Dream Waves: WILDC.A.T.S.

Well whatta' know, it's another surprise edition of Dream Waves, the feature where I present my idea for how I'd organize and distribute a line of action figures based on a particular team/franchise.

As a personal challenge to myself, I'll dedicate the rest of the week to this feature, and see how much I can milk out of it.

This week's edition is dedicated to Jim Lee's attempt at creating his own team of X-Men, the WildC.A.T.S.

 

And yes, it's hard NOT to see how much of a blatant rip-off/homage they were. But it's not like Lee was the only one, since his fellow Image Comics founder Marc Silversti did the same thing with his X-Men-like team Cyberforce.

 Hey I enjoyed both teams for what they were, but there's no denying who "inspired" them.

Anyhoo, much like the team from last week, Planetary, the Wildc.a.t.s actually have already had their line of figures made. Back in the early 90's, thanks to them having their own animated show, the toy manufacturer Playmates created two waves of Wildc.a.t.s. figures.

 

They were pretty good for the time, both in terms of sculpt and paint, but articulation was definitely not their strong point, but to be fair, most comic action figures could hardly boast to be winners in that particular category.

Well my line would be different and much better in terms, of all three, paint, sculpt, AND articulation.

What they did have going for them was a pretty good roster of characters to choose from, both from the team and their villains.

I myself would dig deep into the roster of team, from both the original to the Alan Moore version of the team, villains included, 'cause you gotta' have someone for your figures to fight right?


Okay, here we go......



WildC.A.T.S. Wave 1:



1). Spartan W/  2 sets of heads; one plan, one battle-damaged & two sets of hands; one plain; one translucent energy hands.

2). Zealot


3). Grifter 


4). Voodoo


5). Warblade


6). Lord Hellspont

7). Pike 


BAF:  Maul




Wave 2:



1). Mr. Majestic



2). Void 


3). Lord Emp/ Jacob Marlowe


4). Tao


5). Savant

6). Condition Red


7).  Ladytron 


BAF:  Slag




Wave 3:



1). Alt Grifter


2). Alt Spartan 

3). Stripper Voodoo





































4). Alt Zealot



5). Daemonite:

6). Kenyan







































7). Attica

Whew, that was a lot, but I do believe I fit most of the original and secondary line-ups, plus their main villains.

Was there any I missed?

Baby I Was Sculpted This Way

What's up people?

Ready for a laugh?

The End

You really have to question why certain figures were sculpted the way the were back then. In Warblade's case he really got screwed over, seeing as how the other WildC.A.T.S. members had better articulation. Why Warblade drew the short-end of the straw I have no idea.

Poor bastard.....

Back-Issue Spotlight: Night Tribes One-Shot

Happy Hump Day people

(Mind blown;)

So for today's edition of the Back-Issue Spotlight, I wanted to showcase a neat little one and done
comic titled Night Tribes by Wildstorm Comics.

Ahh Wildstorm. Back when it first started back in the early 90's, it really was typical of the current Art over story stuff that came out from Image back then. But as the the late 90's showed up, so did the stories and comic that were different and mattered. Comics like Planetary, the Ellis-revitialization of Stormwatch that led to The Authority, The revitaliztion of Wildcats under Scott Lobdell, and this one-shot that could've easily been produced by Marvel in the 70's:

Night Tribes One-Shot July 1999 by Christopher Golden, Tom Sniegoski and Joyce Chin.

Here's the basic premise of the story, as excellently put by Comicvine.com:

"  The monsters from Wetworks unite as a force for good to save the world from demons! A thousand years have passed since the world's monsters, the Night Tribes, were brought together in a truce in order to defend the Earth against demonic invasion. A prophecy foretold a new demon lord, against whom each of the Night Tribes would send a "Chosen One." Now the time of the prophecy has come, and only the Night Tribes can save the planet. But can the Tribes put aside their hatreds of each other and work with WetWorks' Jackson Dane and Pilgrim to defeat their common enemy?"

How could you not be interested in something like that? I ws hooked myself, despite knowing only a little about Col. Dane and his then disbanded teammates in Wetworks. I knew he was in the original Team 7, but that was it.

Still, you didn't exactly need to know the total backstory to him and his teammate Maritza.

It was and is, very new reader-friendly.

Since I couldn't find a lot of scans on this issue, I had to take pics from my phone, so sorry for the poor quality for most of these pics ahead of time.

Here's the big bad of the story, Lord Mordor:

Yeah that fucker is just that creepy. And you thought Mojo was disgusting to look at.

He's basically trying to invade our world from Hell, using a cruel piece of construction called the Arch of Sorrows. 

It's made from the bodies of at least one representiative of the Night Tribes.

These are just some of the invidiual members of our team of heroes for the story:

The Last One(basically Frankenstein)

K'runk, a Stone God(considered a child despite it's age)

 Shem-Jazza of the Kraken with the other two

Together they team up with Col. Dane and Martiza to fight off the invading demons and take the fight literally straight to hell with Lord Mordor.

In the end, the Dane and his team succeed in destroying the Arch of Sorrows and closing off the doorway from Hell, even though Lord Mordor escapes.

They then do the typical team thing, and decide to make it official and become the new Night Tribe to keep shit like what just happened from happening.

It's really not a bad story. I feel it had lots of potential as a series or mini-series. It just got kinda' lost in the shuffle of titles back then, plus the lack of buzz and known name on the book probably didn't help.

And then Jim Lee sold Wildstorm to DC, and that was the end, or the beginning of the end for an imprint that was really starting to show potential.

'Sigh'