Chapter 2 - Page 30
In which a switch is flipped on.
Plastic Figures Are Bad For You
So not only did I give in last week to picking up some new Transformers for the abominable shelves of doom, but this past weekend, while on some sort of stupid X-Men high, I decided to refresh my collection of Marvel Legends action figures. One of my goals a year or so ago was to collect my entire dream roster of X-Men — not only the right characters, but in the right costumes. A most irksome goal when the only two figures in Grant Morrison-era New X-Men leather are a Wolverine figure from a few years back and the recently-released wolf-in-creepy-looking-sheep’s-clothing Xorn, who (spoiler alert!) turned out at the end of that run to be Magneto, except that Marvel editorial decided he really wasn’t a few months later after Morrison left the title. (God I hate Marvel Comics sometimes.)
But in most cases I’ve found versions of the characters I like. After picking up Xorn from the local Wal-Mart, I hit eBay (*sigh*) and nabbed a recently issued (but impossible to find in these parts) figure of Rachel Summers, a.k.a. Marvel Girl, the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey from an alternate future who spent a long stretch with the U.K. based mutant team Excalibur — one of my old favorite Marvel super-teams. The original artist from that title, the awesomely talented Alan Davis, did a stint on Uncanny X-Men a few years ago, and the new figure is based on Rachel’s costume from that run, which I kinda liked. I also grabbed a cool tech-equipped version of the blue furry Beast from ‘06, which looked kind of like a costume he had around the turn of the century, I think, and the Jim Lee-drawn version of British-psychic-in-a-Japanese-ninja’s-body Psylocke. (God, I love how ridiculously complicated X-Men can be sometimes. Alas, Psylocke only got more screwed-up as time went on …)
And then I made a list of what else I need to fill my roster, and I cried.
No, not really. But I wanted to. Oh, sad compulsions! How I loathe thee!
See ya Friday.
–Jonathan
Bonus: Here’s a picture I took the other day of art from this page carefully strewn across my drawing table. Click to enbig.
