Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Today is the day to reflect and remember what we are thankful for.  I am thankful for my wife, my family, my friends, my freedom, everyone who visits/has visited here and of course the toys.  Eat, drink and be merry.  Watch some football(let’s go Packers!).  Load up on turkey and drift into a tryptophan coma.  I hope all of you were able to catch at least a little bit of the Macy’s Thansgiving Day Parade(great again, as always).  Again, Happy Thanksgiving all!!

 Anyone remember this Guy?  🙂

Wizard #37, September 1994

I scored this for a buck at the Albany Comic-Con.

I’m sure most of you know what Wizard magazine consisted of, but for those of you that don’t know…let me give you a brief explanation.

This was the self-proclaimed “Guide to Comics”(the last issue was for March 2011, and is now a web-only publication).  It’s first issue debuted in July of 1991, and quickly became almost like a bible for comic books.  The early issues were jam-packed with anything you wanted to know about any comic.  And those were my favorite issues.  Basically every hot artist at the time did covers for Wizard.  Like Todd McFarlane, Sam Kieth and Rob Liefeld(I’m not a fan of his work).  A lot of the older issues came with premiums as well(trading cards, comics, special offers).  These earlier issues were also about 3-4 times thicker than the later issues.  In any event, it was fit to be called the “Guide to Comics”.

Now, I’m not going to review every freakin’ page of this magazine.  But I will show five of my favorite pages from the magazine(this could lead to future installments, as I have a few other early issues in my collection).

(1.

Envelope art is awesome!  I’ve sent my fair share of mail with drawins on the envelope, but nothing of this quality.  These envelopes took time and talent!  This was a feature I looked forward to every month during the magazines early days.

 

(2.

Mortal Kombat II was such a bad-ass game when it came to the arcade(or deli or pizza place).  This was the advertisement for it’s home console/portable release.  The Super Nintendo version would be my choice…for sentimental reasons.

This issue was not short on video game ads.

 

(3.

Homemade Heroes was another regular feature that I looked forward to.  It’s really cool to see custom action figures from almost 20 years ago.   I’m no fan of Mystery Science Theater, but it’s cool to see custom figures from the show.

 

(4.

I like Spawn, and was a huge fan back in the day.  But this was not the main reason that I selected this as one of my favorite pages from this magazine.  The word “almost”, is why I chose it.  Back in the early years of Image Comics, they were known to have delays and erratic schedules for a lot of their titles.  In my opinion, this is suitable for framing.

 

(5.

The top 100 list.  This would give you some insight to which were the hottest books at the time.  For every issue  you may have read at the time, there were a lot others that you may have had no prior interest in, but got them because of this list.  When trades for books on this list went down, we always used the price guide in the back of the mag to see what would be a fai trade.  The price guide was reduced to a mere few pages in later issues.

 

It sucks that you can no longer find Wizard on the racks, but it’s a great trip to look at these older issues.  Does anyone have any memories from this great magazine?

And since I made it a point to mention the premiums, and showed the magazine in the bag stating what the promos are, here’s what was within the polybagged offering.

I couldn’t make out the name, and didn’t feel like searching online for it.  So I guessed that it is called Brute Babe Infinity(but I could be wrong).   The issue number is the infinity symbol, so that’s different, but the comic itself doesn’t do anything for me.

Now these promos are worth talking about.  Here we have a four card spread(I don’t want to call it an uncut sheet, as there’s an ad for the series onthe back, instead of the usual card backs), and a chromium-foil Gen 13 card.  I have a few other foil promo cards from other issues, but I must say that I was disappointed when these stopped coming with the magazine.  Sure, they had some promo cards(non-foil or gimmicky), in future issues, but they just weren’t the same.

2011 Panthro

So, I held off this long with my latest review for the new Thundercats figures.

Today’s entry is Panthro.

These figures typically run for $7.99(this example ran me $8.99), and you’re getting a figure that’s in scale with the Marvel Universe figures.  But these figures come with accessories.  Panthro comes with 2 pairs of nunchuks.  One is a pair that can be used for action poses.  And the other is a pair that you can attach to his back, to complete the look of them being stored when not in use.

The new nunchuks aren’t as iconic as the original blue and red ‘chuks, but the handles retain the the basic design of the originals.  There was just something about the red and blue handles that spoke to me(which may explain why I like old-school blue and red 3-D glasses).

I plan on getting the rest of the “Cats” in the near future, but here’s my team so far.

Albany Comic-Con 2011

So, about a week and a half ago, I attended the Albany Comic-Con(this was my wife’s anniversary gift to me 🙂 ).  I’m not sure if this was it’s inaugural event or if it’s an annual thing.  This year was the first time in the 8 years I’ve lived here, that I have heard about it.

I’ve been to a few conventions in NYC before, and they were a pretty decent size.  This one was smaller, but it definitely had it’s charm.  To give you an idea, it was held in a Holiday Inn, and had two dealer and guest rooms.  There were a few different panels as well.  I attended the panel discussing action figure sculpting and creating.

There was a pretty big turnout, and there were many deals to be had(every dealer I met with was friendly and reasonable).  I won’t bore you to death with all the details, so we’ll get to the pictures.  Most of them are Star Wars related, but I’m pretty sure that’s okay with most of you.

All of the Star Wars costumes were top notch, and made up 60%-70% of the cosplaying crowd.  The Tusken Raider(or Sand Person) above, was one of two who even had sound effects and music playing(concealed within their costume and accessories) that were related to their character.

Now to the loot!

But before we get to that…I just want to show a few games that came in the mail around the same time I went to the convention.

Ultima isn’t a great game, but it’s an RPG that I have fond memories of.  I already have this game in my collection, but I got a great deal on a complete copy(the box is mint).  Wario Land:Super Mario Land III, is one of my all-time favorite Game Boy games.  This was another great deal that also included the game case and instruction manual.  I only realized that it was a foreign language manual when I got it in the mail.  Game Boy games are region-free, so it works fine on my Game Boy.  And the manual is not necessary for me to play this game.

And now to the Comic-Con loot!

That Punisher comic is one of my favorite comic book covers, and it was also the very first back issue I bought when I first got into comics.  The Marvel Universe is part of a series of of pages with pre-punched holes to be put into a 3 ring binder as a sort of reference book.  Both of those were 50 cents each.  The Jason goes to Hell was a bargain at 50 cents, considering it still has the cards in the sealed bag.  I don’t mean this to sound like it’s worth much.  I’m just a huge Friday the 13th fan, and getting a comic book and trading cards of Jason for 50 cents is great!  I have no idea about the Redfox comic.  But it was 50 cents, and I thought the cover looked pretty neat, so I took a chance.

The New Warriors was one of the titles I was heavily into when I first got into comics(along with The Punisher, Avengers West Coast and Marvel Comics Presents).  I couldn’t pas up the first issue for a dollar.  In my current collection, I don’t have any other New Warriors books.  I’m hoping I’ll like it as much as I did back then.  What The..?! is a parody of Marvel characters by Marvel.  It was done by Hilary Barta, who I have mentioned before.  I love his cartoony style and at 50 cents, I promptly snatched it up.  The 2 G.I. Joe and the Transformers comics were a buck a piece.  The first one is a Marvel one from the eighties, and the second one is an Image one from 2003(this one is actually G.I. Joe vs. Transformers).  It’ll be great to read all of these.

One seller had a bunch of polybagged issues of Wizard from the early days of the now-defunct “guide to comics”.  I picked out a fairly early issue that included some pretty cool premiums.  To the right, we have a press kit for the movie The Crow.  This is my all-time favorite movie.  This is a very cool find!  It has black and white 8×10 photos, 5 film stills and a press release about the movie, the actors and various other things pertaining to the movie.  I had no problem dropping the ten dollars the seller was asking for it.  Also pictures are 3 packs of trading cards.  The seller was selling certain packs of trading cards at 3 packs for $1.00.  The 3 packs I chose were The Worst From MAD, The Valiant Era and Adventures in Toon World.  I’ll be saving these packs, and may do a post where I open them and see what they contain.

And here is the star of  my purchases.

The Reveal the Shield line of Transformers has been virtually non-existent in my area.  I’ve barely see any of this line with in an hour’s drive of me.  And this was the first time that I saw any of the “Legends Class’ figures.   The dealer I bought this from had all of the Legends Class figures from this line, and if money wasn’t an object I would’ve bought them all.  Starscream is the next on my list if I can find him at a decent price.  Megatron cost me 7 bucks(not too bad), and Starscream was the same.  I just didn’t have the disposable cash at the time.

I think the figure looks great, and is a great representation of the G1 Megatron that we all love.  But I do have a few gripes about this figure.  The first will be apparent in the next photo.

That is one hell of a paint error!  I wish I would’ve noticed this before I bought it, or else I would’ve bought the other available Megatron(as long as the paint was better).  My second gripe is the rub sign almost came off.  It’s a sticker, and it was moving when pressure was applied to it.  I may have to super glue it to the figure to make sure it’s not lost in the future.

And my final gripe…

Is the orange cap on the barrel necessary?!  The original G1 figure was made of die-cast metal and was a full size gun, so I can understand the confusion in mistaking it for a real gun.  But is there any chance that anyone would confuse this tiny, very plastic looking toy for a real gun?

Still, I’m happy to add this Megatron to the collection.  And I’d say he’s worth picking up if you can find him.

Teaser Pic

Just wanted to give everyone a small preview of what’s to come.

Check Back in a Few Days

Starting from this past Saturday, I have been house-sitting for one of my friends.  He has dogs, chickens, roosters, turkeys and a cat that need to be looked after as well.  So, I will be able to get some new posts up as soon as this weekend, when he and his wife return.

I went to Albany Comic-Con this past weekend, and it was pretty fun.  I have a few pictures from the event, as well as some nice items to share(mostly old comics).  I did, however, score a toy at the convention that I’m amped to review.  Check back this weekend for the lowdown.