I have lots of little dudes in my office.
Since I was young, I’ve collected action figures. I’m not usually a stickler for keeping them in their packages like some collectors, but there are a few I never opened (most famously my ultra-limited translucent yellow Scud figure, which you’ve probably seen behind me in a stream at some point).
Back when I was just a little tiny Phill teacher, not even yet an MA much yet full-on Doctored up, I used to teach an essay on materiality. For it, I always had students bring in an artifact. This was an assignment that existed when I got to Miami, but while I was working at IU, it wasn’t something anyone else had done. So…I twisted the Miami version a bit to fit what I’d been doing. I had my students bring in something they liked, an artifact that was something they’d kept long enough to move it from one place to another.
As I’ve been combing through some old writing and prepping for new research, I got to thinking about why I had my students do that particular assignment. The logic is simple and sound: we imbue things with meaning. They are, after all, only things. That’s a sentiment that permeates modern thought. But things come to matter for us.
Short aside: I wrote about a Julie to be named later and that weird incident with the TMNT marble shooter a few weeks back. When I finished, I went to Ebay and scored the blue and red turtles again (Leo and Raph). I gave my Julie– the one that matters– the Raphael marble launcher and said the exact same sentence to her (“I got you a turtle”) because it had meaning for me. I am sure that devoid of that story, me handing Julie a red metallic ninja turtle wouldn’t mean much. It was probably still waaaaay more for me than for her, but… that’s sort of what I mean.
So over the next month or so, when I’m having trouble coming up with a topic, I’m going to grab something sitting on my desk and write a bit about it. The first thing I chose because it’s currently the second largest item on my desk, so it dominated my visual field when I looked over. It’s a relatively new Moon Knight figure.
He was what I call a small-scale quest item. I wanted the figure because I absolutely adore Moon Knight (someone out there in fan-land buy me his first appearance comic before the potential Netflix series drives the cost up :P), but I have moved largely to Funko figures because some of the other stuff is so pricey. I have always tried to get all the Moon Knight stuff I can find, though.
If you don’t know the character, he’s basically Marvel’s Batman. Mark Spector is rich, he’s a playboy, he thinks (or he does) have the power of an ancient Egyptian god, he makes weird gadgets, and at least at first he was a werewolf hunter (though that went away fast). In more recent comics, there’s a debate over his sanity, and for a brief time he tried to be all of the Avengers he saw in his schizoid mind by using spider webs, a claw and a shield (Spider-Man, Wolverine and Captain America).
This particular figure also hits the one major criteria I’ve put on toys since I was like three-years-old: he looks AWESOME.
When I was younger, I collected the Marvel Secret Wars line. My Mom made me a Moon Knight figure out of a Dr. Doom with hours of careful craft work. I loved that figure. It’s lost to the sands of time, but looking at this one reminds me of it.
I bought this from a local comic store here in Richmond. The owner went to Miami, where I now work (where I did my masters, where I used to go see bands when I was in high school). So there’s the added factor that after hunting high and low at other shops I found this going into the local comic shop hoping to toss a little business to a local vendor.
When I was an undergrad, I started a script for a Moon Knight TV series. I should have finished it and tried to shop it, but I was told to avoid genre fiction because it was tacky and non-academic.
The world sure changed since then.
I think I’m going to keep Moon Knight on his card for a bit. It makes him feel a little different in the sea of collectibles that cross my desk. Plus those little moon boomerangs? One of my dogs will eat that seconds after I open the box.