Been a while. Sorry. For upcoming June, here’s The Maxx, titular hero of the only comic I regularly bought when that whole Image Explosion happened back in the ought-nineties. Sam Kieth’s artwork was just mind-boggling, and the way that the plot kept pushing forward with an answer-one-question-ask-a-new-and-weirder-one energy was just brilliant and showed that he had storytelling chops to match his artistic chops, unlike his Image stablemates.
If I remember correctly the series just kind of petered out, with a whole bunch of unanswered questions and a semi-regular string of nothing-to-do-with-the-main-story issues that were all wonderful, but I did start wondering why we weren’t getting back to the plot.
But anyway: The Maxx! Homeless Ex-Janitor (or plumber, if you follow the cartoon and not the comic) Possessed by the Giant Rabbit Spirit Animal of a Rape Survivor Who Created a Fictional Universe in Her Head Where She was the Jungle Queen of the Outback! Or maybe just Big Purple Guy with Big Teeth and Yellow Claws Who Lives In a Cardboard Box and May Or May Not Be Completely Freakin Delusional!
Either way, it’s got “bitten by a radioactive spider” beat all to hell. IMHO.
Click here to download a .pdf to print out on heavy paper and assemble for your own (.pdf, 143KB)
(also thanks to the Toy-A-Day blog for the template upon which this and all toys on this blog are based)
I always thought that Jack of Hearts’s costume was cool. Busy, but cool (plus: note the bilateral asymmetry on his face). I didn’t appreciate how busy, though, until I tried to approximate it here in little paper dolly form. Fortunately the detail is so small that nobody’s really going to notice.
For the record, though, I used the official style guide that artist Dave Cockrum put together for Marvel Comics to help everyone keep tabs on where all the fershlugginer hearts and wavy lines and such should go.
I had a few comics with Jack of Hearts in them when I was little: two or three from the four-issue limited series where he finds out about his alien mum, and the Marvel Two-In-One team-up with The Thing. I was always fascinated by the way that one of the writers retconned a supporting character from the Spider-Man Marvel Team-Up series into a main player in the miniseries, then kind of left her dangling after the miniseries finished. I would read over her early appearances in Marvel Team-Up, wondering to myself whether her newly-revealed alien heritage had been a hidden factor in the things she had said and done even way back then.
Click here to download a .pdf to print out on heavy paper and assemble for your own (.pdf, 820KB)
(also thanks to the Toy-A-Day blog for the template upon which this and all toys on this blog are based)
February’s doll is none other than The Fab Freak of 1000-and-1 Changes himself, Metamorpho The Element Man.
My fascination with Metamorpho goes back to when I was six or seven years old, and bought a copy of Songs and Stories about the Justice League of America. I knew who Wonder Woman, Plastic Man, Flash and Aquaman were, but this Metamorpho dude was completely new to me.
There was something different about him too - his name was kind of complex in a way the others’ weren’t, and his costume/design was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The colours, the textures, the bilateral asymmetry, his weird, pale, bald head… and don’t get me started on the Metamorpho theme song featured on this album: a dark, moody lament for lost humanity sung by Metamorpho himself - it’s chilling.
But I gush. Anyone keen to investigate Mr. Morpho’s adventures for themselves is well advised to track down a copy of the Showcase Presents: Metamorpho volume, which collects the complete run of his original series, plus a couple of freaky team-ups with Batman and the Justice League.
The first twenty or so issues of Justice League Europe are also very good renditions of Metamorpho, but I’d skip more recent comics featuring the Element Man - they seem to just rehash the same old plot points from the original series over and over again. Original Recipe Metamorpho is the best Metamorpho. Accept no substitute.
Click here to download a .pdf to print out on heavy paper and assemble for your own (.pdf, 1.1MB)
(also thanks to the Toy-A-Day blog for the template upon which this and all toys on this blog are based)
January’s doll, and the first for this new blog, is Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man (note the hyphens).
Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man is probably not the weirdest character to come out of the 1960s Doom Patrol comic, but he’s the one I keep coming back to. Something about the literalism of his name and his compelling bilaterally asymmetric design.
I love the vertical midline that bisects his human/plant half from his dinosaur/crystal half, and I love the bright magenta of his dinosaur parts. Thanks also to the internet for allowing me to use the phrase “the bright magenta of his dinosaur parts” in a legitimate and logical context.
I was made of squee when I saw his cameo in the Doom Patrol episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and ever since I’ve used screen shots of his big fight scene as my Facebook profile pic.
Click here to download a .pdf to print out on heavy paper and assemble for your own (.pdf, 652KB)
(also thanks to the Toy-A-Day blog for the template upon which this and all toys on this blog are based)
