u/birn_echo

This is peak Star Wars and I will not be elaborating.

Let me know what you guys think.

Nothing serious, just a bit of fun with one of my favourite Black Series figures.

The 90s animated Avengers designs would be sweet.

Anakin Skywalker, at nine years old, was a great pilot, something that might qualify him as a Gary Stu, but you have to understand the character's context. He was a slave to a scrap metal dealer, surrounded by scrap metal his entire life, which he used to build, among other things, his ship. He built his pod himself, so that's why he knows what every button does, why he has no problem repairing his vehicle during the Mos Espa race, because he knows every component of the pod. Furthermore, until Qui-Gon Jinn's arrival, he had NEVER won a race; in fact, he had NEVER even finished one. His pod always exploded halfway through. His reflexes have been honed through practice, which is why they say, "Let's see if he finishes the course this time."

Rey, sadly, is not like Anakin. She knows how to pilot a modified freighter and perform impossible maneuvers without ever having touched a ship of that size. Some might say Rey is like Luke and Anakin, since all three are mechanical experts, but if Anakin knew how to fly his pod racer, it was because HE built it, he had already piloted it before, and he failed many times before he could complete the Mos Espa course. It doesn't make sense for Rey to pilot the Millennium Falcon perfectly. It's one thing to fix parts of a vehicle and know what they're for, and quite another to pilot and perform acrobatics worthy of a seasoned pilot. And guess what? Anakin honed his skills through trial and error; he attempted to complete the Mos Espa course hundreds of times before Qui-Gon arrived, which is why his reflexes are so sharp.

In Luke's case, they say throughout the entire film that he's a good pilot. Luke himself mentions piloting his T-16 on Tatooine through Beggar's Canyon, hunting womprats in a space less than two meters wide—the same width as the Death Star's trench. During the final battle, he doesn't even do anything truly impressive; Chief Oro only uses him as a backup pilot and doesn't order him to attack until he's shot down by Darth Vader in an act of desperation.

Regarding the use of the Force, Anakin trained his entire life in a functioning Jedi Temple, and even so, he lost his first encounter against Dooku due to his arrogance. Luke, wanting to save his friends on Bespin, abandoned his training and lost his hand fighting Vader. Rey wins every single one of her fights; at best, she draws, as in The Last Jedi.

My last one...
https://www.reddit.com/r/box5/s/PaJ4U3OYJC

... was 1/10 (7 inch) scale. This one is 1/12 (6 inch) scale.

This one was a lot easier to put together.

Head is the same as the last one, the head of a Hasbro GI Joe Classified Flint with a Phantom mask from a bendy figure.

Body was a Dracula figure from Fresh Monkey Fiction's Monster Force series.

Hands came from a Hasbro GI Joe Classified Cobra Commander.

Cape came from a Hasbro Star Wars TBS Darth Vader.

So we're at the finale, the final lair of this four issue miniseries.

We last left off with Erik having brought down the chandelier because Raoul intervened to have Christine replaced as the lead of his opera, Don Juan Triumphant. Raoul had to tend to the carnage, letting Erik go. He proceeds to take Christine through her mirror.
We pick up with Erik leading Christine down an old Communard tunnel to the underground lake.

So in the original book, '25 film, and ALW musical there are two "abductions." The first were Christine learns that the "angel of music" is just a guy, and later unmasks the Phantom, and the second, where Erik forces her to choose between marriage and some sort of calamity.
The '43 movie, which this comic is based on, only has one abduction scene, at the end.

That first abduction scene also has some variation between versions. Christine goes willingly in the '25 movie and ALW musical, but it's a true abduction in the book. The lone abduction in '43 was very much forced as well.

This abduction is, as with much of this series, blending classic elements into the '43 narrative. It's the only abduction, but Christine goes willingly, at first. Erik's dialogue is lifted from the '43 movie, trying to calm Christine and telling her that the dark purifies the music from the opera. Only here it's reframed as Christine willingly going with him, at least at first.
We get another classical departure from '43. In that movie, Erik merely leads Christine across the lake on a walkway. Whereas in the book and other classically-oriented adaptations have him ferrying her across the lake on a boat. That's what we get here. And the classic boat scene, paired with the stunning and otherworldly design of the subterranean catacombs from the 1943 movie in Simmonds' painted gothic art style, is beautiful.

Christine's mood changes when they get to Erik's
lair, which ups the otherworldly vibes with an underground tree (very anime) amidst the catacombs. Erik starts talking about how Christine will stay here... forever. And when Christine gets freaked out and starts talking about how people will notice she's gone, Erik says they can't go back. He dropped the chandelier. He killed Meg Giry and Biancarolli. All so Christine could sing.

Christine breaks down, saying she never asked for this, and that the Phantom has made her a monster.

We cut to Anatole and Raoul. Anatole mentions that Raoul's plan to tease out the Phantom has failed, and the two examine Christine's dressing room. They find a hidden switch that opens the mirror door and head down. I have to admit I like this. There was no hidden mirror door in the 1943 movie, so it's another element to push that story in a direction that's closer to the book and more referential adaptations.
Beyond that though, Anatole and Raoul investigating Christine's mirror and heading down to go look for her after her abduction has some similarities to the Persian and Raoul doing this in the book.

We get back to Christine and Erik. Christine is fully freaked out now, and Erik tries to calm her. He picks up a violin, saying "this always calmed her," and lamenting that his ailment keeps him from playing like he used to. Christine recognizes the tune...

Erik, the Phantom, is her father.

So this is the big reveal, and yeah. It's just the 1943 reveal (which was actually excised from the movie but made it into the supplementary material).
On one hand, it is disappointing that it's what was expected... but in the other hand... it is what it says on the tin. And as a moody adaptation of the 1943 movie, it works quite well.

Christine, realizing the Phantom is her father, yanks his mask off, and Erik's all "NO MY FACE!"

Of course in the book, 1925 movie, and ALW musical, where he's not her father but instead a would be suitor, and born deformed at that, this anger comes from his own self loathing and anger that Christine's curiosity led her to see his true face.
Here, he's a deranged father who doesn't want his daughter to see his acid scarred face.

And it's here we get the full story. Erik left Christine and his wife/her mother, and her mother knew it. The story that he'd died during the Franco-Prussian War was her mother's way of protecting Christine from knowing that her father abandoned them to pursue his music.

Erik goes into an obsessed rant, that her mother didn't understand, and that family merely held him back from greatness. He claimed he was close to being great, but illness (likely arthritis in his playing hand) crippled him. Having his original work, Don Juan Triumphant, published was his last shot at making something of himself as a musician, but when he thought the publisher was stealing from him he killed him, and got scarred with acid in the process. He fled under the opera house, discovered his daughter was an aspiring soprano, and decided to mould her into the perfect star, to achieve greatness through her that he couldn't achieve himself.

In fitting with the rest of this series, it's a moody take on the 1943 movie. In that movie Erique Claudin (I'm calling him Erik here, because they don't give his name, and defaulting to Erik seems appropriate given that this series reverted Christine from her 1943 rename to her classic name) was a kindly old man, who had ambition, yes, but was mostly content to support Christine from afar. He's only really driven to madness after one very bad day that ends with his face scarring.
Here, Erik has always been a bit nuts and obsessed. Which also pushes him in book Erik's direction, even if he's got a different backstory. His story also dovetails nicely with the speech the conductor gave to Christine at the start of this series, that to be a musical great, you have to give up on "normal" things like family and loved ones. Erik is that taken to a dangerous extreme. He abandoned his family to pursue greatness. Even after his life was ruined, he saw meeting his long lost daughter as only another means for greatness.

Christine realizes what this obsession leads to and says that her mother and herself- Erik's wife and daughter- were what mattered and he left them.

It's at this moment that Raoul and Anatole burst in. Raoul pulls a gun, Erik grabs his sword, and Christine tries to separate them. Erik slashes and accidentally cuts Christine's cheek, and Raoul's gun goes off. The gunshot brings the catacombs down, and Christine is pulled away as Erik finally accepts his fate. He's crushed by the rocks and Raoul and Anatole get Christine into the boat just as she grabs his mask. She says goodbye to her father, kisses the mask, and drops it into the water. Where it lands next to Erik's violin.

We cut to one year later. A worker is putting up a poster for the opera Maria (a nice mythology gag, Maria was the opera they were performing at the start of the 1943 movie) and a little girl throws a tomato at it. Christine, holding a suitcase, is walking by and scolds the little girl. The girl says she hates opera, too much romance and kissing.

Christine chuckles and says opera can tell many different stories. Stories of heroes, bravery, adventure, even ghost stories. The girl, intrigued, asks for an example.
Christine tells her the story of a ghost who was trapped by the whims of other ghosts, and didn't know she was living someone else's dream until it was too late. The girl asks if the ghost ever got free, and Christine says no one knows. The girl calls cop out on that, but Christine says mystery is what makes ghost stories intriguing. She's about to step onto a train, before she tells the girl that whatever she does in life, she should do it for herself and not anyone else.

And that's it.

The 1943 movie introduced the plot point of Christine having to choose between Raoul and Anatole, and it's really a golden age of Hollywood romcom... with the plot of The Phantom of the Opera happening in the background. The big twist is that, in the end, Christine chooses her career over both Raoul and Anatole. The two dudes, having both been rejected, decide to go to dinner together instead (giggity).

There was speculation if that was what would happen here... and... yes and no. We don't know if Christine ended up with Raoul or Anatole, neither of them appear once we jump ahead one year.
It seems like Christine has abandoned being an opera star all together. And this ties in to issue three, where she realized she was living her father's dream and not her own. Seeing her father's obsession taken to such an extreme seems to have crystallized that for her. So despite rejecting the opera entirely, this does match 1943 Christine in that she chooses her own desires in the end. It also has hints of book Christine, who left behind the life of an opera star to run back to Sweden with Raoul to live in seclusion.

The final issue felt rushed, and I can't help but think that if this series got one or two more issues, the final lair and climax could have had time to breath a bit. Still, it's a Phantom of the Opera miniseries. It's a miracle this thing exists at all, and rushed or not, it manages to land the plane.

All in all, this took a movie adaptation that strayed from the book and tried to nudge it back closer to the book (and ALW musical in parts) while keeping the structure of the 1943 movie's plot.
I personally thought it worked well. The exercise is intriguing to me, and Boss as a writer and Simmonds as an artist have the chops to pull it off, and they did. I'd not choose the '43 movie as my basis for Phantom personally, but I think they did very interesting stuff with it given that this was the version Universal requested.

I enjoyed it immensely, and I'll be picking up the trade come September.

One of those ideas I had to do once I had the idea in my head even though it's very, very cursed.

So I never thought the civilian head that came with Maya was that great. And then I got the idea to use the alternate "hair down" head from the recent Marvel Legends Kitty Pryde/Colossus two pack. I donno, am I out to lunch or does it work as a likeness for Cerina Vincent?

As far as fit goes, it fits but it's loose. Nothing some tack can't fix though.