Cyberspace Comics market report, reviews and more

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.

Another Minimate with a huge fan outcry, Phoenix (Jean Grey’s most popular incarnation) finally got her day with the Secret Invasion boxed set. As I had mentioned in the past, a toy company needs to “reinvent” the products they sell every so often in order to keep a line alive and healthy. One of the methods that Art Asylum picked up over time was to design waves around current comic book events or storylines. This hasn’t become their only focus, as they have recently been dipping into the 90’s for new characters and costume variations, however, they have been consistently integrating boxed sets that compliment the big comic book happenings as they are in their prime. Through this, we have seen releases for Civil War, Secret Invasion, Dark Avengers, and even the new X-Force that is just now gearing up.

And Art Asylum isn’t just in it for the money. They do indeed like to give something back to the fans. With the Secret Invasion boxed set, they took the opportunity to give us a Minimate of Jewel, who would never have been released any other time, along with a retro release of Beast (the first Minimate of Hank McCoy that wasn’t the kitty version or the movie version), a first appearance costumed Wolverine, and of course, the ever coveted Phoenix.

Behind the Image:

This is another image that might look super-imposed, but in reality, the Minimate was simply standing in front of a computer screen displaying a painting of a traditional phoenix that I pulled off the internet.
If you are a Minimate collector, you might notice that this isn’t the face that comes with this particular release. I didn’t really like the official one, so I replaced it with the “New X-Men Phoenix” Minimate.

On Ebay: Phoenix