Mail Call For 9.8.25

I’d been picking this book up, but I realized after reading it that the last issue I’d picked up wasn’t the most recent issue. The shop didn’t have a copy of it by then, thus…

It’s not necessarily the greatest book on the stands, but it is a bit fun, and I might as well see it through.

Mail Call Extra

Longtime readers who actually pay attention – if we assume those exist – will recall the Mail Call posts about two Hot Toys figures based on Marvel characters and the eye-related issues.

The first was The Mighty Thor, whose adjustable eyes I adjusted right out of (one of) her head(s).

The other was She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, who arrived with one wonky eye that, thanks to the Thor mishap, I was reluctant to try to fix.

Yesterday, I decided the time had come to try to perform eye surgery on Shulkie.

Before tacking that, however, I decided to practice with the eyeless Thor head sculpt, as, eyes or no, that sculpt is just staying in the box anyway.

Of course, that meant first figuring out a way to put the eyes back in, but I decided that would be good practice, too, as the odds were good that my Frankenstein hands would knock She-Hulk’s eyes out.

After multiple attempts with my iFixit tweezers, I successfully reinserted her eyes.

Well, “successfully” is pushing it, but they were in.

After knocking them out again several times, I finally managed to get them at least somewhat aligned.

However, it was such a hassle that I wasn’t sure I wanted to try going through it again with She-Hulk.

Part of the reason I had decided to attempt the eye surgery was that I wanted to change out which hammer Thor was holding, which meant digging out the box, which is what got me to to thinking about the eyes.

The hammer I was switching to has an LED inside of it, so as I looked through the instruction booklet to find out how to add the batteries to it, I noticed something.

See that little black joint socket that the heads are pointing to?

Part of the reason I had so much difficulty maneuvering this little plastic tool inside the head

is that that the part that’s supposed to be on the neck was inside the head.

With that removed, it’s much easier to access the eyes.

That also explained why the head sculpt that is on the figure has never really sat right…

So, as is often the case, it turns out that I was making things harder for myself than they needed to be.

Bolstered by this discovery, I decided to attempt to fix She-Hulk.

Of course, in her case, that joint socket is permanently inside the head rather than being removable, but even with it in place there was much more room to maneuver.

Jen’s eyes are also more firmly affixed than Jane’s, so I managed to avoid knocking them out, and slight adjustments didn’t result in the same kind of wild eye movements.

That said, it’s still a lot of trial-and-error to get the tool in there and adjusting the eyes seems to involve stabbing wildly and hoping for the best, as nothing works quite the way I expect. Moving the eye one way often has the opposite of the intended effect.

But ultimately, I prevailed.

For the most part.

It’s certainly better than the way it was.

While I was at it, I followed a tip I’d seen on YouTube to make Jen’s costume look a bit more comic booky by popping off her legs and tucking in some of the material to make the bottom look more like a swimsuit than shorts.

I didn’t have as much luck with rolling up the sleeves as he did, though, so I just left them.