Thursday, February 27, 2014

More Logan Love?

One day I was listening to a podcast where the topic for the day was collecting action figures. The guest on the show was talking about his slow but gradual transition from a casual collector to a hard core collector. He went on to say that the number one sign that you have made the transition to hard core was when you start buying action figures of characters you despise. That made me think about my own collection and whether I had any action figures of characters I hated and almost immediately the numerous Wolverine figure on my Marvel Universe shelf came to mind….so yeah, I guess I am hard core.

In case you missed my previous “love-letter”
post to Wolverine, let’s just establish one thing. I hate Wolverine. He sucks. Period. Yet here I am with a Marvel Universe shelf with no less than FIVE (six if you count the minimate) versions of Wolverine! So before you go off and accuse me of being a hypocrite…let me explain why I have so much adamantium laced abominations on my shelf.

First of all, in a perfect world, way back in 1977, it would’ve been Wolverine and not Thunderbird who goes berserk on an exploding resulting in his death and sparing us from his miserable existence. Unfortunately for all of us, Canadian writer John Byrne decided to save Wolverine instead just because he too was Canadian….so instead we get a fried Thunderbird and the most overused and overexposed character shoved down our thoats for the next 30 plus years and beyond….cuz you at this point…he’s gonna live forever…..ughhh

Anyway, my point is, as much as I hate the guy, even I can’t deny that he has become an integral member of the X-Men (and now unfortunately, the Avengers….please Sony, you can KEEP the rights to X-Men franchise forever, just so we can keep Wolverine AWAY from the mainline Avengers franchise), and no respectable X-Men collection would be complete without him….so being a completist I just had to have him….but again, why so many? Let me explain.

1) Frankenstein (Avengers) Wolverine.
OK so this one is actually made up of two different figures. When I first started collecting Marvel Universe figures, I came upon a fellow collector on eBay who was selling a bunch of loose figures at a real cheap price……I remember that I really wanted a couple of figures in the bunch and seeing that it was so cheap I decided to get the whole bag, and low and behold, included were TWO Wolverine figures (gee I wonder why he wanted to give THOSE up). I don’t even know exactly what line they were from but one of them was shorter than your average figure but had an ugly head.

forget Hugh Jackman....
Now for all you people who think 6.2 Hugh Jackman is the ultimate representation of Wolverine, let it be known that the more traditional comic representation of the guy is that of a runt…Wolverine was small…ok, short, and that was actually part of his appeal…he was this little hairy savage guy who could rip bigger people to shreds with ease. So I figured this smaller Wolverine figure would fit in better with my collection…but again, his head kinda sucked…so I just popped it off and placed the better looking head of the second figure on him. So there you go….short runty Wolverine, the way he was meant to be.

2) X-Force Wolverine
OK I have no excuse for this one…I don’t even know why I bought him. I think I had plans of completing the modern X-Force lineup that he led, but those plans were dashed when Marvel decided to release the X-Force archangel as a special online exclusive…so yeah, I don’t even think this one is on my shelf anymore. And even ask my why he has a machine gun (I guess they wanted him to join G.I.Joe too!) and a samurai sword (6 hand blades not enough?)

3) First Appearance Wolverine
So here in Manila, Marvel Universe figures rarely come out on retail….at least the good ones. So in order to get the ones you really want, you either get them online…or get them at a toy launch. So every now and then, Toy Kingdom (probably one of the biggest retail toy stores here in the Philippines) holds one of these toy launches, usually when a new movie property toyline comes out wherein you can buy all these hard to find toys, the catch being they’re usually sold in sets with the desirable figures bundled in with less desirable ones. I’ll give you a guess what category this Wolverine figure fell under.

So in order to get iconic characters like Apocalypse, Cable and ‘90s Jim Lee version Cyclops at reasonable retail prices, I had to bite the bullet and pick up this yellow and blue turd as well. He is currently stinking up the back row of my shelf, where he belongs.

4) Emo Black Wolverine
I never followed any solo Wolverine comic series (gee…I wonder why?) but at some point in the 90’s he donned this rather “creative and all original” all black plain sleeveless get up which showcased his oh so amazing pointy hairdo. This one came in a comic 2 pack with an AMAZING (arguably the BEST Marvel Universe figure released to date) Silver Samurai. I only really wanted the Silver Samurai…so unfortunately I had to get this crappy piece of plastic as well. It all worked out in the end though, I got my shiny cool Samurai and my doggy got a new chew toy (I kid I kid…I would never give my dog such a low quality toy)

5) Brown and Yellow Wolverine
Ok so this guy was also shoved with 2 other figures in an X-Men 3 pack. Seeing that this was the first time we were getting Rogue and Longshot figures, I figured it was worth the torture of getting yet another Wolverine figure. Turns out though that this was OK. This was Wolverine when he was *just* another X-man….This was a Wolverine I could live with, one who was cool. He just drank beer, smoked cigars (the best use for his healing powers) and sliced and diced and made no excuses.

This was Wolverine before Marvel decided to whore him out to EVERY SINGLE TITLE and package him as the ultimate goody goody perfect hero, X-Man, Avenger and Xavier’s heir apparent….the guy who killed thousands of people including team mates during savage fits of rage and yet had the frickin nerve to look Cyclops in the eye and call HIM a murderer for killing Xavier while he was possessed by the Phoenix force (which for the record was bestowed upon him against his will by one of Tony Stark’s contraptions)….ok ok, so obviously I’m not over the whole AVX resolution….Cyclops WAS right.

6) Minimates Wolverine
This guy represents my ultimate dream for Wolverine (not counting the whole him dying instead of Thunderbird). If the guy HAD to live, then my wish is that he NEVER left Canada and remained a member of Canada’s premiere super team, Alpha Flight. I love these guys, and if there is one thing I can appreciate about Wolverine’s origin, it was that he was an original member of one of my favorite super teams (NO he did NOT have to be a soldier that friggin fought alongside Captain America in World War 2….seriously, he just HAD to be a part of everything). So to complete my Alpha Flight minimates collection, I felt the need to include this guy…who for the record wasn’t even Wolverine yet…he was called Weapon X…so he really shouldn’t count :P