bits" scrapped storyline!)

Labels: DC, SUCKS

Woe to you who silence those who say the truth out loud!



Aye - one needs not to be a native of any particular region in order to partake of its true natives' idiosyncracies nowadays; not when the world is a global village thanks to the internet.

And so, folks, discover today one Mr. Gendron - the lone lawyer that I can think of that is not totally beyond redemption as it is...! (Make that the lone male attorney - for I know at least two lady attorneys who have a heart that overrides their legal eagle mindwipe! Having said that, Gendron criticizes a lady judge in one of the videos above; and it is fully deserved as she rendered an appalling decision that involved a 4 year-old girl and molestation... If a woman can "go easy" on a man who molested a 4 year-old girl - then, truly, law students must be undergoing undescribable operations in law school; ops that consist in the removal of their very SOULS as well as their brains, just so they observe the rules, regulations and restrictions (the three Rs?) of their precious penal code to a "T" afterwards...?)

Gendron, though his is a background in law too, does not allow the absurdities of the so-called judicial system to blind him so much as to completely miss out on what should be done instead.

He denounced the system and lambasted it - same as I do here, on a case by case basis too!

Eventually, they silenced him good for having dared to say, on a daily TV show he had for a brief time, what no one else would say about things like that... (His network had deemed him "le diable" from the get-go anyway; it was a very bad omen indeed. The title of the show -"l'avocat et le diable"- was a bad play on words made on an age-old saying, "être l'avocat du diable" or to be the devil's advocate... What Gendron did was the total opposite of that! He was, in fact, the modest champion of truth for his tiny society - no matter how unpleasant it was, he'd say it like it needed to be said! It proved to be way too unpleasant for the powers that be...)

Gendron was threatened with radiation from le Barreau du "Culbec"...

And then his network, facing the heat of controversy as well as the pressure from those powers that be, simply fired him...

And so he was silenced.

(Well, in other times and other places, he would have been shot dead...)

Hurray for democracy.



Every locality has their own Gendron.
Do not silence yours. Listen to him instead.