battlecat

They have the movie Iron Man listed as a "HasbroToyShop.com exclusive" so maybe that's why they haven't shown up on other toys sites? Which would be fine, if they shipped outside the States... LAME. If anyone spots them anywhere else, please post...

Thanks for posting the photos JadOnTV. After being preoccupied with all the other upcoming mates, now I'm just excited to get these sets again... Anyone who has these already -- is the gold paint on the top right Iron Man different on his arms and torso, or is that just the light hitting it differently? And if it is different shades, is it particularly noticeable in person? Aside from that, these look awesome. It's actually kind of funny how much stuff is crammed into each pack!

Thanks MiniFiend. Here's a better photo of the back of the Optimus box, showing all of TF wave 1: http://sdcc08.asmzine.com/gallery/hasbro/m...s/IMG_1917.html I still think that Bumblebee's pretty bad, but the Soundwave is cool. That Iron Man does look awesome (the bright convention lights really sell it too!)... I hope there's enough left over for toy websites to pick them up, it's one of the few bigger exclusives I haven't seen up for preorder either.

Now that I can see the Wolverine mask (the other photo had it in the shadows) I really like it, but it would be much better as a slip-on so that you could have the Skrull chin beneath it... Jewel seems to have some weird double-breasts action going on, hopefully just a printing mistake?

Looks like. I can't believe we're getting 6 waves and 6 box sets (so far) this year... that's 66 new Marvel mates, not including all the variations thanks to the extra pieces they're throwing in these days.

If you go look at the SDCC gallery at www.action-figure.com, and click on the Indiana Jones idol photo (I'd go back and find the link to post, but my ancient computer's taking forever to load certain sites today) you can see part of the back of the Optimus box, with Bumblebee... Now I'm not saying you *should* go look -- the best thing I can say about him is that he makes me like the Optimus Mugg a lot more...

There's close-ups of the Spidey wave in the SDCC gallery at www.action-figure.com... I guess they did extend Venom's weird scowl into a grin, although I wish the whole thing was white, like his first appearances in the comics, instead of the extended bit being red... I think he's great overall though, best Venom yet. I'm with winkerbean on the the Cassidy resemblance, he's got that huge psycho smile and everything!

Yeah, you can see him better in this one: http://i.marvelousnews.com/g/index.php?mod...00&start=20 but yeah he's a custom too, judging from the "toms" part of the sign that's visible... For a minute I thought they might be starting an H.P. Lovecraft line or something I have no talent for customs, but I would've liked one of those squid guys! Too bad...

Still not sure about Transformer Muggs, but the Joes look way cooler than I thought they would... and Human Torch looks very trippy, in a good way.... Anyone know what's up with the guy with a purple octopus for a head, or the monster thing that Human Torch is looking at?

Good job finding the photos so quick, Are-Jay! The Spidey wave def looks better "in person", but are there any actual changes to the designs? The photo's pretty small on my screen, so I can't really tell... And wow, the Invasion set is awesome, and doesn't rely on old parts/designs at all like I thought it would. Never expected a fully new Phoenix! I was happy with the old design but they really nailed it this time... Judging by the photos, the alternate faces are more "flashes" of Skrull, rather than the head split down the middle between regular face and full-on Skrull. I was worried the green would show too, but this seems like an inventive solution...

From what I can remember, Jewel was offered a spot in the Avengers but turned it down. But Jessica's clearly been a big character in the New Avengers book (and the lead up to the invasion) if not an official member of the team. I sort of get what you're saying, but I think more people would probably prefer a bunch of new characters/versions over another Iron Man, Spider-Woman, Fury, Cap etc., even if those characters are more main to the series. It is a Secret Invasion set -- the appearance of the characters in this set was the biggest twist in the comic. And if you want Skrully versions of more main characters, they're giving you the extra heads, so... re: Yellow Jacket and Black Widow I can see what you're saying, but they're lower profile Marvel characters, so maybe they didn't want more than one of those (ie. Jewel)? Plus Yellow Jacket would need new sculpting, and maybe there was a limit on that for this set after all the new sculpts we've had lately? Or maybe not, but I mean who knows what the considerations were? Oh and Wolverine just makes sense because if you turn his Skrull head around you'll actually see it under his mask -- unlike Iron Man or Spidey. EDIT: Forgot, he's also the only one wearing a (slightly) different costume in the series. Action-figure.com said they were supposed to be on display for a preview night tonight, so hopefully photos will be on the web tomorrow...

That was my first thought too -- they just need to extend the corners of the mouth up into that crooked grin he had in his early appearances and I think he'd look fine. Even without that fix, I think this one's a much better attempt than the awful face on the Venom in that Hydroman boxset... and I like the original Venom mate, but his really stylized mouth makes him look weird next to the more recently produced Spidey villains. Otherwise I like this whole wave, except for the slip-on masks.

True, but I can't imagine they anticipated a set that would have this specific a need for them... this isn't alternate expressions so much as alternate species! I wonder which hairpiece they'll use for Phoenix though, since the Dark Phoenix hair covers less than half the head at the bottom... karamazov80, you can always think of green Phoenix as Rachel Summers, which is a different character. She wore the green outfit at one point, and I identify it much more with her than Jean Grey...

Going by the series, they just mean how he looked before he turned into a cat -- regular blue Beast.

I'm glad you changed your avatar pickle, because now I'll be hunting down that variant ... Alphona's probably my favorite comics artist. I'd heard he was off the interiors for the Mary Jane relaunch, but I guess he's still doing some cover work?

Wow, there's not that many undone Marvel mates that I'm really jonesing for, but between the Spidey villains, the Avengers box and now this, DST is really cutting down that list! And even though I hoped for one in the recent speculation thread, I never realistically thought they'd do a Jessica Jones mate, that's just awesome... EDIT: Just took a quick look at that speculation thread, and it looks like DSTChuck was only half kidding when he said he'd want Spider-man and Wolverine ... Personally given the other 3, I'm happy to get another Wolvie. His mask will work well with a Skrull head.

I just have to say that Elektra is one bad ass ninja. Also, leave it to Bendis to

I DO like Thundercats, and I SHOULD not have looked in this thread... unfortunately warnings like that always seem so enticing. I was going to make some lame joke about curiosity killing the Thundercat, but instead I think I'll just go stare directly into the sun. (Also, I once left a friend alone with my computer and she set that Optimus photo as my background. Even worse was the time another friend set my background as a full frontal nude photo of Tony Danza. I have mean friends.)

Wow, nice display Are-Jay! I love how you used the box art for a backdrop, I never thought to keep them. Did your Boba Fett come with a blaster, or did you swipe it from another Mugg? Pickle, I had assumed the same thing about the silver leg being a replacement after Cloud City, but I guess not. Also, didn't they give Threepio a gold makeover at the end of Ep. IV? (And his original one at the end of Ep. II come to think of it...) You'd think they would have swapped out his junk leg at one of those points (or maybe they did?). Never really given it much thought before

God, no DS either... Pokemon are you kidding me I'm with you on everything but Link talking -- no matter what voice they chose it would just sound wrong to me, after playing him for 15 years or something without one. I'm still a little emotionally scarred from that first "it's amee, Mario!" many years ago

That sucks about Nintendo, haven't gone through the coverage on any sites yet so thanks for the summary. Do you know if they had anything more interesting announced for the DS? The only thing I'll say that's (slightly) in the their defence is re: showing the fans some Mario or Zelda footage -- while I'm sure they're working on games for both these properties (or at least the Zelda) I can't blame them for not showing us the very early stages, considering how much crap they've gotten online thanks to doing that in the past. People got so angry about the Twilight Princess delays only because we'd seen the game so much earlier at E3, and I'm sure you can still find fans bitching somewhere about how Mario 64 2 never came out, even though it was never really in development.... So I can understand them not showing us those two until they're further along, but yeah they clearly should've had something big to fill that void. Like you say, Kid Icarus or a better Animal Crossing would've been perfect.

What did the Gray in Hulk represent? I somehow missed that one too, but liked the other 2 a lot -- Daredevil mostly just for the art, but the Spidey story was a lot of fun, like Trekker said, and gave me a much better idea of Gwen as a character (rather than just that girl who fell off a bridge). Another good retro Spider-man miniseries is Dan Slott's Spider-man/Human Torch: I'm With Stupid. It's got the Spider-mobile and everything Tim Sale's awesome, it was great to see his stuff pop up in Heroes... he's done some great little sketchbooks too, can be tricky to get ahold of but well worth it.

That's a good point about why they didn't just replace Sentry, hadn't really thought about it beyond him being too difficult to capture quietly... would also explain how Black Widow was able Anyway, from the points made in the last few posts, this looks more convoluted than I thought... plus when you throw in the possibility of tie-in writers misinterpreting Bendis' take on it, I guess I'll just wait and see how he explains it all...

This thread is only posted in after a SI issue comes out, and is clearly a discussion of the series, so I'm not sure why spoilers are needed. Same as I would never open the Doctor Who UK thread, since it hasn't started airing here yet... but maybe that's just me. I'll try to spoiler it up from now on. We did see though, so it seems the suped-up Skrulls can at least switch back to their form with the stolen powers intact... I'm with you on this being one of the best events I've read... I thought Civil War was great too, but the last event I really enjoyed before that was Age of Apocalypse, which I think was the only decent crossover in the '90s for Marvel. I also think of the Avengers tie-ins as basically part of the miniseries itself -- review sites like IGN keep going on about how the content of the tie-ins should just be in the main book, but really it's all one big thing. The New/Mighty stories are certainly not about the current Avengers teams, Bendis is just using those books to look at everything that lead up to the invasion, while keeping the main series chronological. I think it's kind of brilliant, structurally.

I'm not sure, but didn't the Skrull that was meant to replace Echo (a while back in New Avengers) transform into her during the fight? I don't think they have to have the 'replacee' already captured to perform that ceremony, maybe they just need some genetic material or something? Or maybe they just take on the look of the hero, capture them, then do the ceremony to take their actual powers... Oh okay, cool. Yeah, I didn't think Fury'd believe her if she said she wasn't a Skrull, I just meant he must have known she was on the list of those being replaced if he just shot her like that. Or maybe not -- he is Nick Fury Morphing into a Shield agent is just like pretending to be any other human though, which the Skrulls have always been able to do. I'm no expert on the Skrulls, but it seems like outside of the Super Skrull having the Fantastic Four powers, they couldn't replicate super powers before this new ceremony thing. Plus like you said they can now evade magic/Wolverine, and it also seems to tie into the religion they're now practicing, whatever that is...