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WAM!
2007-03-29 15:44:37

Jen Grunwald brought me in an artifact from the past, well-timed given some of the stuff I talked about in that Bendis interview that saw print last week. It was a packet of stuff sent out to members of WAM!, Marvel's short-lived fan club from the early '90s, the "Wild Agents of Marvel."

This particular packet featured a behind-the-scenes look at the development of the latest line of Marvel Toybiz action figures, including the second X-Men assortment and the first X-Force line. The first section is a transcript of a meeting I attended on 1/10/92 about the various features each figure should have. My brilliant contribution to this discussion included lines such as:

"It would make more sense to mount the light device inside Magneto's belt, rather than into his arm."

"Now, Forge has one bionic hand and one bionic leg. We have to make sure on which is which. They way they've done it here (indicating control art), we only see half the figure. We want to make sure which is bionic and which isn't."

"The only problem I found with the lifting action is that like in the case with Colossus, it worked with the barbell. But when he didn't have the barbell, the action made it look like he was saying, 'Why me?'"

"He is more like a mastermind, plotting and scheming. He lets other people do his dirty work. I guess you could package him with three other guys and let him stand off in a corner..."

Also included in the packet were schematic drawings of many of the figures, as well as the control art from which they were adapted. This is of interest because most of the control art was drawn by me. At the time, the X-Force characters were brand new, and so no usable three-views existed yet. So, taking a stack of Mark Gruenwald's three-view boards that he'd printed up for the three-ring binder version of the Marvel handbook, I sat down and executed the control art myself. I can vaguely remember trying to figure out how some of the X-Force costumes worked, because Rob Liefeld would draw them differently based on what angle you were seeing them from--which was fine in comics, but wouldn't work when you were making a three-dimensional toy.

More later.

Tom B

Weird. I was Wild Agent of Marvel way back then, and I only recently found that printout thing while I was cleaning up my place. I dont think I ever bothered to read it when I first got it (I really dont know what they were thinking when they sent it out, did they really expect the average teenage fanclub member to read 30 pages+ documenting in excruciating detail the minutes of a toy design meeting?) but it was really fascinating to me as a historical document now.

Bob Harras is in the meeting as well, and Avi Arad gets mentioned a lot - already at that point an influential figure on Marvels multimedia development as I think he was the head of Toy Biz at this point.

WAM was a bit of a disater really - this is just oione exampole of its weirdness. I mean why would the average teenage WAM member have been interested in a toy design meeting? especially given that they gave little context for the meeting or why they sent it out. I cant remember getting more than two deliveries of WAM material - as huge disappointtment to my 13 yerar old self and it seemed as if Marvel never really knew what they were doing

It is pretty fascinating to see you and Bob Hsarras backin those days w

Posted by hsheridan on 2007-01-15 13:01:20

oops
I dont know how that happened but I somehow managed to post that 8 times by accidentally hitting some key... please Tom, if you see this, wipe them all I didnt mean to post it yet!

Posted by hsheridan on 2007-01-15 13:04:30

i remeber these figures i know i had wolverine cyclops colossus (who was a bit wasted with his lifting ability, i always moved his arms in different positions to make him dance) i also had a crap gambit whose karate kick leg just wouldn't stay vertical

Posted by steelnexus on 2007-01-15 13:16:23

Hey Tom, is Marvel even going to do anything similar to WAM again? Like a fan club or such.

Posted by Blue_Shield on 2007-01-26 11:41:59

Poor Rob
Poor Rob the guys gone though more critizism then bush himself, you know I liked those toys at the time, but I found the earlier figures that came out in the late 80's were pretty good. I think it was the 80's it was like the first line out and they were amazing to look at, they couldnt bend there limbs but the body anatomy was perfect on them. Very classical looks to them. It would be nice if marvel started selling them in sets again.

Posted by terciera on 2007-04-03 10:52:47

X-Force?
man I loved that title, it was brand new with amazing charcters that were willing to do what ever to get the job done. They were like Mutant Mercs just doing jobs, and the timing of it coming out was perfect. I mean cable was cable with out all that other stuff he ended up in, and shatterstar was a killing warrior until all that confusing he's really a human kid or a genetic warrior or he was longshots son......now thats what should have stuck that would have been awsome, him bieng the child of Dazzler and longshot. I really started to enjoy the story it was heading to about them individualy being conflicted in there own sort of way, and how as a group they would fix each others individual problems as team but never as family. Marvel tryed to do that only it was so brief and very fast and then the team just seperated and it was like Whow what just happened.

Posted by terciera on 2007-04-03 11:04:28

Array

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About this blog:
Ramblings and musings from the mind of Tom Brevoort. "It won’t be clean. It won’t be fun. It mostly won’t be coherent."

About the author:
Tom Brevoort is Executive Editor for Marvel Comics, and oversees such titles as New Avengers, Civil War, and Fantastic Four.


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