As I was putting my 5 year old daughter to bed last night she asked me "Dad, what’s your favorite TV show?"  and after thinking about it and weighing Lost against everything else I had to say
"It’s a show called ‘Battlestar Galactica‘." And then I had to say "and oddly enough the last show is tomorrow night."

It’s sometimes hard to convince the non-watchers to get on board this show because most of them remember the old show with it’s goofy costumes with capes, monkeys dressed up as robot dogs and Dirk Benedict.  Even I was not anxious to watch the original miniseries when it was first announced.  As a matter of fact I only watched the first 2 of the 4 hours.  Then when it became a series I said I’d give it one more chance, and watched the episode named "33"  and when it was over I said out loud "I will watch every episode they make of this."   And I have.  And it has consistently been on my top three shows that I MUST watch as soon as they air (along with The Shield, which also ended this year, and LOST which ends next year).

During the writers strike my girlfriend and I got into watching a lot of BBC shows, and the thing that is unique about them is that they have a story to tell and they tell it and when it’s done, it’s done.  There are a few American shows that are also picking up on this idea, but largely TV just loves to strip mine a series until there is nothing left that you care about and just watch out of habit (like I am doing with ER).   

 Battlestar Galctica has a plan.  They have had one story to tell, it ends tonight, and I really will be sad when it’s over.  BSG has provided some of the best, most consistently written characters in TV and really deal with some difficult social issues in interesting ways like REALLY GOOD Sci Fi should.   It deals with what would really happen if there was just a handful of people, roughly 50,000, what would they do to maintain the human race.    It’s so good at tackling these issues that the U.N. invited them last week to talk on the topics of: race, war, torture, suicide bombing and genocide.  They take on the subjects in interesting and difficult ways.  It’s not like Star Trek where when the ship is in trouble they solve things with some Sci Fi techno-babble.  In BSG, if the fleet or humanity are in trouble you have two options: Fight or flight!

The thing I like about the new Battlestar Galactica is that every week they surprise me.  Every episode there is some gut-punch twist that makes me want more.  This is the same reason I like Lost and the Shield.  They all work really hard to show you something that you don’t see on other shows.   I really like that.  

Tonight I’m gonna watch the show with my girlfriend and a few other friends that are also big fans on a big screen.   I have no idea how the plot lines will resolve themselves, but I can’t wait to see what they have in store for the last two hours.

  If you have yet to start watching, do yourself a favor and TRY IT.  Take the Julius Marx BSG challenge.  Watch the 4 hour Miniseries.   It’s good, but not brilliant, but you really need to see it to know what’s going on.  Then watch the first episode of Season 1- "33" and see if you aren’t hooked.

If you need to catch up on this season you can do it here.

You can download every episode off of itunes.

Or you can buy the seasons off of Amazon.com

If you are already a fan and all caught up go ahead and hit "more" for some other cool articles.   But if you are new, or not caught up do yourself a favor and stop reading this now, go in spoiler free and just enjoy one of the best shows on TV…ever. 

SO SAY WE ALL!!

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I came across this over on Veidt.com and thought it was TOO well done not to share.  It’s a mash up of  the Watchmen trailer and Pixar’s Wal*E.    Someone spent some time on this and it shows!

This was the scene I was met with this morning at my local Target on my way to work.    Target has reduced two colums of Justice League Unlimited and DC Infinte Heroes (8 pegs) into one column (2 pegs for each, 4 total) and in the remaning space has added 8 pegs of Marvel Universe 3.75" Fury Files figures.    3.75" Marvel and DC figures hanging side by side.

The short answer is I liked it.

On Monday night I was invited to a special IMAX test screening of Warner Brothers Watchmen movie that will be released this coming Friday to a theater near you.  Why did I call it a “test screening?”  Because it’s one of the longest IMAX movies ever attempted and it barely fits on the projection platters.  They literally have to wind the film extra tight and work on the humidity in the projection booths to make sure this all works right. Warner Brothers has requested that the new Harry Potter trailer be attached to the IMAX prints and even just that minute and a half of extra film on the platter is causing concerns for the IMAX theaters.  It’s such an issue that there are different, shorter credits on the IMAX version of the movie than the regular prints.   It turns out there was an issue in the screening I saw where the film had to be stopped for about five minutes.

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I’ve seen a lot of collections in my time, but no one puts together more interesting dioramas than my buddy Cuban Zod.  He just finds the coolest stuff and puts them together in such an interesting fashion.    I have a few photos of parts of his collection that I thought would be fun to share with you.

Here is his diorama of Superman’s funeral.   It’s made up of Super Powers figures, Superman and Batman animated figures, his own customs, some Chap Mei policemen, and some scale props.   The building/set they are on is a scale model used in the filming of the movie "Reign of Fire" that he bought in a warehouse sale.

Here is Cuban Zod’s Funeral For A Friend diorama:

I’ve been lucky so far.   I’ve keep toys at my workplace for the past 13+ years, and not just a few here and there.  A LOT!  I’ve been fortunate to work at places where a toy collection fits into the culture so it’s really become and extension of my displaying area.   Here is a picture of me in my office from last year.   As you can see I have quite a bit of stuff on display.

I’ve worked in bull pen areas, I’ve shared work space with a coworker and, for the past 7 years, I’ve had my own office. Currently I have my own office, with a door, that locks, in an out of the way area that you need a key card to get into.  It’s not a commonly traveled common area, you have to want to go to where my team sits.  When I go home at night I lock my door.  I’m also the guy that controls who get what keys on this campus, and security reports into one of my team.  I should be the most secure guy at work. At least that’s what I thought….

I have all of my Mattel JLU figures at work on a shelf..or 2 as the line has expanded.  Here was my JLU shelf back in 2007

Some time in November 08 a few of my JLU figures went missing.  Even though I have a lot of stuff in my office I notice that sort of thing right away.   It was weird because the first batch that went missing was all from the villains shelf:  Joker, Red Hood (original black version), Bizaro and Lex Luthor… but the FIRST one, the one in the suit.  Yeah, the rare one that Mattel will never re-release. 

That was frustrating to say the least.  But, I thought maybe it was just a coworker having some fun and they would be returned to me.  It wasn’t and they weren’t.  Then I thought maybe it was a desperate janitor that needed Christmas presents for their kids, but it was such a weird selection.  Why not take Superman and Batman?  They are so iconic, and right in the front.   I noticed a little later that Waverider had also gone "missing."

With the help of Jim Able, my girlfriend and Ebay I was able to replace those over the holidays and all was well.

As time went on the JLU line expanded and so did my shelves.  Here’s what they look line now (YES there are some customs in there)

 When I got back this week from Toy Fair I noticed the thief had struck again while I was gone, and this time he/she hit me even harder.

 This time the list was:  Superman, Blue & gray Batman, Green Lantern (bald with goatee), Steel,  Robin (Teen Titans), Batgirl and Nightwing for the heroes and Star Sapphire, Reverse Flash, Penguin, Catwoman for the villains.  Now clearly whoever is doing this doesn’t know what they are grabbing.  By that I mean they don’t know who is valuable in the line.  They seem to be just grabbing characters they recognize.

It’s disappointing and it’s maddening.  Some of these figures I might have replacements for somewhere in storage, some I won’t.   Some I’ll have to rebuy on the secondary market.  I just feel violated.  I always hoped I’d never find myself here.  I’ve changed security procedures for my office.  No one gets in while I’m not there.  I’ve set up a web cam for after hours.  

But if it happens again, I’ll have to pack it all up any bring it all home.  In this day and I can can’t afford to keep rebuying my collection.

Has that ever happened to you guys?   What have you done to prevent it from happening?   Ever catch who was doing it?

I’ve basically been collecting toys my whole life.  There was maybe an 8 month break my senior year in High School that I stopped buying stuff… but I still HAD all my Star Wars, Shogun Warriors and Transformers out on display for any and all to see.   I started college in 89′ right after the Keaton/Burton Batman movie. Shortly after that came Batman: The Animated Series (which I got the big, complete boxed set for Christmas, thanks mom and dad!)and when Hasbro started releasing that line I was back in the collecting game! 

It was around that time, that my buddy Doug (my mentor, best friend and a BIG Silver Age fan) told me about a toy line that he had been shown by another guy, some DC Comics figures from a line called "Super Powers" that had just ended a few years back.  The coolest thing for me was that there was a Dr. Fate figure in the line and I had just finished reading the J.M. Dematis run on that title.  I could never imagine a figure being made of that character!  Doug lived in my home town and I was 2 hours away in my college town, but every chance we had, we got together and went to flea markets, little stores and toy shows looking for Super Powers figures. 

This was in the days BEFORE the Internet  (can you kids even imagine?)  so we got all of our information from magazines like Tomart’s Action Figure Digest and Lee’s Action Figure News and Toy Review,and "the Ebay, before there was an Ebay" – a bi-weekly newspaper called "Toy Shop" and THAT’s where everyone sold their action figures. They put an ad in Toy Shop.

Long around 1993 Doug (and Toy Shop) introduced me to a new concept in collecting that I had never heard of or considered before- Custom Action figures. Doug mailed me (snail mailed me, mind you!) an ad torn out of Toy Shop for a guy named Scott Fleming and his "Scooter’s Custom Works"  This guy made custom Super Powers figures and carded them and called them "Extra Powers."  See that ad over there to the right?  That’s the exact ad Doug mailed me.  I still have it.

In the ad it said that if you sent a couple of bucks to "Scooter’s Custom Works" he would send you a color catalog of his work.  Doug sent away for a catalog.  A scan of some of those pages are below.

We found out that these started at about $40 a piece.  For a poor college student without a job in 1993 that was WAY too much money to spend on an action figure.  But I kept all the ads and scans and I LUSTED after these!   I really wanted the Sandman or the Animal Man "Extra Powers" because those books were in their heyday then.  But I also really dug the Batgirl and Catwoman ones because they seemed like they SHOULD have been in the Super Powers line.

Over the years I have been in touch with Scott from Scooter’s Custom Works and became friends with him because of my toy writings on the Internet.  At one point he was even going to revive the Extra Powers line and write an ongoing article about customizing for use at AFI, but life got in the way and that never got off the ground.

Scott has a website where he details the history of his Extra Powers line and the rules he followed to make them.  It’s well worth a read to discover this page of toy history.  It’s a little outdated (it was all written in 2005) and he refers to me twice as "Julius Schwartz" (who was the big silver age editor for DC Comics) but it’s still a great read on the how and why he did this line of customs.

As you can see from Scott’s  "history of the line",  in the day before the Internet Scott’s customs were responsible for a lot of confusion about the Super Powers line.  People thought they were prototypes, or bootlegs or any number of other possibilities. So it was not that surprising to me back in November when these two figures showed up on Ebay that they were listed as "maybe Mexican?" the seller speculated at their origin.  But I knew what they were. I wrote to him, told him they were in fact customs and made him an offer.  He accepted and now, 16 years later and a lot of pining, I have two carded "Extra Powers" figures in my collection.  

The cards are partially hand drawn/colored and cut and pasted using 1991 era color copier technology.  The bubbles are real Super Powers bubbles.  The backs of the cards are all black, but signed and dated by Scott.

I own customs by a lot of the "greats";  the big names like Iron Cow, Airmax, Double Dealer, Casimr, and others.  So, I’m honored to add these samples from the "grand daddy" of customizers to my carded Super Powers collection.

Just before the holidays I got a package from Mattel.  One of the most surprising things in the box was a carded sample from DC Universe Classics Wave 7.

The week before the holidays,  I had visited a local comic shop that is located up the street from Mattel HQ.  On display in the shop, they had the 2-up prototype of Shazam! from DCUC Wave 6 and a carded sample of the finished product of the same figure.  I’m told that there are several of the 2-ups from Wave 6 that were sent out to comic shops across the country to help advertise the line.  Has anyone else seen any of more at their local shops?

I know there is one picture of Barda on Matty’s Facebook page, but I didn’t think that was enough.  Here is a full rundown of this figure.

(No Helmet Variant)

The Collect and Connect figure for Wave 7 is Atom Smasher.  From the looks of this arm he will be at least as big as Lobo.

Below is a comparison with the first DC Direct Version (DCD is releasing another Barda in their second wave of Kirby New Gods line)

Comparison with Starfire from the upcoming MattyCollector 2-pack and Wonder Woman from DCUC wave 4.

Thank you to everyone for reading, linking, digging, forwarding, asking, offering, helping, posting and being a part of our community here at AFI.

And on the off chance you have forgotten "the reason for the season," let me jog your memory with the story of the birth of Jesus… as told entirely with Lego.

The Brick Testament

I thought this was an interesting article in the LA Times this week.

For that special someone who has everything: Custom Lego portraits