Although this is the third Marvel Collector’s Corps box that Marvel and Funko have put out, it’s the first one that I am doing an unboxing for. Back in July it was announced that this month’s theme was going to be Secret Wars. I’ve been knee deep reading comics for Marvel’s Secret Wars event, so a whole box dedicated to Secret Wars is right in my wheel house.
First lets get a rundown of all the items in the box:
Marvel Collector’s Corps Secret Wars Pin
Marvel Collector’s Corps Secret Wars Patch
Secret Wars Funko Pop Tee
Exclusive Marvel Collector’s Corps Secret Wars Issue 1 Variant Cover
Ultimate (Miles Morales) Spider-man Exclusive Funko Pop Bobble Head
Lady Thor Exclusive Funko Pop Bobble Head
First there is the Collector’s Corps Pin and Patch which look like they will be coming with every shipment.
This is only the third Collectors Corps box to be released but the first to have more than one exclusive Pop Vinyl figure. Based on the art on the box (which was revealed ahead of time) I had guessed correctly that one of the figures would be Lady Thor and was very pleasantly surprised to find not only Lady Thor but Ultimate Spider-man too.
I was also pleasantly surprised to find that they had altered the box to put a divider in order to prevent the figures from jostling around too much during shipping. This is a great improvement as the box for my Ant-Man figure from July got crushed during delivery.
Next is the T-shirt which is my favorite T-shirt to date. It is a Funko Pop Tees brand shirt with Captain America, Thor, Ultimate Spider-man, and War Machine. The Ant-Man shipment also had a Funko Pop Tees shirt so hopefully this is the type of shirt we will get going forward.
Last, and certainly not least is a exclusive Secret Wars Issue 1 Variant Cover with the Pop Thor on the front. It came in a poly bag with board so you don’t have to worry about it getting messed up during shipping. I’m not super worried about keeping it for resale so I’ll probably take it out of the bag but haven’t done so yet.
I’ve been receiving the Marvel Collector’s Corps boxes since they first started back in May just to get the Exclusive Hulkbuster Pop Figure. I kept it through the July box to see what the Ant-Man themed box would have and was a little underwhelmed when I got it. If this August box had been something other then Secret Wars I probably would have canceled. However, this has been my favorite box in the series by far and has got me much more excited about the series on the whole. On the website it says the boxes cost 25 dollars but after shipping and taxes it comes out to around 35 dollars, which is a lot. It does help that they only come out every other month but it’s still a high price for possibly only a single exclusive Funko Pop Figure. If every box is as good as this box I don’t see me canceling my subscription anytime soon!
My name is Jason and I’m an addict. My addiction is Funk POP Vinyls. It started off innocent enough with just a Batman figure but soon blew up to over 50 figures. Funko has put out a massive collection of these figures across multiple series of TV, Comics, Books, Movies, and Video Games. These days the series they haven’t created figures for is almost smaller than the list of series they have created figures for. However, there are few things they haven’t made into figures that are still on my wish list.
5) Britney Spears
Who better to make a series of Pop Vinyls then the undisputed Queen of Pop? I understand that I may be alone as not every one shares my obsession with Britney, but hear me out. They have made quite a few musician Pop Vinyls in the past and even did an entire series of Pop Vinyls just on Michael Jackson.
Who then also has a series of incredibly iconic outfits that are begging to be turned into cute pop vinyl form? Britney Spears. I went ahead and pulled some pictures of some of her most iconic looks that would make a great series.
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4) Death Note
Death Note is easily my favorite anime and has just the right size cast where it wouldn’t take more than 4 figures to cover the main cast. They could easily just do Light, L, Ryuk, and Misa and call it a day. The characters are already so stylized in their animation that they would look amazing in the pop vinyl form.
3) Archer
Out of everything on this list Archer seems like the biggest no brainer to me. It has a huge cast to work with and is beloved by the same people who already love Pop Vinyls. In fact I would not be surprised at all if Funko had an Archer series announcement by the end of the year. I mean come on! Just think of how great a Pam with a dolphin puppet, Krieger’s Anime Hologram wife, or Babou the Ocelot would be!
2) Studio Ghibli
HOW ARE THESE NOT ALREADY OUT! Studio Ghibli is one of the most obvious choices for the Pop Vinyl treatment out there. There dozens of extremely iconic and popular figures they could pull from that fans will throw money at. Just a Totoro alone would fly off the shelves and with out expensive most Ghibli merchandise is it would be a steal at Funko’s 10 dollar price point. They would have a big selection of characters to chose from and my top five characters I would like out of this series would be a Kiki and Gigi, Totoro, Nausicaa, and Howl and Calcifer.
1) Final Fantasy
This is the big one. They would probably have to just pick a couple of the more popular games but I would really like to see a collection of Final Fantasy figures that cover the entire series. If they did anything I would assume they would start with Final Fantasy VII which would make the most sense. Final Fantasy VII is one of, if not my favorite game in the series so if Funko only made figures from it I would be still be super happy. But I am also a huge fan of Final Fantasy VIII and would really like a Squall figure. My top five Final Fantasy Characters I’d like to see would be Squall, Cloud, Aeris, Terra, and Lightning.
That’s my top five list, what would you like to see get the Funko Pop Vinyl treatment?
Update 9/6/15 with more covers. I now have the current slate of 41 known covers represented.
This October Marvel is releasing Hip-Hoop Variant Covers for 27 different comics. As far as I can tell this is the complete list of covers they will be releasing. I saw reports of there being 50 different covers but that changed to 25, and then I was able to find 31. I’ll update this post with any additional covers if they wind up actually creating them.
We have now reach Comic number 9 of my 25 part Mystery Comic series with 2005’s Day of Vengeance 1.
I’ve never heard of Day of Vengeance before. So I had to look them up on Wikipedia, which made me feel better that it wasn’t some long on going series I had never head of. Day of Vengeance is a limited series that came out as a prelude to DC’s Infinite Crisis event. Reading up on Wikipedia revealed there ate some complicated steps that happen before we get to Day of Vengeance 1. It centers around some stuff left over from Identity Crisis that is so comiplicated that I don’t really understand it, and don’t want to get in to it.
The long and short of it is that Day of Vengeance centers around The Spectre and the magical characters and elements of the DC universe.
The comic opens up with a vague scene of a woman locked up in a weird mansion. She is possibly getting tortured? It’s unclear what is going on and it ends with her putting a crystal to her chest and transforming into some sort of magical wizard or something. I’m assuming the series was purposefully vague about all this and it will come into play later on.
The comic then cuts to an introduction to Ragman which I appreciated, because I had never heard of him before. It was a pretty cool introduction, it shows him in action and gives the reader enough context to figure out what his deal is. The art is really fantastic and managed to make a character with a lame name like Ragman a interesting character. After our introduction Ragman is sent to help out The Enchantress who has been buried in a forest as collateral damage during a battle between The Spectre and Blackbriar Thorn.
Enchantress is like we have got to GTFO and Ragman transports the both of them to the Oblivion Bar (a hangout of magical folks).
Enchantress tries to gather a group of people together to fight The Spectre who she fears will lead to the death of every magical person. No one at the bar seems eager to take on one of the most powerful members of the magic community except Detective Chimp (yes a talking Chimp) who is ready to go.
The comic then ends with an allusive scene involving some mystic sending out SHAZAM to take out our new team.
Overall I enjoyed the comic. The story telling was engaging and had a good mix of exposition along with vague foreshadowing. The art was fantastic and did a good job of helping tell the story itself which helped cut down or pure expositional text. I think the mystical / magical side of DC is intriguing and would like to be more familiar with these characters. If I see Day of Vengeance collected in trade at a Half Priced books I will definitely pick it up.
I spent some time over the weekend tearing through my back list of unread comics and finally got to reading Batgirl Annual 3. I was actually pretty surprised when this came into my stack a couple of weeks ago. DC has been sportatic with these annuals and there doesn’t seem to be a pattern of when these come out (even stranger this Annual came out the same date as Batgirl issue 42).
Annuals come in a lot of different forms but usually one of three ways. Either an over sized self contained story, an over sized issue to end a big story arc, or an anthology issue (a single issue made up of several short stories). This issue is the first time that Batgirl has done an anthology issue which is one of my favorite types of comics.
Each part of this anthology has Batgirl teaming up with a different member of the Bat family in order to solve the case of the Negahedron. Batgirl works with Huntress/Grayson, Spoiler, Batwoman, and Maps/Olive of Gotham Academy. Whats cool is that this issue changes the art depending on who Batgirl is working with in the story.
The first part Batgirl is on a mission with Huntress (and Dick Grayson although she doesn’t know it) to take down the Negahedron. It features art by Bengal in the style of the Grayson ongoing series which is drawn by Mikel Janin. Here is a sample what it looks like.
The second part continues the Negahedron story with Batgirl working together with Spoiler (aka Stephanie Brown, aka Batgirl number 3). At first I thought the art (drawn by David LaFuente) was in the style of the Catwoman ongoing series drawn by David Messina, since they reference Catwoman 42 in the story. However, looking at the art I think they style they are actually going for is a style based on the art of the current Batgirl series drawn by Babs Tarr. It has a similar stylized and animated look, which you can see in a sample below.
The next part continues the Negahedron story with Batgirl working with Batwoman and is drawn by Ming Doyle. It is drawn in the style of the recently canceled Batwoman ongoing series which was originally drawn by J.H. Williams III. You can see a sample of the art looks like below.
The last part takes place in Gotham Academy and concludes the Negahedron story with Batgirl teaming up with Maps and Olive of Gotham Academy. This part is drawn by Ivan Plascencia in the style of Karl Kerschl. Even though this is the last part of the story this is actually when I noticed the art was not just changing each part, but changing to match the comic of the person Batgirl is teaming up with. The art style of Gotham Academy has a distinct anime / Japanese art style that it is unmistakable (check out the sample below).
For a Annual that I didn’t even know what coming out I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Rather than just a story about Batgirl you basically get a Batgirl comic along with sampler of 3 other comics. I like this issue a lot and hope some other comics use annuals as a way to try out cool new ideas.
Back in May DC Comics announce they would be releasing Blu-ray / Graphic Novel Combo packs for some of the DC Comics Original Animated Films. Well this week they are finally available to buy.
The complete list of Movies / Graphic Novels (GN) are:
The Death of Superman GN / Superman: Doomsday Film
Justice League Vol. 1 Origin / Justice League: War Film
Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals GN / Wonder Woman Film
JLA Earth 2 GN / Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths Film
Batman Black and White GN / Batman Gotham Knight Film
Batman: Year One GN / Batman: Year One Film
This sounded like an awesome deal to me as I love the DC Original Animated films in their own right and figured I could pick up any I don’t already own with the bonus of the graphic novel. Now that these combo packs are in the stores I’ve discovered they are actually a even better deal than I initially thought. Not only do you get the Blu-ray movie and hardback graphic novel but you also get a DVD copy of the movie, a ultraviolet HD digital copy of the movie, AND a HD digital copy of the Graphic Novel on Comixology. You get basically five things for the price of one.
What makes this even sweeter is that this week they are all on sale at Best Buy and Amazon for 14.99 each! This is the best deal I’ve ever seen on any of these movies or graphic novels so if you are interested in either I suggest picking them up while they are still cheap.
Hopefully this is just the first wave and we’ll be seeing some of the other movies turned into these sweet Graphic Novel / Blu-ray Combo packs as well.
Side Note: Best Buy also has some of the other DC Original Animated Films on sale as well. Right now you can get the following Blu-ray / DVD / Digital HD Combo Packs for 9.99
Here is a closer picture of the T-Shirt and Coaster
Star Trek / Green Lantern 1
First book on the list is Star Trek / Green Lantern which by the amount of variant covers they are putting out for it, is a flagship book for IDW. The comic starts out with a little alien dude who looks like he’s from Oa The Living Planet, he is over come by six different corps rings and dies on a remote planet. Cut to the Star Ship Enterprise discovering said planet and sending a ground crew to investigate. The crew finds the dead alien and six corp rings and take them back to the ship. Once back on the ship a cloaked Klingon Bird of Prey appears and threatens the Enterprise. While this happens Scotty accidentally energizes the rings and they find the nearest person attach to. A Yellow Ring (Fear) to a Klingon named Chang, a Blue Ring (Hope) to Pavel Chekov, a Violet Ring (Love) to Nyota Uhura, a and Indigo Ring (Compassion) to Lenard McCoy. The comic ends with Hal Jordon showing up and a big “to be continued”.
Overall the story was meh. I’m not going to buy more issues, but it was entertaining enough to read. The Star Trek people are based on the JJ Abrams movies which is a little offsetting. The art is very good, it’s just jarring to see the actors from the movie being portrayed in the comic. It looks like it could be an interesting story and IDW is really throwing it’s weight behind this series but these movie properties comics just aren’t my bag.
Negative Space 1
This is a weird ass comic. First off I will say that it did have excellent artwork. The art has very detailed pencil work that must have taken the artist a really long time to draw. As for the book it self, I’m on the fence. The main premise seems to be this. What if you had that weird organization from Cabin in the Woods Existed and their mission was to make people commit suicide. We follow our hero a writer named Guy as he is trying to figure out what to write in his suicide note. He seems to be taking too long for the mysterious organization so they cause his day to get worse to help him muster out the courage. Eventually Guy has a change of heart and it ends with him discovering the organization.
It was an ok, although weird, story and the great art really helped, but I’m not going to be pursuing this comic any further.
Star Wars: Lando
Since Disney bought out Marvel and Star Wars there have been a slew of new Star Wars Comics. You can tell we are reaching the bottom of the barrel when Lando gets a solo book. I’ve heard the quality of these Star Wars books was great and although I’ve purchased issue 1 of the Star Wars Main series and Princess Leia solo book I haven’t read them yet (my backlog be crazy right now).
I was actually pleasantly surprised with Lando. I was a decent, well written book, about a character I truly give two shits about. If the other Star Wars books are as good as this then I should be in for a real treat. I won’t be buying more Lando issues individually but I will be reading through some of these new Star Wars books that have just become available on Marvel Comics Digital Unlimited.
Full disclosure I was not paid for this post and bought this comic block with my own money. I am doing this unboxing for my own entertainment, however, if the people at nerd block wanted to give me free things I would love to take them and review them here.
Sadly it looks like this month we are losing a lot more than we are gaining. Here is the list of movies that have left as of August 1st, you will be missed.
In honor of the latest DC Original Animated Film Justice League: Gods and Monsters DC All Access put together a list of the Top 10 Moments from their library of 24 original movies.
I definitely agree with a few of these on the list. I think they were spot on with their number one pick and the scene from Superman vs. the Elite is definitely one of the best. The only moment that really stuck out in my mind that should of been on this list was the Joker reveal in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. I put a link below but if you haven’t seen it I’d suggest just going ahead and watching the whole movie.
Comic Books and Cats 
