Chinese knock-off Legos are a trip

In my ongoing search for cheap Battlefleet Gothic miniatures, I was directed to Ali Express. Its a website hosting mainly Chinese small businesses. Sadly, I keep missing the boat on BGF minis, which go up and come down on a seemingly random basis, but in the process I have discovered a source of comedy gold I never even knew existed:

Knock-off Legos. I mean, have you ever made a Lego diorama and thought that what it really, really needed...

… was a WWII-era German anti-aircraft emplacement! This isn't even the only Second World War figures the store stocks, they do entire Lego infantry platoons for all sides of the conflict. Oh, and speaking of fascists rendered with plastic yellow skin, though somewhat more realistically in this case:

Donald Trump mini-figure with choice of hair or MAGA hat. Its the superhero branding that really makes the comedy. They even painted one of those meme expressions on his face. I have to admit, I kind of want one but not as much as I want this...

Someone made a Ben Reilly figure complete with hoodie! This one I might actually buy on the excuse of testing the oayment system and delivery time for this service. Also, just the fact that after all these years someone has actually made Scarlet Spider merch is more pleasing to me than it reasonably should be. In fact, the levels of nerd that some of these stores reach is actually half the fun. This character set was good for a lot of laughs when I showed it to some friends...

Yes, “Lt. Zulu” is a funny transliteration error but just take a look at Edward Rayburn in the bottom right. My friends and I had some real fun riffing on “The Adventures of Edward Rayburn” until I took a moment to Google him and discovered that, yes, there was actually an Edward Rayburn in Star Trek. He's only in one episode of Star Trek (TOS: What Are Little Girls Made Of?) but he is 100% a canon character, just some random one-episode security officer, and now he has a toy. That's sweet. No idea how it came to pass but it is sweet.

On a more random note...

… there in the bottom right hand corner, the Edward Rayburn Position as it will now be called, South African Military Dictator Batman. This store actually has a wealth of strange Batman variants such as...

… Pride Batman...

… “Glam Metal Batman”, which is perhaps the best deployment of the Joel Schumacher costume design ever conceived...

… Fairy Princess Batman with tutu and painted on booties...

… and, my personal favourite, Batman in a zebra costume with, for no logical reason, a luminous head component. This all pales in comparison, though, to the “Avengers Horror Movie Pack”:

This, as you can see, contains a whole two members of the Marvel Cinematic Universe plus the Joker, Ash, Freddie Kreuger, Chucky, Jack Skellington and some random Sith. If nothing else, this leads me to believe that in China there's a very different popular reading of Nightmare Before Christmas and Big Hero Six.

Now, if I can just catch this website in the ten minutes a week they have Space Marine Strike Cruisers up, I will be a happy man. And if I don't I'll just be a man with a Scarlet Spider mini-figure in the post, which amounts to the same thing. 

Twenty years late, Marvel, but thank you

(Spoilers for Dead No More: The Clone Conspiracy and suchlike tie-in stuffs)

Nostalgia is a funny thing. I realise, intellectually, that the Clone Saga was crap. It was an incestuous, over-extended, poorly edited mess. By the end it was so confused that Marvel even published a parody one-shot about how desperate they were to end the thing.

And yet I started reading comics around the time of the Clone Saga. There is a part of me that will always feel, deep down in my gut, that Spider-Man is a blond guy called Ben who works in a coffeeshop not this Parker guy with his science and his journalism. I know I'm wrong, I know that I just happened to start reading during a replacement hero storyline but part of me will always believe (as I was, originally, meant to) that Ben Reilly is the one, true Spider-Man.

He also had the best Spider-Man costume. You can keep your classic look and your black costume, this is the best design.

True, he was only Spider-Man for a year but back then that meant four monthly series, team-up books, crossovers and the quarterly Spider-Man Unlimited oversized specials. There was, quite simply, a lot of material where Ben was Spider-Man and once he died he was just sort of forgotten. He just wasn't mentioned for about ten years, the forgotten Spider-Man.

Then, at some point, enough time had passed and suddenly Ben Reilly was a nostalgia object. He got a mention here and there; there was a Brand New Day storyline about his wilderness years; his nemesis Kaine made a comeback and even started using Ben's Scarlet Spider identity; and, an alternate universe version made an appearance in Spider-Verse. He was a legitimate part of the franchise's history and, as a fan of the character, that was kind of satisfying.

Plus, those appearances were really good. The Brand New Day storyline treated Ben's years as a homeless drifter with seriousness, looking into what a Spider-Man with a hell of a lot less privilege would look like as the Clone Saga-era stuff only managed on its best day. The Spider-Verse version took a different tac, examining the renewed optimism of Ben's time in the Spidey suit, a Ben reclaiming a life that wasn't Peter's but was a full and fulfilling life after his years on the road. Even the Kaine version of Scarlet Spider was pretty entertaining.

So, as much as I'm sure Ben will be a very different character after The Clone Conspiracy, I feel confident Marvel has a plan to honour the past and origins of the character. Plus, writing duties on this thing are with Peter David, a man basically known these days for coming up with innovative angles on existing properties that take them in different directions that still feel like natural progressions of past eras (X-Factor, Spider-Man 2099, Young Justice, to name a few).

Though I'm not entirely sold on the built-in hoodie. I know where they're coming from, referencing the original Scarlet Spider costume but... meh.