Will Rich be back Friday???

...No I'm here Thursday.

Hey guys, so I’m back from my extended holiday to New York and knowing how my Fridays usually end up, thought I’d update a day early.

The All-Father!
First up, I’d like to mention the Odin special. Having looked through a vast number of Odin’s appearances, from Kirby to Coipel, I can officially say that the All-father has had more costumes than any other character. Clearly a design choice by Kirby, Odin literally changes his outfit every single appearance. At first, I thought that there would be elements that remain the same (after all I seem to remember Odin looking a certain way) but when comparing images I found that the entire costume changes; he has a cape (with or without collar) as often as not, he goes from horned helmets to large ornamental hats, his look frequently goes from Cosmic to Viking, chainmail to modular armour… the list goes on.

What this means is that we’ve not fully picked the costume for Odin yet but essentially want to have him with the eyepatch, horned helmet and a cloak/cape. The image below is one of the images that stands out but I’m not sure we’ll be matching this exactly.



Anyway, while the sculptor and I work through these issues, I am happy to confirm that we’re aiming for an April-May 2011 release to coincide with the Thor film. I’m also aiming to have Odin no bigger/more expensive than the mid-special price point – £15.99. (He may be £10.99 but no promises) He won’t be as tall as Galactus/Watcher etc… The reason for this is very simple: in the comics Odin is generally drawn quite big and bulky but not super-sized, in fact he’s listed as 6’ 9”.

The Mutt
Right enough Odin-speak, let’s move on to Lockjaw.
The debate kicked up by the suggestion that he may come with another figure has been really interesting and has certainly provided food for thought. At the moment we’re not ruling out producing Lockjaw on his own (if he does indeed get made). The only reason to suggest having another figure was that I thought it would be nice to try and give you guys a little extra. The suggestion that Lockjaw should be accompanied by another character didn’t come from management or marketing, and was simply an idea I had. Looking at the size of Lockjaw, I imagined that he’d be priced between £15.99 and £18.99. If the figure was going to be priced at £18.99, I thought it would be good to give you all an extra – possibly smaller – (in the case of Luna) figure. There should be no suggestions that we are adding Luna or Maximus to make this special more expensive, if anything I imagine other departments at Eaglemoss would prefer not to include an extra figure.

But the debate has been really good and I agree with many of the comments that a solo Lockjaw would be a good special. We’ll just need to get the size/material and costs right at our end and I’ll certainly be listening to all your feedback.

Height: Does it matter?
The last subject I’d like to tackle is the height guide for specials. In the past I have stated that characters should be under 6’ 5” to be a regular and those above are likely to be specials. Now this is a general rule but is by no means binding. Of course, the character’s bulk and additions to costume play a large role in the decision process. If a character existed that was 7’ but had the bulk of Flatman, he could be a regular.

While 6’ 5” generally works, we do need to make the decision on a case-by-case basis, looking at height, bulk, costume details, accessories and pose.

The debate seems to have been opened up again with talk of a Sauron figure. Personally, I think it would just be possible to get the character in the regular running order BUT it would require cheating the scale a little, we simply couldn’t have him standing tall at 7’ and not having a very dynamic pose. We wouldn’t be able to have a lot of wingspan on display. If we did the character as a special, we could have him at full height and with his wings open.

Which would you guys prefer? (Neither is definite at the moment).

Right that leaves me with just a sneak peek to post: check out Ares.


Enjoy!