I’m in trouble.

I am moving inevitably into my Elder Nerddom, and while there have been perhaps more statues in my house for several years now than one might expect from a random sample of homes, I have, until now, managed to avoid purchasing anything from Hot Toys. There are a billion reasons for this, but perhaps one of the biggest is that the damn things can run anywhere from $250-500 if not more than that and I knew good and fucking well that there was no way I was ever going to stop with one. My recent disenchantment with the MCU has helped; a lot of the appeal of Hot Toys to their fans is their unearthly skill with facial capture, and as I’ve grown tired of the movies, I’ve grown less interested in the idea of having Chris Evans or Robert Downey, Jr. on my shelf as opposed to a more Platonic, comic-based Iron Man or Captain America.  

And today that beautiful bastard up there showed up under the Christmas tree, and I’m fucked now.  My wife actually stopped me after I unwrapped the box but before I opened it, telling me that she and the two owners of my local comic shop had gone through a process in trying to decide which one to get me, and that they’d warned her that if I actually opened the box, collectors being who they are, they’d be unable to take it back. She asked me if I wanted her to tell me who was in it (the outside box of a Hot Toys figure has all the brand information but does not actually name the figure inside for some reason) and I told her that if the three of them had managed to guess wrong— my wife has been married to me for nearly sixteen years and I have spent money at the comic shop on a weekly basis for slightly longer than that– I was going to get so much mileage out of making fun of them for it that it would be worth it. Truth be told, I was fully expecting one of the many Iron Mans available.

Moon Knight? Fuck yes, and made even better by the fact that even though that’s Moon Knight’s MCU/Disney+ costume, that costume isn’t really much of a departure from his traditional comic book look and, even better, it’s not Oscar Isaac, since there’s no headsculpt featuring his face. So, yeah, this is perfect and I love you but this is going to cost me so much money, because he’s gonna need a friend, and then they’re gonna need a third, because who are they gonna talk to if they get tired of each other, and by this time next year I expect to have a full glass-front cabinet in the house somewhere with $6000 of these things in it(*) and I plan on regularly reminding my wife that it’s her fault.

(*) I may or may not have just inquired about pre-ordering an Iron Man that didn’t actually ever appear in the films but looks like the Silver Centurion, my favorite Iron Man suit ever.