Clix Conundrum

The Coming Invasion

The following piece is from today's ICv2 report. (Reprinted at the bottom of this entry.) Not much new information of substance to those of us who've been watching, but this is the first time I've gotten to see the (not so pretty -- I'm not a fan of Yu's work) booster artwork -- presumably just half of it, since the pattern's been to split it up over four boosters.

As I'd dropped the Bendis-written Avengers series (New Avengers & Mighty Avengers) in '07 and have also been skipping the Secret Invasion miniseries by Bendis and Yu I've only been following it in some peripheral titles and occasionally checking the Wiki article on it for updates.

So far I haven't had anything shake me from the notion I went into this with: The core idea - that there's been a covert invasion by the shape-shifting Skrulls ongoing for a long time, recently kicked into high gear, was at the very least influential in the formation of the recent Avengers teams, that they've come up with a way to make themselves virtually undetectable, and that they're strategically targeting the greatest threats - is an excellent one, but that it will be much more enjoyable in a synopsis form, smoothed out. Hints of nuances of Skrull culture, including elements of religious fervor and how they view some of the Earthlings they know, Reed Richards ahead of all, are also appreciated. While I enjoy Bendis' work in some places he's much better off when he's handling relatively small casts and he really hasn't proven himself up to the task of handling a sweeping arc which tries to work with long-term character history.

And, if somehow, against the odds and experience, it turns out to be solidly crafted it's going to be collected in various trades by 2009.

Aside from the info below, the other info related to this set is that the MSRP will be taking another $1 spike, going to $11.99, and will almost certainly be felt by retailers attempting to sell product locally. I'm anticipating that those of us pressing on with Heroclix will be moving almost entirely to online sources, be that case buys and/or ebay bulk-buys of complete sets or subsets. Buying loose boosters with any serious intention of collecting a set has become the act of a lunatic or moron.

Indications are that this set won't have chase pieces (though October's DC Rogues set is supposed to have two, as Crisis did), but that as with Crisis we'll be looking at a limited edition, numbered Buy It By the Brick promotion. Given that that turned into a debacle when their limit of 5,000 turned it into a miserable race with far too many losers, I'll be interested to not only see what the piece is but what the production scale will be.

HeroClix Secret Invasion
Cross-promotion Planned
April 29, 2008

WizKids and Marvel are cooperating to incorporate a current editorial event in Marvel Comics into an upcoming HeroClix set. HeroClix: Secret Invasion will be released in late July, with special Secret Invasion packaging.

WizKids, Marvel, and Diamond/Alliance are collaborating on a cross-promotion to expose customers in stores that carry only games to comics; and to expose customers in stores that carry only comics to HeroClix. A display that will hold both HeroClix boosters and comics has been created. Alliance Game Distributors will select 400-500 game stores that don’t currently carry comics and send them the display with ten free copies of a special HeroClix edition (carrying the HeroClix logo) of Secret Invasion #1. Diamond Comic Distributors will select 100-200 comic stores that don’t carry HeroClix to receive the display with four free HeroClix: Secret Invasion boosters.

The Heroclix: Secret Invasion release caps off a busy two-month period in which three HeroClix products are released. Batman Boosters will release in June (see “HeroClix Batman Four Figure Booster”), and Fantastic Four Starters (which will include seven figures, six unique), in early July.