Random Thoughts 24

This week in comics and action figures was a week of death....



First,



SPOILERS!













Torch's fire put out- Yes, Johnny Storm gave his life to save others from the horde known as The Annihilation Wave. Although, no corpse could be recovered or even seen, it's certain that the former hero/actor/male model/hot rodder could not have survived. The team has seen its fair share of "deaths" with each of the quartet having several passings. Most of these turned out to be fake outs however. One actually made the trip all the way to heaven before being given a second chance. I'd say that this "death" will inevitably be undone. Such is the nature with comic character deaths [especially Marvel ones]. Look out for those "very special issue of" stories about how heroes deal with the news...



I come to bury Wizard, not praise it- This week the publisher of Wizard and Toyfare announced that those magazines would cease being published. Wizard started in the 90's and quickly became the slickest, coolest source for news, interviews and sneak peaks of the comic book industry. Those were, of course, pre-Internet days. Wizard remained pretty relevant until the early 2000's when Internet availability and technology progressed to the point where news reported in the magazine was old news by the date it went on sale. Now with blogs, podcasts, and sites like CBR, Newsarama and even MTV covering comics Wizard's role is done better and faster. Wizard failed to change...and for that deserves to die. To be honest, the quality of the mag was pretty poor for the last six or seven years, more and more mistakes and skimpier articles...that's why I stopped reading it five years ago. Toyfare also suffered from lack of good editing, but still had nice pictures of new toys coming out, so that I will miss. However, I say good riddance to Wizard. Of course, I do hope that those who lost their jobs find work soon. I'm not heartless. And the way the employees were told was distasteful and cowardly...but that's another topic.



No toy for U!- Mattel cancelled the TRU exclusive "Infinite Heroes" Green Lantern movie figure. Pre-sales had started and with release just a few weeks away, they pulled the item. Produced in a limited batch of 2,418 (the sector Hal Jordan patrols as a Green Lantern), the 4 inch figure came with a GL ring. No real reason has been given for the cancellation.



Thundercats!- Following a leak of pics from the UK Toy Fair, Bandai released info and pics of the new redesigned 'cats for the new show appearing this fall. It seems to draw alot from anime design styling, much like the 2002 He-Man reimagining. I just hope the voice acting is good. Thundercats is the property that I most wanted to return in some form. I was hoping Mattel would get the licence and do action figures similar to Masters Of the Universe Classics and DC Universe Classics. I'll just have to see what Bandai comes up with.

Superman Lives- In breaking news...a new Superman was cast. And he's *gasp* a Brit! Henry Cavill from The Tudors won the part. Hmmm? This seems familiar. I don't know much of Cavill's work, but that Bale guy worked out okay.