The Doctor is in...

Hello everyone.

I must again apologise for not updating the blog as much as I would have liked. The Christmas holidays play havoc with a fortnightly magazine’s schedules and so I, and all of the team on the figurine collection, have been working twice as hard as usual.

In the case of Alan ‘former editor’ Cowsill this means he’s started working at a normal speed (just kidding Alan).

So I wanted to kick off this update with the current list of characters we have for the 121-140 extension. We’ve chosen a few at Eaglemoss now and I do admit that I may have stolen one or two places for the team, we have:

Ant-Man
Black Heart
Chameleon
Grim Reaper
Jocasta
Jubilee
Nomad
Son of Satan
Titania
Wasp
X-Man

Black Heart, Chameleon and Jubilee were fan choices based on results and requests from this blog. Ant-Man and Jocasta were choices from the superherofigurineforum, who are choosing a third figure at the moment.

Son of Satan was Alan’s choice, X-Man was Designer Dan’s choice, Grim Reaper was my choice and Titania and Wasp were office choices. The character I’ve failed to mention so far is Nomad, he was chosen by our long-time collaborator and writer of the Behind the Scenes articles – Mike Conroy.

So once the forum has chosen their third figure we’re going to start the polls running again and choose the final eight figures. Obviously with all the cheating that went on on this blog I can’t have polls running here. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up fair and reliable polls, time which I unfortunately cannot give, so the forum shall host the majority of the polls, click on the link below:



I have personally met the chap who helped set this forum up and have full confidence in his ability to run fair polls. If you want to take part in the polls head over to the forum and sign-up. They’re a friendly and enthusiastic bunch, and if you obey the rules (which are all pretty much common sense) then I’m sure you’ll have a great time on there. I drop on to the forum anonymously every now and then to listen to the feedback the magazine gets and hopefully in the New Year I’ll be participating in a live Q&A.

The new polls won’t be up until the next year as I’m discussing them with the forum admins at the moment.

So with the extension aside, I thought I’d put the latest figure into the office up on this blog, check out Doc Samson.



The character’s costume hasn’t changed much over the years so it made the decision of which costume to put him in an easy one. The hair might be a little less frumpy than it was in the 70s but the costume is straight out of his first appearances. It's a very simple pose but hopefully it conveys the power and thoughtfulness of the character.

That’s your lot for this year, I hope everyone enjoys the holidays, whether your celebrating Christmas or not, and has a great New Year.

Caption Contest Winner

Hello all,

I’m afraid it’s just another quick update, as I’ve been very busy this week.

First up, I want to announce the winner of the caption contest we had on here a few weeks ago, the one for the Valkyrie issue. Our designer Dan has gone with:

"Mmmm...the CMFC (mag) is like catnip..."

So thanks to Ryan Maxwell for that one, I think Dan is going to credit you in the magazine, so look for Valkyrie’s issue (93) when it comes out.

I also have an update on the Madrox figure, below is the near final (painted) version of the figure.



As for polls and choosing characters, I will have more details next week, we will be putting a good few up on one of the fantastic fan forums:

http://www.superherofigurineforum.com/

(Proper link to follow soon)

This will cut out all cheating and allow you guys to have your say. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to put one or two other polls up elsewhere as well so that we can have a little variety.

Hopefully I’ll be back next week with a bigger update.

Have a good weekend everyone.

It's a real shame but lets not spoil it for everyone.

Ok, just a quick update from me today. I've been extremely busy all week so I'll have to follow this up properly early next week.

As many have pointed out in the comments section, my words of warning have been ignored and there has definitely been cheating on the recent polls. We've had a look at some of the data logs (or something like that, I'm not particularly web-minded) and seen that some people are cheating, which is pretty obvious from this weeks poll results.

It's a real shame and I'm very disappointed that a few people are ruining this, especially after my warning and especially as they are not even trying to be subtle anymore.

So, I'm not going to punish all collectors and take away your choice. What I will now do is either run polls on some of the fan forums (stay tuned for their web address next week) or have an e-mail link where voters can send me an e-mail vote, that way at least each vote will come from one e-mail account and we can confidently track cheaters.

Perhaps we'll try both. I will let you all know soon but don't worry you will still have a say.

As for the polls we've already run, Chameleon and Blackheart are going to stand as the cheating doesn't seem to have affected their victories. Sadly the Avengers poll shall be scrapped and possibly restarted at a later date. Regardless of what form the Avengers poll takes in the future, you will have the chance to vote for these characters again.

Well unfortunately that is the only update this week. We'll start again next week and hopefully put all the cheating behind us. A few bad apples certainly won't spoil my enjoyment of posting updates, reading your comments and getting your opinion on the collection.

The Master of Kung Fu abhors cheaters!!!

Hello,

Sorry for the delayed update but before I get on to the real post I just want to address something that’s been brought up in the comments section – cheating!

There’s been some talk about people cheating in the polls and I must say I’m really disappointed that anyone would consider cheating. As far as I’m aware, this is the first time Eaglemoss and quite possibly any part-work publisher has allowed collectors to choose which figures are included in the magazine. It’s something I’m really keen to allow and I would hate to think people were abusing the voting system. I’ve currently got my web department coming up with a solution to make the voting system as secure as possible, but if it looks like people are going to force their favourite characters into the running order then we’ll have to stop the polls, at least temporarily and possibly permanently.

It may be that only one or two people are cheating (but hopefully none) and I ask them not to ruin this for everyone. I spend a lot of time putting up images and polls on the blog and take the cheating as a personal insult. Remember it’s one vote and only one vote each. We all have favourites but you’re more likely to see your figure made if you take part in the polls and vote sensibly. If all the choices were once again left to the guys that work on the magazine, then your favourite might have less chance of being made. I for one know that Blackheart would not have been our choice.

For the time being, I’m going to see out the rest of the Avengers (Heroes) tournament, and reassess the situation after. Please keep voting and make sure to do so legitimately!



Anyway, enough ranting and moaning, let’s get on to a proper update.

I’ve got some images of the upcoming Shang Chi figure, fresh from the sculptor. While not completely finished (it needs painting as well) it should be obvious that we’ve gone for the first and classic costume for the character. This costume has Shang Chi wearing his red and yellow Gee.



We decided to go for this look as it distinguishes the character from any random kung fu guy. Recent Shang Chi costumes have had the Master of Kung Fu bare-chested and wearing just some loose fitting trousers. While these look great, they tend to make him look like a Bruce Lee double or just quite generic. Of course, Shang Chi was fashioned after the great Bruce Lee but Marvel did initially give the character a unique costume, and so that's what we wanted to achieve with our figurine.

Now I’m sure some collector’s are going to critique the fighting stance we’ve put Shang Chi in but I can assure you that we looked in a number of kung fu books, and Shang Chi comics, to come up with a dynamic pose that suited the character and (as I hope you agree) fits in the collection. The discerning among you might even notice that we’ve put the chap on a bigger base. He’s still a regular issue and is in perfect scale, he just wouldn’t fit on the normal size base.

That’s your lot for now, enjoy!