I still don’t have that other piece ready (image work’s finished, though; here’s a preview), but here’s another quick Crayon Haiku. Admittedly, the reason that I’ve been largely preoccupied this weekend is pictured here: Gorilla Grodd, otherwise known as King Kong with about a billion coats of black and grey paint. In keeping with my continuing DC comics/character obsession, I’ve been following the DC Universe Classics toyline very closely (despite not being able to find the toys in stores for the life of me, grrr) — and one of the things that’s made me rather annoyed is that they decided to make Gorilla Grodd the build-a-figure for the second wave.

Now, I can see making Grodd a BAF. Despite the fact that all of the stats I can find on the ‘net put him at 6’6″ and 300 lbs., a good chunk of the recent comic depictions of him have made him this huge hulking beast thing with red eyes and an appetite for human flesh. Okay. But the second wave of DCUC figures is incredibly lame — with the exception of Harley Quinn, which I do want, these are the characters that, in their DC Direct incarnations, I frequently find marked down to $6 or less at Suncoast and even then nobody wants them. I could see going for Black Manta too (though I suspect that I’ll be able to snag the recent DCD version of him on the cheap in the coming weeks, and I’m not particularly concerned if my background characters are superarticulated or not), and I know folks like Aquaman (I don’t), but this is still a crappy wave. So me spending $50 on these losers just to get Grodd? Not gonna happen. And there is a DC Direct Grodd currently on the shelves, which I pondered getting when I ran into it a couple of weeks ago, but I’m really not a fan of the howling at the moon headsculpt. What’s up with that? I could see picking it up on clearance — if it gets there — but I wanted me a Grodd now.

So I picked up one of the billion half-price King Kong figures on the pegs at KB Toys — the “superarticulated” Gripping Kong — and was using him as a stand-in for Grodd. But then I decided that he looked like he’d had the shit scratched out of him by a Catwoman and Vixen double team and decided to paint over all of the scratches and cuts on the original figure. That led to a complete repaint, and multiple coats and sprays and several days later I’m calling it quits because otherwise I’d still be mucking with the darned thing (as I was just two hours ago). So here he is — Gorilla Grodd, as he will be seen henceforth on Scary-Crayon if I ever do any toy comics in which his presence is required. Long live the super gorilla.

Now all I need is a Flash figure to go with him! And a Luthor, and a Grundy, and the rest of the goddamned Legion of Doom. Ugh.

And I still might end up going back and painting his eyes red. At the very least, I think he needs a purple cape. 😛

Okay, all for now — since I’m so done with Grodd for now, hopefully I’ll resume work on that article and have it up within the next few days. That’s the plan, anyway.

Oh, and I’ll add it to the links when I get enough links in the pool to update the block, but if you’ve found any of my ranting about the DCUC line to be remotely interesting — or are a toy enthusiast in general — I recommend checking out Superarticulated. Bogleech is also a pretty neat site that I intend to link in the hopefully not-too-distant future. 🙂

All for now, then. Ja!