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!

Round Two. Fight!

So the first round has now ended and yes, there will be some of you disappointed that your choice hasn't gotten through but don't let that put you off voting in the next round.

From some of the comments left, I can see that we all want more than one of the characters on the list and if we go with the choices that everyone has posted, I think we'd have to run the series to well over 200 issues. I see that many collectors have a favourite family/branch of the Marvel Universe; some people want every Inhuman, some want every character in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. While we're never going to fit all Marvel's characters into the collection (they have over 2000) hopefully by doing a few of these polls everyone will be happy that we've managed to get at least one of their favs into the last 20. You never know you might discover a new favourite just by looking up those in the polls.

Oh, and if you don't know who a character is the best place to get a bio is from Marvel's official website at:

http://www.marvel.com/universe/Main_Page

So that's it from me today, go vote, the polls will close on Thursday.

It's a knockout

The results are in for the latest poll and it looks like Blackheart has won the day with over 60% of the vote. All is not lost for poor old Melvin Potter, he’ll be entered into another ‘losers’ playoff poll at a later date.

As I've previously said, I’m really keen to vary the way we choose the next batch of characters, so this week I’ve decided to put up a tournament style poll. The way this will work, is that we’ll have a number of head to head polls, with the winner progressing to the next stage. The figure that wins the tournament will be put into the 121-140 list. (See diagram below for structure)

I’ve decided we’ll have two sides to the tournament, an Avengers Heroes side and an Avengers Villains side. This week we’ll start with the Heroes.

Round One will be up until Monday afternoon, so get voting.




So, while I’ve got your attention, I thought I’d see if you guys can come up with a caption for the last image in the magazine. As some of you may know, we tend to finish page 19 of the magazine with a funny image of the featured character. We’ve had a bit of a dry run with this image recently but this week Dan the designer has finally got round to putting it back in, and now he wants your help with the caption. The image is below and will be featured in Issue 93 – Valkyrie.

The caption can be for either Valkyrie or Hellcat and can be a thought or word balloon. The only limit is that it must be under 15 words. Oh and it has to be of good taste.

Please post your ideas for the word balloon in the comments section and I will announce the winner next Friday.

Another Friday, another update.

Welcome back everyone; it’s good to see all the positive comments about the series being extended to 140 issues. Some have pointed out that 150 would be a nicer number and I can’t agree more, hopefully if all goes well and (in the style of Stan Lee) ‘You readers demand it!’ we’ll get another extension. Only time will tell.

Anywho, with the collection expanding it’s good to see everyone having their say on which characters they’d like included, last count I made the comments section had over 60 requests. Wow we really could go on forever.

I’ve noticed that a few of the requests are for figures we’ve already got planned so I though it might help to put the 100-120 list up here:

100 Banshee
101 War Machine
102 Hobgoblin
103 Baron Zemo
104 Taskmaster
105 Doc Samson
106 Madrox
107 Shang-Chi
108 Titania/Viper (we've not quite decided)
109 Beta Ray Bill
110 Man-Wolf
111 Union Jack
112 Dazzler
113 Ka Zar
114 Black Knight
115 Machine Man
116 X-23
117 Ikaris
118 Tigra
119 Hellcat
120 Enchantress

Now as some of you may remember we ran a poll to choose the costume for the Madrox figurine, and despite it being very close the most modern version of the character won. So, I know this is going to split opinions but we’ve gone with this costume for the figure, as shown below, with an image of the final sculpt stage.



If you voted for the first Kirby costume I hope that the quality of the sculpt at least eases the pain of not having ‘your’ version. I personally love this costume; I think it matches the direction the character has been going in perfectly, while at the same time paying homage to the Jack Kirby costume with the T-shirt design.

So this just leaves me with one last thing to talk about and that’s the polls from last week. They finished today and it looks like Chameleon is a no-brainer but the MK poll appears to have ended in a tie between Blackheart and Gladiator. I think we’ll have to settle this with a showdown – Blackheart vs. Gladiator, no-holds barred, well as ‘no-holds barred’ as a poll between the two characters can be.

For anyone who doesn’t know the characters check out the pic and mini-description I’ve put below.

Blackheart (First app. Daredevil #270 1989) – Son of the demon-lord Mephisto, Blackheart was created from the evil energy that accumulated in the town of Christ’s Crown, a particularly popular spot with murderers. He’s fought Daredevil, Spider-Man and Ghost Rider and constantly tried to usurp his father’s position in hell.



Gladiator, Melvin Potter (First app. Daredevil #18 1966) – A costume designer who made his own suit of battle armour, complete with deadly wrist blades, Melvin Potter decided to become a professional criminal. One of Daredevil’s earliest foes, who has also fought Iron Man and Spider-Man. Gladiator has reformed a couple of times and helped Elektra and Daredevil fight the Hand.




I’ll have some more character polls up early next week.

Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Extended...

It’s Friday and so in celebration of the weekend I thought I’d update the blog.

I know everyone wants to know if we’re getting extended and I’ve put off answering for weeks now, but I can finally confirm that the Classic Marvel Figurine Collection is going up to 140 issues.

That's right 140 issues!!!

So first of all I’d like to say a huge thanks to everyone who’s made this mag successful, without the collectors we wouldn’t be here.

And of course you know what that means… we need to choose another 20 characters to immortalise in lead.

So far we have Jubilee, as I’ve already promised you guys she’d be included, that leaves 19 places.

As the collection has grown we’ve tried to include as many fan-favourites as we can but for the first time in the series I want to let you guys decide who gets on to the regular list. As such I’m going to be putting up plenty of polls on the blog as well as coming up with different ways to let you choose which figures we should include.

As I've said we’ve got 19 places left, however I am going to call 4 of those places for the guys in the office to choose a favourite, leaving you guys with 15 to choose.

Obviously, I’m going to have to choose who’s going to be in a poll but I hope to keep all polls themed, i.e. Fantastic Four, Spider-Man foes, cosmic heroes etc… After running a few polls I think we’ll have a second and third place play-off, where everyone who finished second or third gets another chance. So all votes count.

So without further to do I have two polls ready, one for Spidey villains, one poll for Marvel Knights/Daredevil characters.

Watching over us...

Hello,

First of all I want to apologise for the not-so-frequent updates on the blog. I had really hoped to post something at least once a week, but as time has gone on I’ve found it difficult to keep up.

Anyway, I’m definitely going to keep aiming for the once a week target but I don’t want to reveal every figure that’s going to come out, otherwise there will be no surprises left.

With that in mind, I thought some of the discerning Marvel fans amongst you might be interested to hear that we’ve got a couple of Marvel’s greatest artist to produce some covers for us.

The first is the Absorbing Man pencilled by Herb Trimpe (coloured by Alan Craddock) and the second is Warlock, drawn by Jim Starlin.





For those of you not familiar with their work (shame on you), Herb Trimpe worked for Marvel back in the late 60s/early 70s and is best remembered for his amazing run on the Incredible Hulk. Jim Starlin on the other hand has worked for Marvel (amongst other comic companies) since 1972 and is perhaps best known for his cosmic stories; he introduced Thanos to the Marvel Universe and helped shape Adam Warlock into the character he is today.

Being huge fans of their comics we were thrilled to work with both creators.

Right, I tried to be good at the beginning of this post and not just slap up some new figurine images but I can’t resist. Below is Uatu the Watcher.



As you can see from the image we’ve gone for the version of the Watcher best characterised in John Byrne’s run on the Fantastic Four. With the Watcher we’re very lucky that the costume has changed little since his first appearance in Fantastic Four # 13. However, we did go for the ‘baby’ style of head rather than the original ‘just a bald guy’ look. The obvious reason for this is that the look we’ve chosen has pretty much become the ‘official’ Uatu look and has been used to illustrate him more times than any other.

If you’re wondering what the original Watcher looked like check out the image below.




Ok, I’m off again now but I’m going to make sure you get another update next week, I should have the Madrox figure in by then.

The Professor is in.

Hello,

I'm back once again after a bit of a break and once again I've got some fantastic news regarding the specials.

First up I have some images of Professor Xavier and Lilandra (please forgive my photoshop skills or lack of). For anyone who doesn't know, these two figures are going to be our first (and hopefully not the last) double pack. I hope everyone likes the figures as much as I do.







Second I have some news regarding our next special after Prof. X. This special is going to be another mega special and we've gone with the Watcher. I know that Onslaught narrowly beat Watcher in the vote but as we had an X-Men foe as our last special (Sentinel) and we will have also just had Professor Xavier's special, we thought we'd give another branch of the MU it's turn. Sculpting has already begun on the figure and I hope to have a few images up within the next week.

Right well that's your lot, I promise to be back a little sooner next time and hopefully I can give a definitive yes or no to the series extension.

You wait for ages and then two turn up at once!

That’s right I have another blog update this week.

First I wanted to show everyone the Bishop figure. I promised this a while ago on one of the forums and completely forgot, sorry about that. I know the costume choice is going to split the fans but we went for his original 90s look. The reason for this was that we thought this particular costume was the most iconic and represented the character the best. After all, this is his XSE uniform that he wears in the future he comes from. The more modern costumes/appearances have lost this look and, in my mind, really made the character into just another generic X-Man in an X-uniform.



The second part of this update is once again devoted to that controversial subject: the possible Marvel Chess Set. After reading (and passing on) a lot of the comments on this blog and other websites we’ve decided to set up a poll to outright see if you guys actually want a chess-set or not. It’s not just a bit of cheeky market research we really want to know if you think a chess set is a good idea, now, later or never, we do value your opinions.

As with all the polls I promise we won’t just go blindly forward with the top result but we will be using the results as a guide.

Anyway that’s your lot, enjoy.

Rich

I'm back...

Hello and welcome back to the CMFC blog.

My apologies for the long time between updates, a few members of the team have been off on holiday so those of us that remained behind had to work that little bit harder, which has meant I’ve missed a few weeks of blog update.

Anywho, I’m back now and have a couple of exclusive images of figures coming to you in the future.

First up is Union Jack. A personal favourite of mine, he’s turned out very well. There may have been different men in the costume but really there’s only ever been one look with this character, so the choice was very simple (although the way the flag fits that costume has always disturbed me a little). We decided to include the character’s classic weaponry, the Webley .455 revolver and 6” dagger, as these weapons really make the figure, plus I believe they’ve been passed down through the family line of Union Jacks, so it keeps the figure a little more ageless.

The pose was based on a Mike Perkins piece of art that featured on issue one of the recent Union Jack series. We chose this as it brings together the Super Hero and secret agent aspects of the character.




The second figure I have for you is a pre-production sculpt of the Man-Wolf. With this character we wanted to have the first and classic costume, rather than the newer Star-God version. We chose this as the Star-God version really isn’t the character Man-Wolf; he’s got a lot more control and uses different weapons (in some comics he looks a little like a Wolf version of Hawkeye). The classic Man-Wolf figure in our eyes was the first version Jameson changed into, although he eventually gained control of his bestial form, in his first appearances Jameson was this out of control Werewolf and that’s what we wanted to capture in the sculpt. Hopefully we succeeded.



Both figures are due roughly around the #110 point.

I’ve also set up two polls; the first is which costume would you like Madrox (the multiple man) to be in? The images below correspond to the numbered choices. I’m really keen to get everyone involved with this character, so please vote even if you don’t particularly like the character (but really what’s not to love).










I’ve also set up a poll for our next normal sized special. There’s some interesting choices but if you think I’ve missed someone really important leave a comment with the name on.

Anywho, I think that’s plenty for everyone to chew over, I promise the next update won’t be quite as late.

Mutant Beware!

Right so I’m back again with another update, but before I talk about the Figurine Collection I just want to address a couple of points that were raised with the Chess Set.

First I think I should make it clear that this is an entirely new series from Eaglemoss and not an extension of the Marvel Figurine Collection.

And Second, the Marvel Chess Collection will not in anyway affect the quality of the Classic Marvel Figurine Collection and certainly won’t take any resources away. I won’t be in charge of the Chess set, a different team will handle it, and if anything the addition of another Marvel product to Eaglemoss’ range is only going to help us. We’re going to have more Marvel experts working here and we’re going to have a stronger relationship with Marvel because of it. Oh and no this doesn’t replace double pack ideas we’re still looking into these and will see how well Prof. X and Lilandra do.

So on to this week’s update.

I have some lovely pictures of the Taskmaster sculpt (see below). Personally he’s one of my favourite sculpts to date and hopefully everyone can agree we went for the correct costume, none of this Agent X costume malarkey.



Apart from Taskmaster’s appearance in the office, this week has been pretty quiet but very busy, so I don’t have a lot to report. We’re still discussing the extension and possible characters. I think it’s safe to say Jubilee is getting into any extension, so Jubilee fans can celebrate.

Once the chess polls are finished I’m going to have a (regular) specials' poll put up to help us choose the next special character.

And lastly, I know some of you have seen him already but here’s an image of the Sentinel Mega Special, due out around the second week in November.

The Sentinel figure posed an interesting challenge for us when deciding which costume/version to make. As there have been many versions of the Sentinels since they were introduced in the 1960s we really wanted to make a classic looking Sentinel that would be recognised by comic readers from all generations. The actual Sentinel we have settled for is based on the Mark VII Sentinel, which in my mind is the most iconic as the design of this Sentinel can be seen in (and heavily influenced by) the Mark III Sentinels (drawn by Neal Adams), the Mark IV, Chalmer's Sentinel, Psi-ber Sentinel, Mark VI, and Day's of Future Now. While the Sentinels are obviously robots each model in the classic pink/purple and blue has always had a certain human body tone and as such this is recognised in our model. My favourite thing about this sculpt is the pose. I think this screams classic 'stop and identify yourself Mutant'.

And for those of you wondering about a size comparison with Galactus, what we've decided to do is have all the mega specials standing at roughly the same height. Yes, I know Galactus is bigger but the Mega Specials are obviously slightly out of scale with the rest of the collection (let's face it, at our scale Galactus should be about 6ft) so we want to make each of these figures as big as we can. Hence Sentinels and Galactus being very similar.

That's enough rambling for now, I'll catch you all next time.

Are you a Grandmaster?

Hello everyone,

I’ve got a very special blog update today regarding another of Eaglemoss’ fine Marvel products, the Marvel Chess Set (we’re still thinking of a name).

As some of you newshounds and forum members may have discovered, we’re looking at expanding our Marvel range of products by offering a unique chess set.

Similarly to the Lord of the Rings Chess set (which we also produce) we’re going to create new poses for your favourite figures, add new characters that have yet to be included to the Marvel Figurine Collection and aim to produce a chess set you simply can’t find in the shops. Our aim is to build up different teams/families of Super Heroes to battle their respective villains with each set based on a branch of the Marvel universe.

So, what does this mean? Well, imagine collecting a Spider-Man set of Heroes to battle their greatest foes: Spidey battles Venom, Black Cat fights Doc Ock and Aunt May takes on the Grim Reaper (ok, just kidding with that last one but seriously how old is she now?) The next set in the collection could then be based around the X-Men with Prof. X vs. Magneto, Wolvie vs. Sabretooth, Colossus vs a Sentinel etc… You get the picture.

So why am I announcing this on the Marvel Figurine blog? Well, as collectors of the Classic Marvel Figurine Collection and true Marvelites, you guys know what characters make the best figures and we want your opinions on the Spider-Man chess set. I’ve put up a few polls with some interesting choices, the discerning amongst you will notice that we’ve got ‘powers’ vs ‘civvies’, and we’re keen to see if you’d prefer a line-up full of Super Heroes and Villains or whether you’d like a few more of Peter Parker’s supporting cast instead.

Well what are you waiting for, let the voting begin.



P.S. I'll have a fully CMFC update before the week is out.

It's a Special Day.

So I promised I'd have some figurine news and here it is:

We've finally sorted out the Professor Xavier fiasco!

If you've been following the saga of Prof. X on the figurine forum then you'll know a little of the history already but for those of you who haven't here's a quick breakdown.

We've always wanted to have Prof. X in the collection and he was originally scheduled for the first 60 issues, however problems with the initial sculpt led to him being delayed. We then had the problem with the size of the character, in his wheelchair he's a little too big for the regular issues but a little too small to be an outright special. So we have decided to go for a double-pack special.

This is essentially two characters on separate bases (with one shared magazine) in the same special. We really wanted the second character to have a shared history with Xavier, not just a somebody stuck in for no reason, and to be a character we probably wouldn't have in the collection unless we went way past issue 120. So, the guys on the forum have been voting frantically for over the last few weeks for their choice of character and I'm happy to say the overwhelming majority voted for Lilandra, who was actually my joint fast choice. I was also keen on Vulcan just to have the 'Third Summer's Brother'.

If you don't know who she is (shame on you), she's Professor Xavier's wife (although technically the marriage is now annulled) and former Empress of the Shiar.

Hopefully the double-pack idea will prove popular and we can add it to our list of specials (mega and regular). I'm personally very excited to see how the idea works, as it could be a great way to get some of the lesser known characters into the collection and also means that we're getting more Marvel characters into the series. For those of you worried about a shared magazine, I can assure you we'll be looking carefully at the magazine's content to make sure we have a detailed history on both characters.

I also have news of the upcoming specials, below is an image of the next regular special – the Man-Thing. He's coming out after the Sentinel mega issue (of which I'll have some images soon) and was sculpted by a very talented artist from South Africa, Aren Damiani.



And lastly I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who voted in the mega special poll. It would seem that Onslaught narrowly beat the Watcher, so I think I know what the next two mega specials will be after the Sentinel.

Keep watching this space and we'll have a regular special poll up very soon.

Rich

Questions, questions, questions...

Thanks for all the positive comments, it's great to hear from so many collectors all around the world. A few questions have popped up, so I thought I'd answer these before moving on.

1. Abomination on a different base- Well here at Eaglemoss we're always looking at new ways to expand the collection and make it the best we can. As such we decided to try a more dynamic pose with the Abomination to see how he worked in an almost diorama type of setting, similar in some ways to the Spider-Man rooftop figures. Having received a lot of feedback on the figure, I think we can say that we succeeded in making a great looking Abomination but perhaps went a little too far with the base. Sure it looks good but many collectors have stated it stands out a little too much.

Personally I think it's great to try new things and bring fresh blood into the collection (a lot of fans have been crying out for more dynamic poses) but based on the feedback we will definitely be thinking long and hard before changing the base on any other figures. This blog and the other forums are a great place to talk to you guys about things like the Abomination, so in the future I'd like to get your opinions before we try anything new. And so for the next two specials Man-Thing and Sentinel we've gone back to the lovely basic black base.

2. Classic costumes vs. Modern costumes- Sure the magazine is called the Classic Figurine Collection and we always aim to put the character in their classic costume. However, for me Classic doesn't just mean the first costume the character appeared in, sometimes a character has a classic style/costume/look that appeared much later. We also have to get approval from Marvel on every figure we produce and sometimes Marvel prefer us to use an updated or different costume to the one we initially choose. A great example of both these points is the Beast figure. You could argue that his first appearance (human form, X-costume) is classic but for me and everyone working on the project his classic look is his original blue fuzzy form. However, when we started the sculpting process Marvel were very clear that the new cat-like Beast was the figure they wanted to see. We've also got to take into consideration the costume from a sculpting point of view and make sure we can supply enough quality art to the sculptor to make a great figurine.

So it's a bit of a balancing act to get the best looking figures and retain the Classic element we want to achieve. I think, and hope most people agree, that we've struck a nice balance between the pure classic costumes/looks each character has and their best costumes even if they are a bit more modern.

3. My favourite character has not been made yet- Let me know. Seriously, if your favourite character or one that you think has been missed out is not in our 120 figures list, let me know on the message boards and this blog. Last I heard Marvel had over 5000 original characters, so clearly we're not going to get through every single one but the more I hear a character's name the more likely they are to get in. In my mind once we got past 100 issues the choice of characters became so much more interesting. There were still a few relatively big names left but the selection became so much more personal. If we go past 120, which it looks like we might, then I'm going to open up a couple of polls and really let collectors have a say.

Hope that sorts out a few things and I'll aim to have another figurine update ready for you by the end of the week, until then keep on voting for the next mega special.

Hello Everybody!

Welcome to the first official CMFC blog. We may have taken our time getting it up and running but now we’re here and I’m ready to ramble endlessly about our collection. First I’d like to say a huge thanks to all the collectors, without you guys the magazine wouldn’t be the success it is today and I’d have to find some other way to geek-out about Marvel comics.

Over the coming weeks and months I plan to use this blog to give everyone a little insight into the way we put the magazine and figures together as well as announcing new figures and products.

So today I’m working on issue 86- The Scorpion, the figure has been approved and we’re very happy with the final product. As you can see from the picture I’ve popped up, we went for the classic green costume from the 80s/90s. We could have gone for the new Venom look but let’s face it he just isn’t Scorpion and we’ve already had a Venom figure. Let me know what you think about the figure and go and vote in our poll for the next potential Mega Special after the Sentinel.