Comic Con Exclusives 2010

By Devin T. Quin

Arg! T’is time again for the San Diego Comic Con, the biggest and most expensive trip most nerds will take outside of their parents basements this year. If you haven’t bought your tickets yet then take heart, because you can’t anymore. I’m sure the dang thing will be totally sold out by the time we go to press. Did I say “heart?” I meant “valium.” Don’t worry, you can always pre-order for next year….OH WAIT, sorry, pre-order for next year has probably sold out now, too.

Well, you can always do what I do: steal clothes out of my grandfather’s closet, pour talcum powder into my hair and flash a homemade badge as I power-walk through the gate, brandishing a cane and pretending to be Roy Thomas. “I reinvented Conan the Barbarian, dammit!” I scream. I don’t think anyone’s caught on to me yet.

“Why go through all the bother?” you ask?

Because the con is a hotbed of exclusive swag, items so magical and rare that you could finance the overthrow of a small third-world nation by reselling the con exclusives on ebay!  I hear they once offered a limited edition Megatron that transformed into an actual WORKING pistol! This one time I hear they sold finger bones from Batman “Creator” Bob Kane’s actual fingers! THIS ONE TIME I swear to god they were selling the actual bags of sand drained from the costumes from the desert scenes from Star Wars: A New Hope! Yup, I own a five hundred dollar bag of sand that was in Anthony Daniel’s foot!

What do you mean “Do they still sell Comic Books at this thing?” Who cares about the comic books, man?! This is the San Diego Comic Con!

PREMIUM GOODS

Mattel is always great for the exclusives, and this year is no exception. They’ll be continuing their line of fan pleasing He-Man Masters of the Universe action figures with not one but TWO brand new, never before seen characters. From the depths of Eternia’s deepest and most mysterious ravines comes Pit•Hayr, the evil master of pits, hair and the joining of both! Pit•Hayr uses his prehensile under-arm follicles to climb and swing through rocks and trees in the employ of Skeletor! His opposing number on He-Man’s roster is the other excluive: Cac•Tor, the walking cactus! Cac•Tor comes from the dry heat of Eternia’s sand dunes and is completely covered in sharp barbs and spikes. His biggest action feature is that he’ll always stay in mint condition, even if you open the box for the simple reason that you can’t pick him up to play with him. Dang Thorns!

Hasbro, meanwhile, has decided less is more and plans on blending their G.I. Joe exclusive with their Star Wars exclusive.  Limited to a run of 1,500 boxes are the latest recruits to the G.I. Joe team: Han “Shoots First” Solo, Chewie “Hairball” Bacca, Luke “Choke-Hold” Skywalker and C “Metalman” 3PO. COBRA also gets new rank and file in the form of Jabba “Two-Tons” the Hutt, their new money launderer and the Wampa, their new arctic combat specialist. Look out, Snow-Job!

Sideshow collectibles is offering a 6” action figure based on the TV show “Small Wonder.” The figures are free with any purchase, and not just at the Sideshow booth. Someone at Sideshow really loved that show and ordered up a million figures. Before anyone noticed they had arrived at headquarters…so now they’re just giving them away. Any left over will be quietly dumped into the Pacific Ocean at the end of the Con.

I hear there’s an exclusive Stan Lee action figure that’s life size and says all of Stan’s catch phrases. It is one per customer, as there’s only one. Don’t fret if it resists your attempts to take it home, or screams “Help, I’m being kidnapped” instead of “Excelsior” at first. He’s an old guy and you should be able to over-power him. I mean “it.”

Another amazing exclusive at the con can only be purchased from a shady looking guy behind the dumpster in San Diego’s famous red light district. It’s not an action figure, or a giclee print from the Silverhawks…in fact it’s not really comic book related at all, but I think for the price it’s one of the best values in the whole town. Tell him Unkiedev sent you and he might knock a few hundred off of every Kilo you purchase!

Of course, the most amazingly hard to find item at the San Diego comic con, perhaps more valuable than any Mighty Mugg of the 11^th Doctor Who or a Minimates set of the Filmation Ghostbusters is the self satisfaction of saving your money, sanity and personal relationships by not going to the San Diego Comic Con in the first place. Maybe THAT’S what I’ll do this year, instead.