This week in toys and general Val interests:
Everyone’s favorite green giant (no not the one on the veggie cans) makes a reappearance in Diamond Select Toys’ Marvel Select line this week as we see the Hulk as he is portrayed in this summer’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” with his new stretchy grey pants. This one should be a good one especially since the Marvel Select movie figures don’t usually last very long and have limited availability. I just heard rumors that another Marvel Select Age of Ultron figure will hit by the end of May, ask me which one when you see me in the store. Sticking with the color green, we have gotten our shipment of Gamora Hot Toys figures as of this writing she is still in stock but she probably won’t last long. She is a gorgeous piece and the costume detailing alone is worth the price of admission.
I generally have a bad track record of getting into TV shows close to the end of their first runs. I don’t know why that is, but it was true of two of my all time favorite series: Star Trek: The Next Generation and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Incoming this week is a cool new blind box series from Titan featuring the latter. I am not the biggest fan of blind boxes usually but I’ve also never wanted to collect an entire run of them before. Buffy, Willow, Faith, Giles and quite a few monsters make up this set which will also include rare variants.
One TV show that I am actually not late to the party on is Arrow. I promised at the end of last week’s column that I would write about meeting Katie Cassidy aka Laurel Lance aka Black Canary at Wizard World Philadelphia, so here goes. I always enjoy meeting my favorite celebrities at conventions or concerts or signings and have only had one bad apple, all I will say is he was no Angel. It is rare that I meet a star from a hit series that is still on the air, but that changed when I met Stephen Amell at last year’s New York Comic Con.
Wizard World Philadelphia is probably my favorite convention to go to for celebrities since I’ve met so many of them there over the years. I swore after last year that I wouldn’t go to another Wizard World event because of how they mishandled everything.Then they announced Katie and I knew I had to go.
Katie Cassidy has been on my short list for a while since she has appeared in other roles I’ve enjoyed, but getting to meet Katie Cassidy the year she has become the Black Canary and just days before the season finale is icing on the cake. All I have to say about my Katie experience is that she was a dream, she’s gorgeous and was very nice and she was signing autographs and posing for photos at her table which I always prefer to the “professional” Photo op, there’s something less staged about those. I presented Katie with a copy of last week’s Weekly Planet, explaining that it was kind of about her since she and the forthcoming DC Collectibles Black Canary figured so prominently in it, and she asked if she could keep it, hopefully she liked it. One thing about the con this year is it seems to have run smoother than previous years.Last year was a nightmare when it came to photo ops with the celebrities as the pictures took forever to print out. This year, pictures printed out instantaneously and there was a lot less drama over previous years. All in all I really enjoyed myself and I finally got a picture not only with Katie but also with Stephen Amell, who I never got a picture with last year. I wouldn’t mind meeting the other Arrow cast members in time but I am pretty well set with the two lead actors.
I could keep gushing about how beautiful and wonderful Katie Cassidy was but I will just leave you with this:
