SDCC Struck Again!

San Diego Comic Con 2018 just happened. (As expected, nobody cared about “Fiction & Felines!” while it was occurring.) I have opinions. Armchair coverage & the possible spoilers associated therewith happen below.

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The biggest news out of this year’s SDCC is … Cutthroat Island is finally getting toys!  Thanks to Blitzway, you can own a Hot Toys-style replica from the film that sunk pirate movies until until Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl surprised everyone! Congratulations, Geena Davis!

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Captain Marvel Shazam! & Aquaman look fun! Who would’ve expected horror directors to make DC’s most lighthearted movies? I didn’t understand why The Rock couldn’t be both Black Adam & Shazam, but Zach Levi is an appropriately wholesome goofball as The Big Red Cheese. I’d prefer Ocean Master’s armor to be classic gold to New 52 silver, but hooray to Orm’s outfit all the same. Aquaman’s new suit looks more like the classic costume. Black Manta still doesn’t look anything like a manta ray, but at least he’s got a submarine & eye lasers!

Mattel is finally making the classic Kyle Rayner that I requested! I’m not sure if the modern Starfire, who looks like she has translucent hair to compensate for not being tall enough, also counts toward my wishlist. Mattel’s SDCC 2018 exclusive plan didn’t compute.

DC Collectibles is producing individual animated figures again (re-release the Rogues Gallery in single packs!), but the Justice League line is exclusive for members of the DC Universe digital subscription service. Aquaman better include an alternate hook hand!

Teen Titans looks like it’s trying way too hard to be the Watchmen movie, & I say this as someone who likes the Watchmen movie. It’s as if they didn’t get the memo that the movies finally got. I laughed so hard at Robin cursing. (Batman’s got a utility pouch filled with Bat-soap just for him.) It’d be fine if this was Hit-Girl Damien Wayne or Jason Todd, but Dick Grayson shouldn’t be so violent. That fur coat just looks wrong on Starfire. Even Dove, whose whole deal is pacifism, is slicing crooks up! They seem to be on the right track with spooky Raven, but she’s going to be overshadowed if all her teammates are grimdark murderers. Young Justice: Outsiders looks much better in comparison. (Now will they tell us what Vandal Savage’s masterplan is?) If you want one but not the other, you still have to pay $75 per year or $8 per month.

She watched the Titans trailer & now only has a week left to live!

Meanwhile the DC TV shows you don’t have to pay extra for had a bunch of trailers with varying degrees of new footage. (Sadly the amount was zero for Black Lightning.) Bronze Tiger officially not being dead on Arrow is not enough for me to get over Black Siren not being in an Earth-2 prison or Diaz being alive. How long will Oliver’s supermax status quo last given his show will still factor into the December crossover (but not Legends of Tomorrow?) introducing Batwoman? I was somewhat right about The Flash’s daughter being XS after all! Do you think they’ll finally show what Barry does to royally piss off Eobard in the future? I’m concerned about Chris Klein cast as Cicada, although I guess joining DC TV worked gangbusters for his Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li co-star Neal McDonough. What I really want is more Grodd, Earth-2 Mirror Master, integrated Killer Frost, the Rogues teaming-up, & Abra Kadabra turning Barry into a marionette.

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Now that Black Panther made ALL THE MONEY, Hasbro is doing Marvel Legends for the characters it should’ve produced in time for the movie. See, an all MCU series is budgetable!

We’re getting Marvel Legends Skullbuster (he’s this year’s Lasher) instead of Maverick? Now that they’ve given Psylocke & Typhoid Mary energized katanas, when will they unveil Silver Samurai armed with it? Bona fide movie star Black Tom can’t get immortalized in plastic? Despite all her toyetic costume changes & being lead in the eventual Marvel Rising: Secret Avengers & New Warriors TV shows, still no Squirrel Girl? At least Blink is finally getting her due.

Marvel Studios eschewed SDCC this year, & they further spited fans with a trailer for Iron Fist season two that’s still bland. It’s not even the best Marvel trailer by default since The Gifted snuck in. Wait, Alice Eve is Typhoid Mary in Iron Fist this season? (Alice Eve & Erin Richards should play siblings sometime, ditto Rufus Sewell & Skeet Ulrich.) Does that mean I have to start watching Iron Fist? Or is this another instance of Netflix squandering cool characters?

In a rare instance of noteworthy comic book news as a comic con, Marvel announced it will relaunch Uncanny X-Men this fall. No cast or creative team has been revealed, but knowing the title is a step-up from when Mr. & Mrs. X was solicited as X-Classified. Marvel supposedly doesn’t hate the X-Men anymore, but they still don’t remember how to market them.

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Godzilla: King of the Monsters made me smile with all its kaiju reveals. It has an informative FAQ. Hopefully it’ll be more Kong: Skull Island than the last American Godzilla. NECA is doing this Gojira, but no word yet on whether they’ll finally do some other monsters.

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NECA’s update of the Lasershot Predator looks awesome! Hopefully it’ll have light & sound features like the original. Too bad it & Spiketail aren’t going to be in The Predator. (Is the big Pred a Yautja female, which are canonically larger than males? I’m glad there will be Predator 2 continuity thanks to the Buseys.) They finally have an Alien Resurrection (my third favorite in the series) Ripley prototype too!

The GDT line is getting expanded with Ofelia & Oscar-winning Sexy Fishman. NECA is making the most out of assimilating Chia Pets.

After three stressful days, I finally got an SDCC exclusive TMNT movie set. NECA really needs to overhaul its ordering process so it’s not a race to enter a credit card # during checkout before your cart items sell out. (Rival customers can’t snatch products of of your hands while you’re queued up for a cashier, which is why physical retail stores being completely replaced by online ones would be bad.) I just wanted the normal turtles set, but it sold out while I was checking out for the third time. Luckily they still had a diorama set for me. So on top of the agitation, it cost me over $100 more. It doesn’t sting quite as much considering eBay has just the turtles for as much as the diorama. I found a white hair in my moustache, & I’m holding NECA’s 2018 SDCC exclusives sale responsible. I don’t even want to think about what will happen with the TMNT villains.

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That about wraps it up for things I saw second hand. Did I miss anything you wanted me to opine upon? Let me know!

Is it just me or did this comic convention antclimax? There was lots of excitement leading up to preview night followed by at least one solid day of DC trailers & Marvel Legends toys on Saturday. Anticipation rose while awaiting news to be posted. All the cool stuff revealed early aroused speculation that something even more ideally suited to my tastes would be a surprise at the end. Then absolutely nothing happened on the last day. Has it always been like this?

Next week I may have that prophesied custom ready! Or I might try to critique Cloak & Dagger or Teen Titans Go! To the Movies while they’re still timely!