anung un rama

the san diego comicon, henceforth the sdcc, is ON and if you remember toy fair, it’s like that, only open to the public, and it also has comic books and wrestling and big summer movies and the like. but it’s no small potatoes as far as toy news.

for starters, some seriously good news and imagery of mezcos comic hellboy line. all of them look like mignola artwork and they are things of beauty. i’m totally going to buy every one, even the the hellboy variants.

series one, due in october, will consist of hellboy, lobster johson, liz sherman, and herman von klempt, the head-in-a-jar nazi scientist, with one of his robot monkeys.

series two, due who knows when, probably no earlier than january, although they might bust them out for christmas, will have roger the homonculus, johann from bprd, hellboy with jetpack, and one of the freaky aliens guarding the ogdru jahad in their crystal prison.

judging from standard toy practice anymore of saving some of the major characters for later waves to retain interest throughout a line(although also running the risk of clogging the pegs with minor characters such that some major characters never make it into large-scale retail or production…) series three ought to have another hellboy, probably abe sapien, hopefully rasputin, and maybe kate or the new guy in bprd, the zombie or whatever the hell he is. or kroenen. or a frog monster. i believe mezco was quoted as planning a villian and a hellboy in every wave, although i don’t think the ogdru jahad warden counts as a villian. anyways.

additionally there will be a gigantic 18″ rotocast hellboy to tower over all of your other toys and make them wish they had sprung forth fully formed from mignola’s head.

variants abound, with two planned exclusive hellboys from series one; a mezco store exclusive with a trenchcoat(i forget if the regular figure has one) and a figures.com exclusive battle-ravaged version. additionally, available right now at the sdcc and on their store is the transparent blue ‘ghost of lobster johnson’. luckily i have friends at the show and one of them is going to try to procure one for me. worst case, i can get one on ebay. i also ought to track down the ridulux version of movie hellboy with poly-stone hand of doom, pewter samaritan revolver, and pleather coat. silly and excessive, but neat.

at a guess, i’d say future hellboy variants in the main line will include anung-un-rama hellboy with crown of fire, hellboy with horns, baby hellboy, and probably some story-specific ones like chained hellboy with a nail in his head(the island), hellboy and the corpse(the corpse and the iron shoes), and baby hellboy with pancakes and ethereal parents(pancakes).

i can only hope someone will do a variant of the jetpack hellboy who is on fire and falling from a great height.

obviously rasputin’s ghost would make a good variant or even a second figure, as would deflated johann or ‘burning’ liz in clear orange plastic. i haven’t actually read it, but one of the hellboy prose novels had him carrying a strange old hammer, which fused to his stone hand after he was struck by lightning. hellboy wielding mjolnir would be absolutely good.