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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.

Costume changes are pretty common with comic book characters. Sometimes the changes are the result of a specific storyline (remember Superman’s electricity phase?), and sometimes they’re simply the result of evolving art styles (Wolverine’s ‘Astonishing X-Men’ costume is a perfect example).
Whatever the reason, just about every popular character in comic history has several distinct looks.

Art Asylum took this into account when planning out their Marvel releases, giving every wave one short-packed ‘variant’ figure. The variant figure is always an alternate design of one of the characters released in the wave, with the differences ranging anywhere from a different face to a completely different costume.

Marvel’s 28th wave gave us the long awaited Minimate incarnation of Wolverine’s arch-nemesis Sabretooth. Just to make sure all those patient fans were happy with the anticipated release, they added a first appearance variation as the short-packed figure.

Behind the Image:

I always enjoy a photoshop-heavy project. With this one, I wanted to showcase the comic sources of each costume design. The top image is the cover of X-Men #33, and the bottom is the cover of Iron Fist #14. To achieve the sleek, tech-y look of the image, I ran everything through various filters, and fiddled around with the layer transparencies. It was a little time consuming, and ultimately, it didn’t pay off as well as I was envisioning… but then, none of my ideas ever pan out the way I see them in my head.

On Ebay: Sabretooth