My hands must be secreting some sort of anti-Batdude chemical. First my new Movie Masters Batman snapped in half at the waist this weekend (luckily I was able to return him), and then I managed to snap off Batzarro's arm during today's photo extended shoot. The fit of the arm is tight enough that I can still wedge it back into position and have it stay (the extreme tightness of the joint requires some pretty forceful motion to turn the arm to begin with, which is likely how I managed to break it off), but I'm still not too pleased about that. 🙁

Anyway, here are the figures I picked up this weekend and some of the ones that arrived in a box today. Click on the thumbnails to see larger pics!

I've actually had Edward Scissorhands around here a while -- my sister gave him to me for Christmas several years ago -- but I didn't take him out of his package until last Friday. Although he's not superarticulated (though he gets a fairly high joint count because all of his scissorfingers move individually), he's still pretty cool. The Scarecrow, however, is completely new to the collection. I actually considering ordering him on eBay a few weeks ago -- I was thinking of using him in my Legion of Doom, although this Scarecrow is the Marvel version -- but dropped that idea when I happened upon a legitimate DC Scarecrow on clearance. Still, I thought it was pretty amazing that I happened upon this figure for $3.97 at KB Toys this weekend, since he's pretty much been out of retail circulation since 2006. (He must have been hidden away in the back room, since I've been to that KB before and never come across the toy.) It almost felt like this Scarecrow was destined to come home with me... and so he did. (more...)

I picked up four figures today, and get this -- all of them suffer from some significant flaw. With three of them it's not too bad, since they were on clearance, but the most expensive one -- the new Batman Movie Masters figure -- just snapped apart at the fucking waist when I tried posing him. Argh! I've still got the receipt, so I should be able to return him, but given how in demand these things are I'm not sure I'll be able to get a replacement. I'm also not sure I care, since I am seriously pissed with the quality of these figures. I suspect that a bit more fiddling would have caused him to lose his leg as well.

I almost don't even want to see The Dark Knight now. 🙁

Any guesses? My diet has pretty much consisted of this stuff -- with slight variations, of course -- for the past two weeks or so.

Before yesterday, I really didn't think Jeremiah Wright was all that bad. Well, I admit that I thought he was "out there" -- and certainly a liability to Obama -- after first seeing the snippets of Reverend Wright's sermons on YouTube early this year (or maybe even last year; conservative websites were harping on them long before they became the talk of mainstream media). But when I had the opportunity to listen to the full sermons I found it obvious that they had been taken entirely out of context for the purpose of vilifying the man and, by extension, Barack Obama.

Sure, "God damn America" sounds pretty harsh, but Wright was chiefly talking about the American government -- and the injustices towards "racial" minorities that he attributed to it in that sermon, for the most part, have been well documented. When he thundered that "America's chickens are coming home to roost," he was quoting former US Ambassador Edward Peck and highlighting that our country is far from being an innocent bystander on the international stage. Far from gloating that America had gotten its just desserts with 9/11, Wright was simply pointing out that "violence begets violence, hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism" -- and that, as we move forward, we need to recognize this reality and stop perpetuating the cycle. And the sermon from which Obama lifted the title of The Audacity of Hope was probably one of the best and most interesting sermons that I've ever heard. I haven't heard all that many sermons, of course, but considering that I'm hardly Christian I was surprised by how engaging I thought it was. I listened to it twice. (more...)

So after nearly six weeks of waiting (or maybe less, but it felt like at least as long), the additional dual background for my light tent arrived towards the end of last week. I finally broke it out yesterday and lost a good seven hours photographing and repositioning and photographing action figures -- time truly flies when one is shooting little plastic people! -- and continued with the experimenting today. Whereas shooting with the grey background was relatively easy and unproblematic, the new black background (much like the old blue background) shows up very bright for some reason, which meant that I had to fool around with a bunch of settings I'd never previously touched in order to limit the camera's light intake. Very strange.

Anyway, here are the best of the results. I'm also trying out a new plugin for displaying the larger versions of images, which you'll see when you click on the smaller photos below. I'm not sure if I'll keep it (I'm not the biggest fan of javascript and fancy effects, hence my choice of this simpler plugin over the Lightbox JS-based variants), but let me know what you think.

Is this the first time that I've featured Buffy figures on Wesoteric? I forget. Anyway, I've had Spike, Angel, and Willow around for ages, but Cordy and Xander are new! Well, kinda. I got a Cordy for $4.88 a couple of weeks ago with intent to use her as Lois Lane, but a) she was far too tall compared to my previous Superman figure and b) I found an actual Lois Lane figure (albeit a super one) soon afterwards, so she got set aside. Also, her arm had broken right out of the package, which was no fun. But then, this past week, I came across the same Cordy and Xander for $1.88 each, so I picked up two more Cordy figures (one of which is seen here, and yay her arm did not break!) and a Xander. I've always thought this Xander looked really weird, and I'm not the biggest fan of the character anyway -- he's kind of a dick -- but $1.88 is pretty tough to beat.

Now all I need is a Buffy, eh? Not to mention a Faith, an Anya, maybe one of those superarticulated Willows...

I really, really like that Superman figure. Anyway, five down... two to go!

Did I mention how much I like that Superman figure? And here he is surrounded by friends and foes -- note that I have much more of the former group than the latter. Darkseid eyeing Jimmy Olsen is deliberate, btw.

And with the addition of Black Manta and a proper Scarecrow (as opposed to that huge scarecrow from some other toyline), my SuperFriends Legion of Doom now has five official members. Eight more to go!

And that is all for now. 🙂