Random Happenstance

What About Bob?

Wait. I hated that movie, I'm not using that for a title...oh, too late now. Click pictures to enlarge!




When I was a little kid, I had a metric ton of Star Wars toys. I got about every one I could find, pretty much up to when Return of the Jedi came out, when I was supposed to be getting too old to play with toys, and the barrage of aliens and Ewoks seemed overwhelming.

And yet, in a good five or six years of hard play with those toys, they still held up damn well, but one thing always bothered me. I only had one regular Stormtrooper. Oh, he had a Death Star Commander guy for backup, and his Snowtrooper counterpart, but one lonely Stormtrooper isn't all that intimidating, is it?

This poor bastard got shot, lightsabered apart, beaten by Wookie, strafed by X-Wings, shot some more, in the battlefields of my mind and the living room; hundreds of times. They say cowards die a thousand deaths, a brave man dies but once; so he must have been the most chickenshit bastard in the universe.

Years later, when Hasbro started the new Star Wars line, I collected for a while: not every single figure, for that way lies madness, but I cherry-picked the ones I liked. And I made sure to get more than one Stormtrooper. Nowadays, with the prequels, fans can build armies of Clone Troopers, either uniform, or in any number of variants.

But, I'm mostly collecting larger figures now, which means a higher price point, which means it's more of a pain in the ass to build an army. All of this has been prelude to me saying I did not want to buy the Hydra Soldier Marvel Legend. Then, just like She-Hulk, I saw him on the racks, left him, and had an idea for a comic like twenty minutes later and had to come running back later.

For those of you who didn't read Cable & Deadpool, thanks heaps for helping it get cancelled, and you missed out on one of the more fun Marvel books in recent memory. (Admittedly, the Incredible Hercules and Iron Fist appear to be more successful fun books of late.) Bob was an agent of Hydra...pretty much just for the medical package. Kidnapped by Deadpool, he ends up becoming Wade's lackey, or pet, since he wasn't really a bad guy. Get the back issues while you can, since I'm frankly terrified that Marvel is going to try to grit up Deadpool the next time around. That would be easy enough to do: played completely straight, Deadpool would be grimmer than the Punisher, but we already have one of those.

Daily posting may be spotty for the next little bit, as financial troubles with the Youngest's therapy are cutting into happy time. Still, he's doing great, so it's worth it, and intermittent posting isn't going to hurt anything...God forbid, I might actually read some comics this next week. See you soon!