World War Z, Max Brooks’ fictitious epic oral history of how and when the zombie pandemic happened, is being made into a film as you may have already known, and they’ve found their director in Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace, Monster’s Ball, Stranger Than Fiction).  Even better is the screenwriter, J. Michael Straczynski, who has written episodes of He-Man and Masters of the Universe and The Real Ghostbusters, not to mention numerous comic books including The Amazing Spiderman and Fantastic Four.  Brooks himself is known for his prior work, the cult hit The Zombie Survival Guide.  What I’m trying to say is that this movie has the potential to kick major ass and make zombiephiles cream their jeans.  The only thing that has a chance at surpassing it in overall zombie greatness is Zack Snyder’s next project, Army of the Dead.  Read about it here.  All this zombie talk is making me giddy.

Can you tell that I’m excited about this sculpt?

According to Royalt1us, he’s on to the arms next, and then on to the alternate (standard shark) head. Keep an eye on the progress along with me here.

From MattyCollector.com:

MOTU Packaging Reveal
November 3, 2008
By Matty

MOTU Classics fans,

Well, we are getting that much closer to the on sale date for the first two MOTU Classics Figures He-Man® and Beast Man®! Both will be on sale Dec. 1, 2008 with new figures following after that once per month. Everyone at MattyCollector.com^SM is so excited to get these figures into fan’s hands. We know you have been waiting a long time for this!

To help with the countdown, we are proud to reveal the brand new packaging for this line! The new packaging features a brand new blister and card back paying homage to the original toy line, including cross sells, vintage art and a brand new character bio for each figure. A lot of love went into this package design and we hope collectors will enjoy the package as much as we did designing it.

Keep those posts coming on all the fan sites. We love your input and want to continue to make MOTU Classics and all the toys available on MattyCollector.com^SM as fan-friendly as possible!

Best,

Matty

Yay!  Faker!  How cool is that?

From MattyCollector.com:

Matty announces NY Comic Con MOTU Figure!
Oct 30, 2008
By Matty

Hey MOTU collectors!

We’re getting closer to the release of MOTU Classics. Everyone on the MattyCollector.com^SM team is so appreciative of all our fan’s patience as we work around the clock to get these figures correct before bringing them to market.

We will be launching the MOTU Classics brand page here on MattyCollector.com in early November with release dates, photo guides and up-to-the-minute information about the MOTU Classics brand. It looks to be a very exciting 2009 with at least one new figure each month starting with a double delivery of He-Man® and Beast Man® in December.

What’s that? You want more? Well how about the NY Comic Con Faker® figure!

That’s right, in addition to the February figure Stratos®, Faker® will also be available at NY Comic Con (with additional supply available in March here at MattyCollector.com). But get him first at the show!

This sculpt is looking so freaking rad! Rumor has it that the finished statue will also come with an alternate standard (non hammerhead) shark head.
It’s also worthy of note that I’m making a lot of progress on the painting of Royalt1us’s Po-Lar statue, which I will post pics of when I’m finished.
Follow the further progress of Lava-Shark on the He-Man.org message boards here.

Check out these cool Mighty Muggs customs! They’re all from the site CustomMightyMuggs.net

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Wow!  Meggs is at it again!  This time, he has put on an amazing exhibit entitled Own Worst Enemy at the Don’t Come Gallery in Melbourne, Australia.  These custom cast He-Man busts are super rad (they are cast from an old bank if I’m not mistaken), but the rest of the stuff in his show is really cool, as well.  check out some images of his work in progress and the show itself here.

Thanks to the mighty COTU crew, Zodac has a whole gang of new homies!  Check out these totally original designs and completely new casts of the expanded Cosmic Enforcer Corps.  Check out the discussion of these original figures here on the He-Man.org message boards.

While you’re at it, check out all of the other cool shit that COTU has been up to here on their blog.

These are the first images of the MOTUC Stratos figure posted today at He-Man.org.  For more pics and info, please click through to the org.

Here are the first few WIP images from Royalt1us of his WIP Lava-Shark sculpt.  This is going to be so badass!  Follow his progress here.

“Dear MOTU Collectors,

I’m writing to let you know that I’ve just made my first really tough decision as Master Toy Collector of Mattel. In a nutshell, we have been forced to make a trade-off between shipping according to our announced schedule and getting our figures exactly right, and I’ve decided to go with quality over speed.

The issue is removable armor for the Masters of the Universe Classics line. As you know, these figures are meant to bring the classic 1980s MOTU toy line aesthetic into the modern era. But the technical challenge of having removable armor that still holds in place with the level of quality we expect from a collector line has proved very difficult. In order to stay on schedule, we briefly considered compromising by gluing the armor for He-Man and Beast Man in place. But I realize that you, the true MOTU collectors, would much rather have the figures done right than get them a few weeks earlier. Our engineers are now re-configuring the sculpts so that the armor attaches to each figure in a uniform plug on his back, so that the armor for almost every figure will be both removable and interchangeable.

So the bad news is both He-Man and Beast Man will now be available for purchase in December. The good news is not only will their armor be awesome, but we will release them on the same day, meaning you can save on shipping by buying both figures together.

I’m bummed we’ve had this delay, but I’m glad it’s given us a chance to show you where our priorities are.

Good Journey,
Matty”

Images of the Masters of the Universe Classics figure of Stratos will be featured on September 15th on the main page of He-Man.org. According to Mattel’s Toy Guru, the images of the Stratos figure will be accompanied by an extensive interview about the upcomming MOTUC line.  Following this unveiling, future figures will be revealed each month at Mattel’s Matty Collector website.  Or, you can just keep checking in with Nerd City, because I will be compiling info and images here as well.

Check out this badass Masters of the Universe aquarium by He-Man.org user leaper1976!

You can read about the making of it here.

Leaper1976’s collection gallery has a few more images of said aquarium here.

For those of you who made it through the decidedly offensive Episode 15, you might have caught my mistake in stating that one of the few black characters in the Masters of the Universe cannon was Chef Alan.  As you can see in the picture above, he was actually Filmation’s token Italian character.

For the record, the guy that I was thinking of was called Melaktha.  I don’t specifically recall what his role was (for shame!), but I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t of a culinary nature.  Here he is:

And to round things out, here he is, the man, the myth, the legend, Clamp Champ:

Sory for the mixup.  Go ahead and start with the True Romance jokes.

Episode XV: The boys are joined by Chicago comedian Jimmy Pennington as they talk shit on “Star Wars:Clone Wars”, discuss the current improv comedy scene, and try to determine why He-man is such a racist, this week on Nerd City.

Pictures and links after the jump…

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