James Bond teaser poster uncovered?

My hero harry Knowles ran a story over on AICN about the supposed new James Bond movie poster for Quantum of Solace (I'm still not used to that title- how about you?). Apparently spotted in a European paper, the new poster, while minimalist in the extreme, does do its job quite nicely...



Like the title of the film itself, it may well be a grower. Thankfully the image chosen for this alleged poster is tasteful enough not to date very quickly, if much at all. Hopefully there'll be some cool teasers available soon, but as the movie is in the very early stages of production, and as such there's still probably Boom shadows in each shot and whatnot. Ah well, hoepfully this poster will turn out to be the real thing as I think it'd have a good chance of becoming a favourite with the fans. Mind you, that leg looks a bit wonky doesn't it? Maybe they had John Cleese stand in for the shot and he couldn't help himself...

IRON MAN: S(L)EEK AND DESTROY!

IRON MAN SIDESHOW ‘STEALTH’ STATUE

Sideshow Collectibles seriously don’t want me to breathe right, do they? These images of the ‘Stealth’ version of their Iron man Movie statue surfaced a while back, and I cannot wait to get the thing in one of our display cabinets, as it is going to look incredible with the lights bouncing off that finish. Plus, the thing comes with built in lights, and while that looks incredibly cheesy on many statues, on this one it is an absolute plus. Check this baby out;




I’m so pleased the decision was made to recreate one of the teaser poster poses instead of just having old Shellhead stood looking morose. He may have a letterbox for a mouth, but he does look stunning in these preliminary photos. Granted, the final product may well differ from these initial snaps, but Sideshow rarely, if ever, let anything substandrard out of their doors. Actually, this piece has the potential to be one of the coolest things they have produced in a while.

There have been people asking whether or not we will actually see Iron Man in this guise onscreen once the movie is out, and the answer is…sort of. If you check out the recent TV spot that premiered at the Superbowl, you do catch a glimpse of the MKII armour before it gets the red and gold finish. Onscreen it looked more chrome than the blue tint in these images, but its certainly close.

Excitement continues to grow here amongst the denizens of TLPS and Starstore.com as this movie has been a long time coming, and at last the technology is available to do it justice. The movie is shaping up to be something of a huge event, which isn’t bad seeing as it is being directed by the guy that played Foggy in Daredevil!

-Andy

LIVING DEAD DOLLS... BACK FROM THE DEAD

Once more from the mouth of hell itself (well, okay, MEZCO), the fifteenth set of the chilling LIVING DEAD DOLLS will be unleashed soon, and personally I'm stoked. For the tenth anniversary (ten years of terror!!! A decade of deviance! A very long time in toys!) of the hugely popular range of pint-sized terrors, the makers over at MEZCO have outdone themselves once more with an even darker menagerie of tiny evildoers than the previous one! Y'know, it must be getting pretty damn hard to come up with set after set of malevolent miscreants in infant form, but they do keep on rolling them out (digging them up? Jeez, I have my pun head on today), and why the hell(mouth) not? People love the demonic sprogs, and the items themselves are consistently ghoulish, gruesome and great.

Reportedly being unleashed upon the public in April 2008, the latest line of coffin-bound kiddies contains: Judas, Countess Bathory, Death, Flamingo, and Gypsy. Death and Bathory? Someone likes their old-school death metal don’t they? That aside, the inclusion of little Death and Countess Bathory is just the coup the LDD creators needed to make this set special. Granted, the dolls are all excellent, but there did have to be something unique about this set, and it doesn’t get much better than a little reaper and Erzibet in miniature form. Blood and virgins not included. Still packed with their own death certificates in their individual coffin boxes, these are cute and chaotic in equal measure. I mean, could you seriously picture getting much sleep with one of these beasts staring at you from your shelf?



Also, if you get all five dolls, you’ll find a special little extra in there with them… No, not festering entrails or maggot-ridden slabs of necrotic flesh, you strange, twisted creatures. You can put all five extra pieces together to form the ‘Talking board’ accessory. Now, pictures of this completed accessory are proving a tad elusive, but I would imagine it will be a Living Dead Dolls themed Ouija Board of some description. That sounds like the perfect thing to go alongside this awesome latest set of dolls. Just be careful not to contact too many other demonic children while you're at it, otherwise the world will end up overrun by rotting, zombified youngsters, without the aid of a games console!

As ever, the workmanship on these things is immaculate. The sculpts are excellent, especially on Death, and the fabric costumes boast a high standard that has been noticeably improving over the last few sets of dolls. All in all, this is an exciting release, and a little different to the usual Living Dead Dolls set, which is just the right thing to celebrate the tenth anniversary. Here’s to the next ten years of scaring the wits out of friends and family members all over the (under)world! Aah, (after)life is good.

Shellhead (Almost) Unleashed!

The IRON MAN spot that was premiered at the Superbowl has gone live online, and my sweet God it looks pretty sweet. It is shaping up to be quyite an exciting prospect. At first I was kind of so-so about the whole thing. Y’know, ANOTHER origin story on the big screen, but it does look as they’ve nailed it. Robert Downey Jnr was born to play Tony Stark, wasn’t he? He’s certainly been living the part for long enough (read some Twisted Toyfare Theatre for the full story).

It seemed that the ad campaign for the movie was getting a bit stale of late, with image after image released that were essentially the same shot, but now this tv spot is available, it really is time to get excited about the first movie outing for the red-and-gold Avenger. The suits look amazing, and the effects are seamless. Stark comes across every bit at arrogant and brilliant as you would want him to be, and the story sounds pretty cool too.

One thing I’m still intrigued about is the much-rumoured crossover scene between the Iron Man movie and the new INCREDIBLE HULK movie. Apparently both crews and some of both casts were present for the shooting of one scene that spans both films. Okay, so me and every other geek on the face of the planet immediately went ‘AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!’ (well we did in the shop anyway), and what else could it be? Personally I think the Iron man movie would end on a massively high note if it ended thusly…

(DISCLAIMER- Pure fanboy speculation!)

INT. STARK’S OFFICE- DAY

STARK is at the huge window, staring out at the city beyond his office. The scorched MKII helmet resides on his desk, facing us. O/S, The door opens. We hear footsteps. STARK doesn’t turn around yet.

STARK

Better make this quick, fella. I have brooding to do.

VOICE

I won’t keep you long, mister Stark. I have something of a
proposition.

Stark turns and faces the tall, blonde military man before him, and takes in the various medals upon the crisp uniform his visitor wears. A blue folder is under his arm.

STARK

My my, what a hero. Mr?

The soldier lays the folder on Stark’s desk and offers a strong handshake. CLOSE on the folder, which bears an oversized letter A, partially sticking out of the circle that surrounds it.

MILITARY MAN

Rogers. Steve Rogers.

(Beat)

Are you a patriotic man, Mr Stark?

…and off Stark’s reaction, we go to;

LOGO AND END TITLES

Yeeeeaaaah. That’d be nice. Pretty Please?

*Insert Marvel Pun here*

Well the goodies (no, not Bill Oddie and Co...) keep on coming thick and fast from the House of Ideas. Their domination of the comic book movie genre continues with the news of the latest IRON MAN trailer, that is going to hit at the Superbowl and then online. I'm looking forward top that movie with interest- Mr Stark and his shiny suit aren't really the biggest name on Marvel's roster, and thus it'll be cool to see how the public at large takes a shine to him. Hopefully they'll find him more palatable than they did with Johnny Blaze...

Oh, and have any of you spotted the 25 LOST references in current Marvel books? No, me neither...

The big news in comics this week is the (inevitable) return of Captain America. Well, we all knew it would happen sooner or later. The thing is, despite my cynicism about the whole thing, I'm really quite pleased that Marvel chose to go with Bucky as the new Cap. It's a brave move to put a bit of a psycopath in the role instead of resurrecting Steve Rogers somehow. Mind you, we may have a bit of a KNIGHTFALL thing on our hands here- Bucky is looking very violent as the new Cap and Steve may well be brough back in to clean up Cap's name. We shall see.


As you can see, the new Captain America doesn't look quite so wholesome as the original...

LIFE IN THE GEEK LANE 2

This isn’t easy, really it isn’t. While the archetypal, stereotypical, clichéd view of people in our line of work is that of Tim and Bilbo from SPACED, stood behind a counter reading comics, the reality is a very different thing. I’m saying this because my back is killing me and my eyes ache from rearranging our back issue shelves (literally moving the shelves elsewhere and then refilling them), and I wanted to say a bit about how hard we work behind the scenes here, both in the store and online.

We’re a small team, but we’re a team nonetheless, and we all have our roles to play in the tragicomedy that is life. Sorry, I got a bit too pretentious there, even for me. It is a fascinating thing to observe, in that we all know each other’s quirks and strengths, and we work hard to make sure things run smoothly. They don’t always run as smooth as we’d like, and aside from the odd mishap I think we do pretty damn well. With us being situated in a shopping centre, we’re open til 9pm on weekdays and 10pm in the festive period, and the place is a hive of activity during those ours. Come and see for yourself.

But that’s not all. Outside of the store there’s the web stuff, which is going on pretty much 24 hours a day, ALL YEAR. There’s always something going on here. I mean, just speaking from my own side of things as head blog bod here, I spend a great deal of time checking out cool stuff to tell you and checking up on the facts about it. I trawl through endless sites, newsletters and lots of virtual nooks and crannies in my daily search to keep myself, my colleagues and you guys up to date with stuff going on. It is my duty as a good little geek to do this for ya. We live and breathe this stuff and that’s why we share it with you and want to help get it into your homes.

We’re always keeping an eye out for new things to offer and talk about, always looking for the next item people are going to love, and I can tell you, it takes it out of you, but we love it. The internet is a great tool for us to keep up to speed with what you guys are after, and also for us to find out about the latest developments ourselves. My inbox is bursting with info from the hottest toy, film and comics companies on a daily basis, which is great but there just isn’t enough time in the day or energy in my fingers to tell you about it all. We do try though.

I guess what I’m trying to get across is that there’s a bunch of people working very hard behind the cool exterior of our website or the chatty blogs we offer all over the net. This ain’t a machine you’re ordering from- we do it all for you at every stage, and every one of us is grateful that you took the time to visit us.

Thanks folks, you (and you, and you and YOU) make it all worthwhile.

Your friendly neighbourhood geek,

THE ESSENTIAL ESSENTIALS

It's obvious that Comic collecting can be a very daunting thing to get involved in. Everyone knows the basics about the big heroes, Spidey, the X-men, Daredevil and so on, but what of their early exploits? The newcomer can be more than a little flabbergasted by it all. The Secret Wars? Modok? Maximum Carnage? Weapon X? Huh? Also, it would cost an absolute fortune to get hold of the actual classic issues, themselves, not to mention the hassle of tracking down the key stories and the must-read issues that helped define these legendary characters. Thankfully, Marvel listened to the fans long ago and began publishing the near comprehensive ESSENTIALS volumes, which are great value for the amount of content offered. Essentially (pun intended), they are big thick books containing 25-or-so comic book issues in black and white, printed on value stock to keep the price of the books reasonable.

What you get for the money is really quite substantial, though, These books are generally a minimum of an inch thick, and are often a good deal thicker. While they don’t offer colour reproductions of the original comics, they do allow fans both old and new to appreciate and enjoy the classic stories they may have missed and would miss out on due to the lack of availability or cash. Being able to flick through these chunky tomes and enjoy Jack Kirby’s early Marvel work, for example, is an absolute joy.

I’ll talk you through a few good examples of the range and what they contain, if I may. I’ve picked a bunch at random off the shelves, so lets see what they offer.

First up I picked off a copy of DOCTOR STRANGE Volume 1. Now, in this you get Strange Tales 110, 111 and a run of issues 114 to 168. That’s a hell of a lot of comics for the same price as a current release Trade Paperback. There’s classic work in this volume by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, no less, not to mention some of the most famous stories in the Dr Strange pantheon.

WOLVERINE volume 1 is next on my pile, Bub. This really does live up to its ESSENTIAL status, containing issues 1-23 inclusive of the original WOLVERINE series. The roll call? Chris Claremont, John Buscema, Peter David, Archie Goodwin and John Byrne. Heavy hitters or what? The content of this book alone would easily set you back a couple of hundred quid, and we’ve got it for just over a tenner. Not bad at all.

What else have I got here? Let’s try ESSENTIAL X-MEN volume 7. Jeez, there’s Uncanny X-Men 214-228, Annuals 10 and 11, and FANTASTIC FOUR Vs The X-MEN 1-4, with work by Claremont, Barry Windsor-Smith and even Marc Silvestri. Now this is a sizeable chunk of X tales from a great period in the team’s history.

Likewise with ESSENTIAL CAPTAIN AMERICA volume 4, which is the last one I grabbed to tell you about. This is very nearly 2 inches thick (I measured, yes I’m that sad), and contains issues 157-186 of the original run of Cap’s own title, and features some awesome work, not to mention appearances by Falcon and Black Panther along the way.

The whole range is massive, and well worth checking out if you want to check out the classics without breaking the bank. It’s a really, really good idea, and the uniformity of these volumes makes them look superb on a bookshelf.

DC have had a go at something similar over the past couple of years, which has seen them bring about the DC SHOWCASE range. Now, that range has got off to a bit of a slow start, and in a couple of cases, some blatant misfires. They’ve gone for the big obvious names like Superman and Green lantern to get things up and running, but then they’ve gone and brought out things like The haunted Tank, y’know, really obscure titles with limited demand, which are only going to dampen interest in the line until the next big title comes along.

The early volumes are of great quality, black and white like the ESSENTIALS from Marvel, but printed on a slightly higher quality stock, enabling the art to stand out more. It’ll be interesting to see how the DC range pans out, but I’m not sure how they’ll pull it off, mainly because of the sheer amount of material they have released in their long, LONG existence. The stuff they’ve released so far is enjoyable, but with such a rich history to pull from, it’s going to be hard to pick the stuff people will scramble for.