Thor isn't one of my favorite characters, but I don't dislike him either. I didn't have a Thor figure, but then at Meijer in Wixom they had this 80th Anniversary version of Thor on clearance for only $12.50, so I snapped it up.
He is a really comic book accurate, so he doesn't look like Chris Hemsworth. The detail is really good; it even has the whole mantra written on his hammer! They even did a nice job with the box featuring artwork by Alex Ross.
If you're only going to have one Thor and not spend like $100 or more on some really fancy figure, this is the one to get.
BTW, it's kind of a misnomer to say "80th Anniversary" because none of the Marvel characters we know has existed that long except Captain America and Sub-Mariner, back when it was Timely Comics. I also got the Iron Man figure on clearance at Meijer for the same price. It's I think based on the 70s/80s version more than the very original or movie version. I don't really like it as much as Thor though.
Lando was I think the second of the main characters from the original trilogy that I got. I found him at the Ollie's in Farmington a couple of years ago. It might have been intentional that he was in the very back of the row, like maybe someone was trying to save him until they could come back, so they tried to hide him behind a bunch of shitty Last Jedi figures. Instead I snatched him up for a whole $6.
This is one of those where the newer technology Hasbro has started to use gives it a pretty good resemblance to Billy Dee Williams. The clothes he's wearing are pretty spot-on too. All he comes with is the blaster, but then I don't think there's much else they could have given him.
For $6 it was a good deal, not like the one he struck with Vader.
Here's my homemade shelf (a shallow Amazon box with the flaps cut off) with all the main good guy characters from the original trilogy, though the Chewie is the Solo version and the C3PO is the Force Awakens version and R2D2 is the Galaxy Adventures version that's kind of cheap-looking. They came out wth a 40th Anniversary Empire Strikes Back R2D2 but spending $20 on a 3-inch droid seems pretty lame to me. This is cheaper looking but came with a BB8 and that one from the last movie. So close enough! I still need to get a Vader at some point. Maybe an Emperor and Obi-Wan and Wedge; I'd probably need a new box for that.
Ahsoka Tano was actually the first of the Star Wars Black Series figures I ever bought. I got it from Meijer in Wixom a few years ago. I hadn't seen her on Rebels but I did like her in Clone Wars, so I just thought she looked cool and bought her. I don't think she was even on sale, or if she was, it wasn't much.
This is a good representation of the adult Ahsoka from Rebels. She has the two pale lightsabers that aren't quite as white as they were in the TV show. The only thing I didn't like is her legs are really skinny, which makes her harder to stand. She was definitely a good candidate for my little homemade stands made from discarded flavored sparkling water bottles. It helps to give her a lot better balance.
A recent acquisition is Hera Syndulla, also from Rebels. I guess there was a figure a couple of years ago, after the show began, but they recently reissued them. I really liked Hera in the show, so I decided to pick her up off Amazon.
She's a good likeness--and that's about it. I mean she doesn't really come with anything except a little blaster. It would have been better if she came with Chopper, but I guess then they'd charge more for that.
It occurred to me a couple of years ago that while I had a couple of Star Wars figures, I didn't have any of the original ones: Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, etc. Then one day I was at Meijer in Wixom and they had the reissue of the pilot Luke Skywalker figure on clearance for only $10. So that was the first of the original trilogy ones I bought.
I really like him because he's got good detailing for a figure originally issued in the early 2010s and he has the helmet, blaster, and lightsaber. The pilot suit and lightsaber always make me think of the old SNES Empire Strikes Back video game where Luke wore that costume through most of the game and you could use the lightsaber or blaster as your weapons. I beat that game a few times back in the 90s.
Today's figures are from the Knightfall storyline back in the early 90s. That was where the evil Bane comes to Gotham, lets out most of Batman's enemies from Arkham, and then breaks Bruce Wayne's back. Bruce then chooses Jean-Paul Valley, the former assassin Azrael to replace him. Because he was Azrael and Batman, fans mash it together into AzBats.
The first AzBats I ever bought is the little one on the right in the picture. That's the first suit Jean-Paul Valley makes. The figure was part of the "Legends of Batman" series back in the mid-90s that was sold in a two-pack with Viking Batman--you know, Batman dressed like a Viking.
In 2013 the DC Multiverse line came out with a new AzBats figure, one that is based on the final suit Jean-Paul makes. I pre-ordered the figure from Amazon because I was really hot to get it. And I wasn't disappointed. It is pretty sweet, with a good amount of detail for the time, including the bandoliers of darts or Batarangs or whatever they were supposed to be.
The one problem as you can see in this old picture is that he doesn't stand very well. He's really top-heavy, so that I usually had to bend his knees to get him to balance. I wound up putting him on a cardboard stand with the older Azrael figure I bought a little later.
The AzBats figure came with a Build-A-Figure piece for Bane. It was unfortunately a leg, not the head. The head I bought later off eBay. The weird thing is that the rest of the parts to make that Bane were more expensive than buying the 90s "Legends of the Dark Knight" figure. The head of that figure looked really stupid with long brown hair sticking out.
So I sawed the head off that figure and glued on the head from the AzBats series Build-A-Figure I got from eBay. And while he isn't 100% accurate to the comics with the blue jeans, he's close enough. Plus it's always neater when you make it yourself. I mean no one else in the world has a Bane like that. Just me. So there.
This is my third of the new McFarlane line of DC Multiverse figures. The weird thing is that McFarlane is owned by Todd McFarlane, the creator of the Spawn comics series published by Image (not DC) and who used to draw Spider-Man for Marvel. The McFarlane figures are bigger than the older Mattel ones (7 inches instead of 6) and they really have better detailing.
This is all really obvious with the Azrael figure. It's from the recent Elseworlds miniseries Curse of the White Knight, which was the sequel to the White Knight series about the Joker going sane and seeming to become a good guy. I haven't read the sequel, but apparently Azrael is brought into the mix.
Back in the early 90s, Azrael was created by Batman editor Denny O'Neil and future Marvel bigshot Joe Quesada as the latest in a line of assassins who serve the Order of St. Dumas. The Azrael of the that time, Jean-Paul Valley, eventually stepped down from being Azrael and became Batman for a little while. But then he became Azrael again before dying.
There was a DC Multiverse figure of that Azrael back in the 2000s or 2010s but it's not very good. For some weird reason the head is permanently tilted down, so he's basically always looking at his feet.
So while this White Knight version isn't the same as the 90s one, it's a lot better. The head isn't tilted down and there's a ton of detail. The little cape strands are even flexible to move around. The coolest feature is ironically the flame on his sword can be slid off to make it a regular sword.
If there's one complaint the figure's a little on the top-heavy side. It makes him a little harder to stand, even on the included stand. Still, overall it is an awesome figure and really the best version of Azrael that's commonly available.
I read the first couple of volumes of the Batgirl comics when she moved to trendy hipster Burnside and changed costumes, but I wasn't really a fan. But I do like the costume. The purple body with yellow accents is the same color scheme as the Yvonne Craig Batgirl in the old Adam West TV show, though the all-black cowl is different. I like it better than the ones that basically look like Batman's costume only for a girl.
There was a DC Multiverse figure out years ago but the one I have isn't that. It's a DC Essentials version, something only sold online not in stores like the other one ostensibly was--not that you could find most of them in stores. On Amazon this version was actually cheaper than the other one, which was nice. The Multiverse one looks more blue than purple anyway.
Burnside version on the left, Yvonne Craig version on the right
The figure has good articulation and I think it's a decent likeness. The left foot looks a little weird a lot of the time, where the foot and upper part of the boot don't really seem to go together. The hair is pretty good, though maybe it could be redder.
A year or so ago they changed her costume and there's a McFarlane figure of it but I don't like that one, at least from the neck up. I mean that "mask" covers like 1% of her face and those stupid ears sticking up through her hair. How is that going to conceal anything? How does her father not recognize her in like two seconds? Ugh. It'd be better to take the body of that figure and the head of an older figure with the full cowl to look more like the costume in the comics back in the 70s and/or 80s, basically until she got shot by the Joker.
It's Friday the 13th! As if 2020 needed more bad luck. Anyway, though thanks to idiots who don't want to wear masks or social distancing we won't really have the traditional holiday celebrations, I still don't expect there to be much blog traffic between now and the new year. Previous years I've done promotions of indie books, but I haven't really read any this year. Or I reposted the most popular posts, but that's boring.
Then I thought that since toys feature so much into Christmas, I'd do something to focus on that. So, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday to the new year I'll feature an Action Figure I Like. My collection isn't huge like some people's, but I have over the years accumulated a few. I'll just be focusing on the 6-7" ones like Marvel Legends, DC Multiverse, Star Wars Black Series, and the new GI JOE ones with a mix of older and newer ones. They'll all be ones I own, not ones I'd like to own.
You probably won't care, but it'll be fun for me and I certainly need that right now.
Since it's Friday the 13th, here's one I wanted to own but didn't get.
It's a gender swapped Jason from the Friday the 13th franchise. I tried buying it on Wish--twice! The first time my order wound up in some little town in Georgia, maybe to the prison there. The second time I don't think it ever got sent. I got my money back both times but gave up trying to get it from there and on Amazon and eBay it's a lot more expensive. Besides Jason they have the other 80s super-killers like Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Chucky.
At some point I should write a story about a gender swapped serial killer, but I haven't gotten around to it.
The other day I watched the Rifftrax movie Lady Mobster. It's from the early-to-mid-80s and it's about a girl who gets adopted by a mob family after her parents are murdered. She becomes a lawyer and when the family starts having problems, she steps in and eventually takes over. It's basically like if The Godfather had been about Tom Hagen taking over the Corleones instead of Michael.
The murder of her parents got me thinking this could be a good premise for a Batman Elseworlds story. (It might already exist; maybe Arion or Laplume can correct me if I'm wrong.) The idea would be that after Bruce Wayne's parents are killed in a mob hit, he's adopted by the Falcone family. Bruce studies to be a lawyer or whatever at his adopted father's behest but when the family starts being hassled by another family (or maybe the Penguin or Joker or whatever) he starts dressing up in a costume to take out the family's enemies.
In the end he finds who killed his parents and takes revenge. Then he becomes head of the Falcone family. Throw in a love interest and there you go, pretty solid premise.
A few years ago late at night I watched the 2005 thriller Hide and Seek on some local channel. Just as it was getting to the final act, though, the movie went to commercial and after the commercials the channel went to some old Friends rerun. WTF?! I couldn't find the movie on Amazon Prime or Hulu or anything and I didn't feel like paying to watch the last 20 minutes or so, so I just put it on my watchlist on Amazon in case it ever did go on Amazon Prime.
Then Halloween when I was looking for something to watch, I realized the movie was finally on Amazon Prime. So I decided to watch the whole thing. The movie is about a psychiatrist played by Robert deNiro and his young daughter played by Dakota Fanning moving to upstate New York after his wife and her mother kills herself. The little girl starts playing with an imaginary friend named Charlie, but then it starts getting creepy when a cat is drowned in the tub and she blames it on Charlie. Eventually "Charlie" kills someone.
When the movie cut off the first time, I still didn't know who "Charlie" was supposed to be. The red herring is the creepy neighbor. When I got to watch the final act, it's revealed that deNiro is actually Charlie. Apparently seeing his wife kissing some other guy at a party caused a psychotic break and so he murdered her and then started playing with his daughter as "Charlie."
Instead of clever, I thought it was a pretty lame twist. To that point the movie had really done nothing to set up this twist. There's a vague mention of him having a bad childhood, but nothing about any schizophrenia or anything like that. So it just sort of comes out of nowhere.
There's a similarly bad twist in the James Nguyen disasterpiece Julie and Jack. In the first act Julie and Jack go out to dinner a couple of times and tour their native San Francisco and fairly normal stuff like that. Then it's revealed they're actually meeting in virtual reality all this time. Wait, what? Why the hell are you eating at restaurants in virtual reality? Really they could have been skydiving or base jumping off the Eiffel Towel or jumping around the moon. I mean come on t's virtual reality! Have some fun with it.
Except A) that would have been too expensive for a lower-than-low-budget movie and B) If they had done wild stuff like that it would have tipped viewers off that they were meeting in virtual reality. But would that have been so bad? I don't think this first twist was really that important that it needed hidden. It wouldn't have tipped people off to the other twist: that Julie is in reality dead and her consciousness is on the Internet.
I get that if you have a twist you don't want it to be spoiled too early, but at the same time you don't want a twist that comes out of nowhere or doesn't really make sense. Or like the movie Duplicity where the twist made me think the main characters were morons with how easily they were duped. When you're doing a twist ending, you have to be careful.
In the last month I bought a bunch of the recent Rifftrax on-demand movies to watch with the Roku app. And there was one thing that struck me that I shared on Facebook: if you're doing a really low-budget horror/sci-fi/action movie, stick to practical effects. They might still look bad, but probably not as bad as low-budget computer effects look.
A few of the movies that made me think this were Feeders, Lycan Colony, and Suburban Sasquatch. Feeders could at least use the excuse it was made in the mid-90s so great computer effects weren't very affordable. Still at one point when a doctor is on the floor with his head ripped off, the neck and blood look like they were done in MS Paint. It's one of those times when even the professional riffers can only laugh because it is so utterly ridiculous. Though to be fair a lot of the practical effects, like the clay lump alien puppets, were pretty bad too.
Lycan Colony and Suburban Sasquatch were made early in the 21st Century. Lycan Colony uses a lot of bad green screen that leads to one riffer saying, "How can you manage to make rolling look fake?" I mean, seriously, someone is supposed to be rolling down a hill and it looks incredibly fake. One guy is supposed to have a tattoo on his neck but instead of drawing it on with a marker or using a sticker or something, they tried to do it digitally and you can see it wobbling when he moves. Though it's still probably not as funny as the terrible acting (like when a guy blurts out, "MMMMistake!" which would describe the whole movie) done mostly with heavy Boston accents.
Suburban Sasquatch has even more hilarious computer effects. It's about a Bigfoot (or Sasquatch) terrorizing a suburban development--hence the title. The Sasquatch is clearly a suit, the kind where you can see the seams and the two cops have the fakest-looking uniforms ever; they're brown button-down shirts with darker brown tape on the shoulders. They couldn't even go to the dollar store for a couple of fake badges. Strippers have more realistic cop uniforms! But that's nothing compared to the computer effects of when the Sasquatch gets shot with an arrow and fake digital blood splurts around. Or when he picks up the cop car and it changes dimensions in his grasp. (Though ironically the cop car looks far more real than the cop uniforms.)
By contrast Vengeance of the Dead was made in Wisconsin early in the 21st Century and while it's not a great movie, it looks far less ridiculous than the others I mentioned. The reason is it doesn't use a lot of low-rent computer effects. Instead it relies on practical effects, mostly a young guy lighting old people on fire after he finds an old spoon that causes him to start sleepwalking to avenge a family murdered in the 30s. There aren't any of those moments where you just laugh at how utterly stupid the action on the screen looks.
The basic message overall is to not let your reach exceed your grasp. If you don't have the money for ILM-quality digital effects, then don't write your script so you need them. It's just going to look ridiculous. To apply this to writing, I guess that would mean to stay with what you can do well; don't venture too far from your comfort zone or things probably won't go so well for you.
The other day when I went to the Amazon KDP site, I saw they had added something new: a tool to manage series. In the last couple of years Amazon would put books of the same series together, but it was something they did on their own. But now you can do it yourself.
There are two ways to do it, either add books to an existing series or you can create a new series and add the books yourself. And there's also an option to add "related" items like omnibuses, prequels, or short stories. The only thing is there's a message when setting up series that says the related content isn't supported yet. So I guess it's something that will be added later. Or not. Who knows?
One little hitch is you can only add a book to one series. I was wondering why I couldn't find Another Chance to make a "related" book to the three Chances Are books and it turned out it was because it was already its own series. So I had to remove that series before I could add it to the other. Or like the Gender Swap Six Pack that had both the Chances Are and Girl Power series, I could only relate to one series.
Something I noticed was most of my Eric Filler books already had series set up. It mostly seemed to be older books that didn't have anything set up. So if you have written series on Amazon, it could already be set up or it might not.
One good thing was it allowed me to fix something stupid Amazon did. For some reason they had the first book of the Gender Swap Heroes series listed with the second and third books of the Gender Swap Detective series. I was able now to get the right books listed under the right series.
Anyway, if you have books on Amazon, maybe check it out.
Last Wednesday I wrote an entry about people rating books with no comments and how that's useless to the author. Lately while mostly I've just gotten ratings with no comments, there are sometimes comments and you can see why they're more helpful to me than merely a 1-star rating.
Like this one for Chance of a Lifetime:
Deleted it after page one. reviews were bad to start. and I don't need the f word in every paragraph. This writer has little imagination and even less grasp of the language
I went through and counted that in the first chapter there are exactly 3 f-bombs. So there are some, but it's hardly "every paragraph." I'm not sure what they mean by "reviews were bad to start;" according to Amazon of the 61 reviews/ratings, 52% are 5 stars and 24% 4 stars versus 8% 2 stars and 7% 1 star--including this one. And I don't know how well you can gauge imagination or "grasp of the language" if you deleted it after "page one," whatever that means on your Kindle.
Or this one for Night at the Carnival:
There is nothing erotic, the main character i a constant victim, everyone else is scum and nothing in the least bit sexy happens.
I didn't file this as erotica for the exact reason that there wasn't a ton of sex in it. I guess it is an Eric Filler book and there's a sexy ringmaster on the cover so you might assume it's erotic. I wouldn't agree that "everyone else is scum;" it's probably that it's not pure black-and-white with good guys and bad guys. You know, the main characters do some things that aren't all that good.
That's why I try not to do dark stories all that much anymore because they tend to get reviews like that from people who want simple fairy tale plots appropriate for little kids, but that are sexy. SMH.
Anyway, so if these people had just given a 1star rating, I would have been like, "OK, someone didn't like it for...reasons." The Chance of a Lifetime one I probably wouldn't have even noticed. But since they wrote why they didn't like it, now I know that one is some annoying PTA mom who thought it was a children's story and the other whined because a non-erotica book wasn't erotic.
So they're annoying but not really anything I can do about it. That's your context.
