The Captain Britain wall

Before we moved, I had the clever idea that I would frame some of my favourite comics and let the rest go into storage.  I searched for comic frames, decided they were overpriced, found Youseph Tanha's Ikea Comic Book Photo Frame Hack post, discovered that the Ikea in Burlington didn't have those frames, and then finally discovered that Dollarama did have the size and picked up a few.  And then our move was bumped up by a month and the project fell by the wayside.

But the frames (and the longboxes) made their way south with me, and this week I finally put a few of them together along with a couple of figures in/on a shadowbox.  Making the cut for round one (I still have a couple more frames waiting to be used) were issues #1 and #100 of Excalibur and #1 of Captain Britain and MI:13.   I'm not 100% sold on the spacing (I may rehang to get the gaps a little more even), but overall I'm pleased!

On top of the box is my mystery Captain Britain figure - I picked him up from the loose figure box at Chinook and Hobby West back in 2008ish, and there were a couple of releases with the same look, so I don't actually know which one he's from.  The smaller figure in the 70s-style uniform is from the recent "great battles" release, which I found in the clearance bin at Winners about a year ago.

Visiting toys: Mulder, Scully and Krycek (Sideshow Toys X-files)

Krycek's ready to stab some shape-shifters

My sister and I were huge X-files fans back in the day.  Even now, when the show's been off the air for more than a decade, when we get together we randomly insert quotes into our conversations.

But even so, back when Sideshow toys released their X-files line we passed on them - the $65 price tag seemed steep when there were still $15 movie tie-in action figures floating around. 

And aside from that, my sister isn't much of a collector - being more of a minimalist, a doll would be out of place in her house. But as a pathologist, the ghost of Scully has haunted her:  When she finished med school, a surprising number of people asked her if she was specializing in pathology because of CSI;  "No, because of X-files" she'd joke.  The joke was repeated often enough that we started joking that it was too bad there wasn't a figure of Scully in scrubs that she could put on her desk at work and point to.

"But I don't wanna do an autopsy!"

Fast-forward a couple of years, to 2013, when I decided to pick up the Krycek doll on the secondary market (I wanted to add him to my "evil amputee" shelf, which is a story for another day).   And while I was checking out the ebay listings, I noticed that there actually was a version of the Scully doll in scrubs - "Autopsy Scully"!  So of course I decided I'd found the perfect Christmas gift for my sister.  And when I found a listing for both that doll and the Mulder one, I went for it.  Unfortunately they didn't arrive early enough for me to take along on my holiday visit to Toronto, so the dolls are still with me for now.


On the doll quality: The likenesses aren't great - they all look vaguely like the actors, but are all just a little off.  The proportions are also a little strange, although I think if they had slightly longer necks and legs then they'd all look a little less blocky.  That said though, the dolls are very well articulated and have nicely detailed outfits.  My Krycek doll was still in his original box and came with a branded stand and some nicely detailed accessories.

Out of the box: Sarah (Volks SD16 Daria)

Her default outfit and hair.

This is another doll where having slightly off-trend tastes made the acquisition so much easier:  Your average Volks Dolpa exclusive involves luck and lotteries to purchase, but Daria wasn't the most popular offering, and as a result she was available for preorder.  No lottery or second-hand searching necessary!

I don't know why she didn't sell-out; She's a lovely doll - fabulous face and a fantastically detailed fullset outfit (just the shoes are a work of art!) - but hey, there's no accounting for tastes.

Lovely though her default outfit is, I ultimately ended up keeping her primarily in very casual, very modern clothing.  Until the move, I generally kept her displayed with Grant (my Dollmore Glamor Model Suntan Mettaa - that's them up there in my site header), but since he's still boxed up, she's currently on display solo.

Modern style, with an Angell-Studio wig

For whatever reason, she's the doll that gets the most comments from friends and relatives who check out the doll collection, and the feature that gets the bulk of it are her eyes - her "big, sad eyes" as a friend of my husband's said.   I don't think she's particularly sad-looking myself (wistful, maybe) so I find the fact that so many people comment on it a little amusing.

Out of the box: Mmabatho (Iplehouse YID Lt Cocori)

I love how ridiculous this hat is.

This girl was the first female BJD to join my collection, and she was my first attempt at a hybrid.  She was actually my reason for joining the Den of Angels forum - I told a doll-owning friend that I regretted missing the general order period and she told me that there was a head for sale on DoA.

The head wasn't in perfect shape - the original owner had left the head on display in a lit cabinet and it had significant greening, but at the time there weren't any other options for getting the doll (outside of the normal skin pre-orders), so I decided to chance it.  And honestly, the green is apparent in person, but generally she still photographs well.

The second challenge was finding a matching body.  At the time I hadn't done nearly as much exploring into the options, and ended up going with the lowest priced option and put her on a Resinsoul body.  People who love the whole sueding-and-wiring process generally rave about these bodies, but being lazy I honestly think it's way too light and floppy.

Her current wig

If I were buying a body now, I'd probably get an Island doll tan body instead:  I prefer the engineering on that one, and I believe the colour would be equally close in that it would be slightly too dark rather than the slightly too light colour of the RS Coffee body (Island doll tan is actually very close to the newer Iplehouse Lt brown).  But since she's been on the floppy body for nearly 4 years now, I'll probably just leave her as she is.

A new aquisition: Daken (Marvel Legends Dark Wolverine)

He's glaring at you.

I was looking through action figure collection photos on Flickr the other day and noticed this guy in someone's collection.  My first reaction was to assume that it was a custom work, because considering that the Daken comic was cancelled, and he's not a character in the movies or the TV series, would there have been demand for an official figure?

But apparently the demand was there, because this is a real thing!  So of course I bought him, because I loved his solo series while it lasted - it had all the soap opera + action that makes a bad/good superhero book (Vague spoilers here: planting bombs in schools!  Tricking people into fighting!  Psychopath girlfriends and power-stealing boyfriends!  Silly crossovers!).





In any case, the figure is decent - well-articulated, clearly looks like the character (although I think the tattoos are a little wrong), and included the random extra of the arm of a build-it-yourself figure.

I did think it was a little weird that they only used the name "Dark Wolverine" on the packaging.  If someone who isn't familiar with the comics saw the package, would they know it was a different character and not just Wolverine with a mohawk?

Invasion of the fashion dolls

Opening the boxes

I've never had any fashion dolls - even as a kid, they were just not my thing (sure, the occasional barbie-type gift might pass through my hands, but ultimately they would be passed along to my sister).  But having seen so many interesting ones lately (the perils of meeting BJD collectors whose entry to doll collecting came through fashion dolls rather than action figures), I've found myself tempted by a few.

And now that I have access to more dealers and more reasonable shipping costs (crossing the border does have its benefits!) I found a couple of dolls on sale and decided to see what they're like.


The dolls in question:  "TJ" from Integrity Toys' mid-range Dynamite Girls line and "Martha Jones" from Tonner's Doctor Who licensed line.  Interestingly, despite the difference in size and company, they were packed in exactly the same fashion.

Dynamite Girls TJ

I was most impressed with the Dynamite Girl - she's tiny, but the face paint is still quite detailed.  The articulation is fairly natural, her hair is decent and the outfit is fantastic - loads of detail, decent materials, and so many individual pieces!  Just the details on her tights are worth raving about - I was very impressed at the quality for something so small scale.

She also fits nicely on the included stand, which is always good (the stand itself had both saddle and waist attachments)  I'm not sure if the differences between this line and Integrity's higher priced Fashion Royalty line are worth it though - from what I've heard the differences are primarily in the accessories rather than the dolls and clothes, and that doesn't strike me as a huge selling feature. In any case, I was very pleased with this doll, and would probably have been happy with her even at full price (I ordered her at 25% off).

Tonner Doctor Who Martha Jones

Unfortunately, I was less than thrilled by the Tonner.  The doll itself is of good quality - a nice smooth plastic with an even colour,  but it looks nothing like the actress.  In fact, the face is so undetailed that it could be anyone - she's a pretty enough doll, but you don't look at her and automatically recognize the character.   That would be forgivable if the focus of the doll were the outfit, but the details on the clothing were minimal.

Considering that this is a fairly large doll, the simplicity of the jeans and jacket was disappointing - there are really no details on either (there is a simple pattern on the tank under the jacket, but again: standard quality).  The zippers on her boots were also a challenge to unzip (they needed to be opened in order to get them on the doll).  As with TJ, she came with a stand, but it's saddle-type only and because of the thickness of the denim, the doll doesn't actually fit on the stand.

Because of all of that I'm not really certain that she was a good value, even at the 60% off price that I paid.  I certainly would never have wanted to pay the $175.00 sticker price.  Still, she's not a bad quality doll - just a bit generic.

Out of the box: Murad (Iplehouse EID NC Shadow Chase)

I missed this guy when Iplehouse first released him, and pre-CDS, that meant watching the secondary market for ages - I actually missed this very doll once (I messaged the owner just hours after she accepted an offer from someone else), but then that owner later sold him and so he came to join my doll posse (minus his chimera parts at that point, but I wouldn't have used those anyway, so I wasn't complaining).

Despite being third-hand, he's actually in very good shape still - the hook on one ankle broke, but that's a common issue with the EIDs, and so it's not really cause for concern.  Everything else is near-perfect.  I've heard of dolls from this same release who went purple, but his colour is actually near-identical to my 2012 JID Boris, so I think it's safe to say that it's aging quite well.

He's become the doll that I've put through the most reinventions as well, so let's take a look at them:

Day 1: Painted as the last owner's character ("censored" with a cigar, because ha!)

I actually loved how owner #2 had painted the eyebrows, so the real challenge was trying to keep them while taking off the rest of the face - it worked reasonably well, I feel.

Look #1

Look #1:   big blue eyes and orange-red hair (the default wig from my SD13 Heath - despite the huge size difference, they actually wear the same wig size).

At this point I had no EID-size clothing, so I had to squeeze him into anything that fit (the pants I'd made based on online measurements ended up being a good size too small).

Look 2 (with Angelheim Venetio)

Look #2: Same blue eyes, but now with a white fur wig.  Same clothing issues too, since my attempts at getting him into Angelheim's Elderheim sizes and Dollmore's Glamor Model clothes had a 90% failure rate.





Several more failed attempts at other-company clothing and weak attempts at sewing (finally foiled when the tension on my ancient sewing machine finally died), but this guy was finally saved when I ordered another EID (an Arvid) and bought a selection of clothes along with him.  Around the same time I snagged some smaller brown eyes as well, and thus was his look finalized (although the clothes still rotate, of course).

Final look (with Lt brown EID Arivd)