Ahh, the Figure Friday No man’s land that’s the period of time from when 31 Days of Horror ends and the Holiday Gift Guide begins. Just writing about toys with no agenda. Back to basics.
Since I have no agenda I wanted to take this brief space at the top here to write about conspiracy theories. Remember when those used to be mostly fun? Area 51? Crop circles? Paul McCartney or Avril Lavigne being replaced by doppelgängers? The X-Files as a show could not exist in today’s climate. I couldn’t possibly imagine Mulder and Scully going after George Soros.
These days conspiracy theories are thinly veiled excuses for confirmation bias to justify a person’s racism or agenda. Barely passed any high school science classes and can’t articulate why you don’t trust science? “Joe Rogan had an expert on his show that said the liberal demon-crats were putting chips in all the vaccines! He even said, ‘that’s crazy, man.’ So you know it must be true!”
This past week I read online, ironically, about the Dead Internet Theory which puts forth, “that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic curation, marginalizing organic human activity. Proponents of the conspiracy believe these intelligent bots have been made, in part, to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to ultimately manipulate consumers. Further, some proponents of the theory accuse government agencies of using bots to manipulate public perception. The date given for this “death” is generally around 2016 or 2017.”
I did enough research and this doesn’t seem overtly racist and I didn’t see a subsection on wikipedia about the secret cabal of lizard people masquerading as humans living in the earth’s core that control all media. The reason this kind of resonated with me is that writing for a blog is a bit like screaming into the void some days. To be clear, I’m writing because I love writing and BBP! has tolerated me doing this for the last seven or so years. I didn’t get into this game to become the next famous comic/toy review writer like…wait, has there ever been one?
The internet as a whole is a tool designed to sell you things. It’s only going to spit out things on your phone that are asking for your dollars or your attention. I’m doubling down on the irony here because I’m about to write about an action figure I bought online. But the point, and I do have one, is that there are still pockets of people doing interesting stuff online for the love of the game as it were but you’ve got to look for them. I don’t think BBP! is ever going to turn into an AI content farm like some previously great websites have. Fingers crossed.
On to the toys…you will believe an action figure can fly!
As part of my ongoing crusade to acquire definitive versions of characters for my action figure collection I bring you MAFEX’s Superman from the Batman: Hush line. When it comes to being a Superman fan, I feel that I fall solidly into the middle ground. There aren’t a ton of fair-weather Superman fans and I think that has a lot to do with no one in charge having a clear idea what to do with him for the last 40 years or possibly ever.
I’m sure I’ve written about it before, but the absolute high-water mark of Superman media comes from 1978’s Superman: The Movie, when the character makes his first appearance in costume. You know the scene. In my opinion nothing has come close in the decades since and every subsequent adaptation has the nigh-impossible task of attempting to live up to that.
I kind of fell backwards into collecting the Batman: Hush line. Previously, I had limited myself to collecting MAFEX’s Spider-Man figures and the occasional Batman or two. Their Hush line of figures so perfectly captures Jim Lee’s artwork it looks like the characters have leapt right off the page. Perpetually late to the party, I missed BOTH of the standard Batman figures (one blue/gray the other black/gray) and I’m hoping they’ll reissue them again since those go for north of $200 on the secondary market.
Which finally brings me to Superman. I saw the figure was being reissued and I swear it had an expected ship date of Q4 2024 which certainly looked like a job for Future Me to worry about. I placed my preorder and then a couple weeks later received an email that my order was processing soon, the charge hit my credit card and now I have a new Superman figure.
The figure is damn near perfect and fits my estimation of what a definitive figure should be. It’s just…Superman. The figure sculpt is amazing, the posing is dynamic, and when you use the enclosed stand and wired/posable cape together you’ve got yourself a figure that looks like it’s flown right off the page.
Superman comes with an alternate “angry” Superman head, a slew of alternate hands, “Poison Ivy” vine attachments, and, as a cruel joke, an alternate “Kryptonite ring” hand for a Batman figure I cannot buy.
This is an incredibly worthwhile figure to buy and I’d suggest snagging it while most online retailers have it in stock. MAFEX has been pretty good about reissuing figures but there’s next to no rhyme or reason given as to when they choose to do so.