Comic Review: Godzilla Kingdom of Monsters #1

Modern comics have been off my radar for more than a few years now. While I used to follow roughly a dozen titles in my heyday, I eventually found that comic books just didn't work for me anymore. Not only are they prohibitively expensive (most titles are at least $3), but comics today are way too fixated on the graphic novel concept. A comic company will force almost every storyline into a series of at least five or six issues so that they can capitalize on it twice by re-releasing it in a collected graphic novel format. That's all fine and dandy, but the problem is that often the storylines aren't strong enough to stretch out that far... not to mention the fact that I just don't have the attention span to wait half a year to finish a plot. Nowadays, I read the inexpensive "phonebook" collections like DC's Showcase Presents. But IDW lured me back with Godzilla Kingdom of Monsters. Let's check it out!

Retro Toy Review: Bill S. Preston Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan (Kenner)

The mid-90's were the Dark Ages of action figures for me. It was a transitional period: I had stopped playing with toys as a kid but I hadn't yet started collecting toys as a collector. Many fun and interesting toy lines were lost on me during this time, including Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. In fact, I wasn't even all that interested in the movie at the time, so this property almost entirely fell under my radar. I've since come to appreciate the hilarious time capsule that is Bill & Ted, so I thought I'd pick up the hero figures from the toy line, namely the Wyld Stallyns themselves! Let's check them out!

Toy Pix: Lieutenant Saavik, Then and Now

The Star Trek movies featuring the classic cast never got a lot of attention from toy manufacturers, but fortunately we did manage to get some Wrath of Khan figures from both Playmates in the 90's and Diamond Select in the 2000's. This Then and Now feature concentrates on one of the most memorable characters in TWOK: Lt. Saavik.

Toy Tribute: Next Generation Starfleet Officers

Every so often the Playmates Star Trek: The Next Generation action figure line would branch out from the main crew of the Enterprise to explore the secondary officers. Although Playmates never got as obscure in its character selection as you often see in Hasbro's Star Wars line (unfortunately), it did manage to include many of the more prominent secondary characters. Let's check them out (in order of appearance, of course).

Toy Pix: Axis-Enhanced Echo Morph with Phase Arms (Glyos)

When a new Glyos wave is released, I can often only afford to buy one of each item in a wave. Of course, that means that when I finally get my shipment and start playing around with the different configurations, I often find myself thinking, "Man, if I had just bought one more set of blank, I could make this dude super-awesome." So, with this past Glyos release, I decided to go crazy (at least, for me) and buy two sets of metallic Axis Joints and Phase Arms.