Jesus Christ, I have a buttload of Mattel to talk about.  I found the most recent wave of retail JLU on my way out of Columbus to C2E2, I got three more JLU sets at the con itself, and when I got home I had Ghostbusters Louis Tully.  Oh, right, and I got Action League Batman/Joker the day before I left.  Will have to get around to that some time.

Let's start with the Gray Ghost 3-pack set, then, I guess?

Hey, it's the Gray Ghost!  When Batman was a kid, he was super fanboy for the Gray Ghost.  The Gray Ghost was like his Power Rangers. But then Batman's parents died, Batman became Batman, and then Batman met the aging actor who played the Gray Ghost and got really pissed off that the aging actor who played the Gray Ghost won't put on a costume and fight real crime.  Batman, you are the world's greatest detective.  Why are you so dumb?

Also, there was lots of the actor who played the Gray Ghost throwing furniture around as the musical score pleasured itself.

The toy of the Gray Ghost is of the aging actor in the Gray Ghost costume, not the actual Gray Ghost, which is fine by me.  The latter is fictional, and so would look kind of weird standing in my display.  (You know what I mean!)  What's weird is that the Gray Ghost appears to be completely bald.  There's no paint for his hair behind his ears.  I remember the actor having thinning hair, not Lex Luthoring it.  Ah well.  Who's gonna be staring at the back of his head anyway.

It looks to me like Gray Ghost's got a new head, torso, and cape.  The rest is probably The Question or something.

The rest of the three-pack is filled out with character reuses, but that's fine by me.  There's the requisite Batman, and he's the JLU toy decoed like the Batman: The Animated Series design.  It works well enough despite having the wrong belt.  I like that the inside of his cape is blue.

The third guy is the Joker, because why the hell not.  Fitting in with the BTAS theme, this is the JLU Joker toy decoed like BTAS Joker.  This interested me more than I thought it would.  I mean, I definitely prefer my JLU Joker, but it tickles my brain in the right areas to see that toy done up in an earlier model's colors.  The purple suit's a smidge bluer, he's got the orange shirt, and his bowtie is teal.  With the hair being a dark green and his face painted up just a little differently, he passes off as BTAS Joker pretty damn well.  JLU Joker is just BTAS Joker with sharper lines anyway.  He's certainly a better BTAS Joker toy than any of the original BTAS Joker toys, but that's what 20 years of sculpting advances will tend to do.

That's right.  Twenty.

I was gonna make a bigger post later on, but apparently they're, like, 50% sold out of Primus Package sets already. So, uh, yeah, Animated seems to be doing pretty well for Fun Publications.  Run over there and sign up for some expensive toys if you desire them, before it's all gone.

Me, I'm just really thankful I was able to get the Customization Class thing.  I've never tried to do it before, but the idea of an Animated character in toy form that I don't own sounds like a horrible thing that would destroy me.  (Okay, it could be a nonAnimated mold if there are any nonAnimated souvenir add-on sets, but that's much less likely, given the statistics.)

Glad I drove home early from C2E2.

Yay, I'm home!  ...and my desktop computer decided to stop finding wireless networks while I was gone.  WELL THAT'S FUN.  GOD DAMMIT.  Can I get home from a convention and actually have everything be normal?  Apparently not.

Anyway, me news -- The Laughing Ogre here in Columbus is having a FF #1 thing on Wednesday.  (Apparently it's just literally "FF" now, so trying to spell out what the acronym means is counter to informational purposes.)  The Laughing Ogre is having a sale with 15% off Fantastic Four trades and 25% off Fantastic Four back issues. And if you buy the FF #1 "blank cover" you will get a sketch on it from one of the local artists in residence.  One of those local artists is me! So if you've got a hankering for a doodle of HERBIE, I'm totally your man from noon to about 6 or 8.

I may also learn to draw the Thing.

...including a bunch of Young Justice stuff specifically for my wife.

Phew!  I've spent so much time getting over the stupid sickness ECCC injected into me that I almost forgot how damn fun it was.  And it was fun!  As I pack for undoubtedly another fun weekend in Chicago for C2E2, have some belated photos.

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The fandom kinda freaked out when this guy suddenly and magically, without fanfare, appeared in Toys"R"Uses and Walmarts. What? A Transformers 3 toy? That has to be a mistake! And how did we let it slip past our insanely focused warning systems?

It's not something I would pick up normally, but it is a "preview" toy months in advance, and I kind of have an empty blog to fill, so what are you gonna do.

This is "Cyberverse Commander" Optimus Prime. That's not really a description of the character so much as it is a description of the sizeclass. "Cyberverse" is what Hasbro's calling the sub-Deluxe size class stuff this year. They're building an army of little Legends class-ish toys and giving them playsets and swappable weaponry. "Commander" means that Optimus is one of the larger toys. Price-wise and mass-wise, he's kind of a Scout, but not quite. He feels about 90% of a Scout. But he sure costs 100% of a Scout! ($7.96)

As a Commander, Optimus Prime comes with an accessory weapon. It's a jetpack and two guns, which you can combine with him in various ways. It's attached via the new C joint clips and rods, which is the same stuff you use to clip Jazz's speakers everywhere. So, yeah, in theory, you could clip Prime's tiny jetpack to a larger Generations deluxe. No promises it'll face the right way, though. The guns have pegs that fit into C joint clips, so there's probably some interactivity potential there, too.

Likewise with the vague new pricepoint, Optimus Prime's complexity also falls somewhere in between the old Legends Class and Scout Class figures. The toy's transformation feels more like a Legends Class toy, but has way more steps and parts than those allow. Legends Class toys don't usually have balljointed hips and shoulders or bendable knees and elbows, or at least certainly not all at the same time.

There's also a pair of 3D glasses (red/blue) included so that you can view downloadable content from the official website.  Or downloadable 3D porn images from certain other websites.

So I guess, at the very least, this is an interesting look at what the cheaper half of the Dark of the Moon toyline is going to be like --  tiny versions of movie characters with accessories or playsets, with transformation complexity somewhere above Legends Class toys.  I'll probably skip out on most of it, since I'm not very interested in starting a whole new scale, but this toy was a welcome diversion during the winter toy drought.

I'm going back to C2E2 for its second year this coming weekend (March 18-20), and I'm bringing some pals.  You can find me sharing a table with Danielle Corsetto (Girls with Slingshots), Randy Milholland (Something Positive), and Joel Watson (Hijinks Ensue).  It looks like we're in booth 862, which is a corner booth in the back of the hall facing Artists Alley and the Webcomics Pavilion.

You can still buy tickets to C2e2 online, but only for the next two days (plus eight hours as of this writing).

As a sidenote, woo, apparently Mattel's booth is selling three exclusive JLU three-packs at C2E2!  There's:

• Goldface / Evil Star / Kyle Rayner


• Angleman / Firestorm / Killer Frost


• Heatwave / The Flash / Mirror Master

I've bolded the guys who are new.  I'm pretty excited for Killer Frost.  Oh, and Evil Star, too, I guess, if only because of his one, quick hilarious bit in "The Great Brain Robbery."

I miss you, Dwayne McDuffie.

Hi, this is Maggie!

So for the first time in my life, I went to McDonald's to buy toys at 10:00am on the Friday they came out. My first trip to the nearest McDonald's was a hit; they had two of the McYoung Justice toys I craved.

Unfortunately (?), they were Superboy and Superman. I mean, that's cool: I'm totally getting them all, but those who know me understand who really makes my clock tick. Oh well. The search continues!

So, while toting my husband to the Urgent Care center for his bronchitis, I interrupted our trip twice to check other McDonalds near the doctor's office, as all good wives should. Sadly, either they only had more Superpeople, or they hadn't gotten the toys in at all.

Anyway, I am whelmed by the toys! Maybe I had really low expectations (and I did, in fact), but the molds are relatively show accurate and detailed. Superman's head's a wee small, but he can't seem to brain in the show anyway.

Superboy's red symbol on his chest lights up red and so do his eyes. This is a little weird because it's a plot point that he doesn't have all of Superman's powers, including the ability to fly and heat vision. Superman's head tilts down a little so that he can condescend to Superboy.

They each have a nifty button on the back that makes them punch things. Superman raises two arms, and Superboy punches with just one. If Superboy didn't feel inferior before now his only dream is to one day to punch with both arms instead of one. POOR SB WE STILL LOVE YOU.

Overall excited for the rest!

I have bronchitis.