When Giants Walked the Earth!Tuesday my collector's set of Heroclix DC Giants arrived via the generally friendly people in brown shirts.
I'd written briefly about the set -- well, focusing on one of them -- back in January.
I'm very pleased with the general quality of the seven-piece set - though some people's sets apparently took some knocks along the way and arrived as 8, 9, 10 or even more piece sets, as figures came off their bases while in transit. Confidentially, I believe that some of these people inadvertently pulled them off the bases when they failed to note that while the figures were twist-tied to the back-board the bases were similarly wired to the cardboard from below.
The only real mistake - which everyone noticed - is that they forgot to put the giants symbol (over there on the right) next to the damage stat, and instead put the usual jagged explosion symbol. Sooooo, all true believers are watching for the errata (The Holy Errata! Infinite Errata! Where error becomes law!) that'll declare for all to see (well, all who seek it out) that these are, indeed, giants.Me, I'm going to trust they're giants and have prepared a death row inmate's stare to offer anyone who questions it in a game.
Here are the two women in the set -- Rita Farr & Giganta. Rita's a member of the Doom Patrol (not that they get their own team symbol -- Rita's gotten the Outsiders TA) and Giganta is a member of the Injustice League, making her the first new figure produced for that team since the new The Society feat card was introduced in Collateral Damage. Rita looks a bit above it all, no pun intended, though I suppose that goes with the white gloves.
While not the best of the sculpts, I'd be remiss if I didn't at least get a closer shot of Colossal Boy (man, that's hubris!) and Atom Smasher, adding some long-awaited characters to the Legion of Super-Heroes and Justice Society of America teams.
Every piece looks at least as it did online... though Giganta's right foot wasn't trimmed and tapered from below during their processing, so it looks as if she's wearing a flesh-toned clog that's easily four sizes too small for her foot. The rest of the figure, from the sculpt to the paint effects, however, is so nice I didn't notice the flaw until today, and no one I showed it to did either. (Yeah, yeah, I know. We're guys. She's a slim, athletic woman with shoulder-length brunette hair, wearing a leopard skin two-piece and gold wrist-bands and anklets. "She had feet? I didn't notice!") Even looking at her left foot I'm forced to admit that especially for such an attractive woman she has ugly feet.
As we'd hoped (yes, "we." What's the collective noun for geeks? A conspiracy?) Chemo is indeed cast from a translucent, green plastic, with a cool, tooled texture that gives the impression of turbidity, which is just right for an animated, man-shaped vat of failed chemical experiments. Either that or he has a terrible rash. Either way it's a cool effect.Being given the Suicide Squad Team Ability means that Chemo's going to be even more difficult to kill than he already is with two clicks of Regeneration at the end of his dial. (Any time an ally is knocked out while adjacent to a Suicide Squad member he gets a never-fail healing roll for between 1 and 4 clicks.)
Validus (pause for the fan cries of "That's not Validus!" -- it's another one of those cases where we have a character who trashed an entire team of superhumans, so it's understandable that any mere clix dial will not suffice) has a smaller but similarly cool bit of transparency on his skull. Now, why anyone would want to show off his brain has seldom been clear to me, but whether it's somehow functional, a 30th Century fashion statement or simply something to distinguish him visually from other characters, it's there even if the glare obfuscates the effect a little. Validus is potentially a good fit on many teams because of his wildcarding Calculator Team Ability.
Alloy looks better in person, too. It helps to keep in mind that he's a composite being, as the members of the Metal Men lumped onto each other like some bit of anime to form a giant robot. I was hoping the Metal Men would place high enough in the recent polling to merit a collector's set -- it would have been a near-perfect fit -- but it wasn't to be, at least not that time. Alloy is the latest addition to the Kingdom Come Team.I've all but decided I'm going to auction off the extra set as seven singles, with a couple gimmicks in place. One is that I'll charge a flat shipping rate to a given destination, so if they win one auction or four or all seven I'll charge the same price. The other will be that if one person wins four or more of the pieces I'll ship them in the collector's set box they came in. If I'm going to do it I'll be starting that by this weekend. The main question for now is whether or not I'm going to offer a Buy It Now option for each based on the going prices or just leave it open to a full 7-days bidding. I'm leaning towards the Buy It Now angle.
The international buyers -- and this includes Canada -- are still waiting for word from Wizkids of a solution to the shipping costs. What problem, you ask? Some abroad almost had heart attacks when they started to order them from Norway and got to the next to final step only to see shipping charges of $55 on up. Gah!
Consequently, many are seeking their pieces on ebay, where even the scummiest of dealers with the most egregious "handling" charges don't dare reach for such a level of infamy.
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Comments
And, yeah, that's not Validus. The head is too elongated and "Alien"-like in the mouth. And both he and Chemo suffer from having too little bulk in the hips and legs. They both should be build pretty squarely.
Tim: I should have made the Micro Lad reference, too, seeing as how I'd just started reading the first trade of the new series the other night.
Yeah, the look's a little odd for each of those two villains. Generally the sculptors work from one or more comics images, though, so locating the sources is something that's been running in the back of my mind. I'm trying to recall if Perez drew Chemo with the prominent shoulders & trunk and relatively narrow waist and short legs; it looked familiar from somewhere. I haven't looked at the original Crisis run in years, though, but as I recall both characters showed up by the 9th issue, so that might be a good place to start. I don't know where the color scheme and lack of bands on the arms and legs for Validus came from, but since he's a character I'm not extremely familair with (running across him in a few places over the years) I just figured it was based on some incarnation/appearance I'd missed. After all, in Armor Wars we were given an REV of Crimson Dynamo based on some 6-issue miniseries where it was a remote-controlled robot! Feh.
In any event, they're both recognizeable enough for me, and they're likely the only Validus and Chemo clix we're ever going to see this side of a custom job.
Now, to find a map of Bludhaven to drop Chemo on...
Either way, the large, long trunk and shorter legs looked familiar to me from somewhere - and so must have been in a comic - when I first saw the sculpt.