Action figures have long been a perfect compliment to comic books, since every kid (or kid at heart) has that natural desire to act out adventures with their favorite heroes off the drawn page. Every so often, a unique style of figure comes along that breaks the mold, so to speak. Each Saturday, Donny B will be showcasing various offerings from Art Asylum’s take on the ‘block figure’, with a weekly spotlight on Minimates.
As we saw last week, Art Asylum’s comic-based Minimates almost never deviate from the character continuity established in their respective comic books. The only exception to that rule of thumb is Batman, who received a few conspicuous costume variations in the C3 line. That aside, there have been no Minimate costume releases designed to exploit the toy market and the little kids who just want an exciting looking Spiderman, even if he’s neon green.
However, the bottom line for any toy company is the need to make a profit, and that is usually only possible to pull off with big name heroes that are guaranteed to sell. If collectors want lower profile characters that don’t have as much general appeal, they need to wade through a veritable river of the big guns that are more likely to catch the average buyer’s eye. So that raises a question – if Art Asylum literally needs to release at least one new version of Spidey or Iron Man or Hulk with every wave, how do they fill 35+ waves without fabricating new designs of those characters? Well, when the characters in question have decades worth of comic history, there is often plenty of pre-established costume diversity to tap into. And with more than 20 Minimate releases so far, Wolverine is a great example.
Left to right: New X-Men Wolverine, Gaijin Wolverine, Giant Sized X-Men #1 boxed set Wolverine, Patch Wolverine, Ultimate Wolverine
Behind the Image:
The visual approach on this one is clearly different than any of my other posts so far. I played around with a few ideas and eventually decided to utilize a very stylized feel for this image.
In order to set up for next week’s article, I wanted to center the focus here on the Giant Sized X-Men #1 version of Wolverine. In order to establish that, I placed him in the middle, made him larger than the others, and then muted the color schemes on the 4 background ‘mates.
On Ebay: Wolverine
Very cool design, here. It looks like a movie poster for a new, hip action movie where you have no idea what’s going on … until they explain everything in the last 5 minutes.
Comment by Doorman — July 26, 2010 @ 7:35 am
Hahaha… I had never thought of that! but now that you say it, that’s all I can see when I look at this image, lol
Comment by Donny B — July 30, 2010 @ 4:04 am