Décor

So my mancave, my Den of Dorkdom, is coming along pretty well. I’ve put together enough cheap-o shelving to display most of my graphic novels and other genre-ghetto books, along with many of the toys and knickknacks I’ve amassed over the years. (Somehow, utterly unawares, I have managed to begin a gargoyle collection, of all things.) I still consider the whole thing a work in progress, as there remains the ongoing discovery of various tchotchkes and dust-collectors while we continue the never-ending unpacking from the move, so some things are not necessarily in their final museum-ready presentations. For example, Evil-Lyn and Dr. Fate are currently shacked up together in Castle Grayskull, one popping up from each tower like some dark demented corner of Mr. Rogers’s Land of Make-Believe. (For “demented”, please read “TOTALLY RAD”, btw.)

But other elements have come together in a pleasing diorama-at-the-local-public-library kind of way. As you might have guessed, my Green Lantern collection got some early obsessive attention. I can look at the shelves dedicated to the Emerald Gladiator’s various toy incarnations and feel pretty pleased with what I see. Which is of course immediately followed by a ravenous need to expand the collection.

I feel like I have a respectable number of sculpts of GL himself, so the next project I’m amusing myself by contemplating is a rogue’s gallery. They do make a ton of bad guy action figures, too (almost as if they’re supposed to be bought by kids who will act out dramatic fight scenes with them, like toys!) so it would be prudent to be selective in assembling the more nefarious characters.

If you read my primer a few weeks back about Green Lantern mythos then you might recall that GL’s arch-nemesis Sinestro has formed an entire Corps of evil-doers who are armed with yellow rings and powered by the ability to inspire great fear. It’s been interesting, on a deeply geeky level, to see how the comics have presented various takes on inspiring fear, even though most of them have something along the lines of “this guy will totally kill you.”

One that stands out is an alien hag named Kryb. Her schtick? She steals babies. Since being inducted into Sinestro’s Corps she has focused on stealing the babies of Green Lantern Corps members, but it’s been a lifelong activity for her. It’s not that she’s the witch from Hansel and Gretel; she doesn’t want to eat the babies, she wants to raise them and looooooooove them. She’s a nightmare pastiche of every Hand That Rocks The Cradle cliché possible, plus she has an alien morphology which includes gel-filled incubator pods all along her back, which is where she keeps the babies. If you can get past the sci-fi silliness, Kryb is a pretty scary, repulsive concept. And since I willfully embrace the tropes of my favorite comic series, and since I have a baby boy, I think Kryb is terrifying and viscerally disturbing – which makes her a glorious supervillain.

So do they make a Kryb action fig OF COURSE THEY DO.


AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

(Note, by the way, that she comes with two alien baby accessories. That is genius.)

So – to acquire this grotesque action figure, or not? I have to admit she’s become a personal fave just for the sheer audacity of concept – but do I really want a three-dimensional replica of that concept in my house? I honestly worry that if my son were ever to see that toy on the shelf it would give him nightmares. And despite my snark earlier, I do firmly believe that action figures are meant to be played with by little kids, and while I’m too old for that and my little guy is still too young, when he’s a bit older I will have no problem sharing, letting him play with the GL collection when the mood strikes him and displaying them on the shelves when his fancy is elsewhere. (There may be some negotiations as to what he’s allowed to do in the name of play, since I vividly recall going outside and burying GIJoes in the dirt to play “Jungle Ambush”, but those are just details.) Maybe by the time my son is five or six, he won’t be creeped out too much by a baby-snatcher because he won’t consider himself a baby. Or maybe he’ll have a rock-solid grasp on the difference between fantasy and reality and “scary toy” will be an oxymoron for him. Still, I find myself stymied on this issue of exactly how much weirdness I want to bring into the house, even in the subterranean corner of the house that’s set aside expressly for my weirdness. When and if the dilemma resolves, I’ll report.