SubJugated SubCasts

As someone who has never previously ventured into the world of vinyl or statues or the like, I have been totally taken by TWEEQiM's Marvel SubCasts line through Upper Deck. I ended up picking up all four of the released editions. The first of the bunch, Spidey, is my least favorite. He just doesn't translate as well to the format as the others. The three subsequent releases, however, are nothing short of (ironically) spectacular! Iron Man, Ghost Rider, and Wolverine lend themselves perfectly to the funky proportioned polyresin. They are stunning, distinctive, beautiful works of art.

The official Upper Deck website and both of TWEEQiM's MySpace sites had indicated that we might see miQ and Thuy Wilmott's unique take on more Marvel icons, like Captain America, Thor, and Hulk, but it looks like those ideas won't see the light of day beyond some concept sketches found on those sites, and a SubCasts trading card of Cap put out by Upper Deck.

When I had heard this, I reached out to miQ, who responded with a gracious and thoughtful reply. While he couldn't comment on why the line was coming to an end other than to say it was a "bizz thing", he did seem genuinely disappointed. He acknowledged there was a conscious effort to approach these characters with "a bit of a quirky attitude" and indicated that there were a lot of directions in which they would have liked to have taken the line.

It really is a shame this is coming to an end, TWEEQiM's Marvel SubCasts line was able to breathe new life into the Marvel stable by taking two-dimensional characters that have been a part of the pop culture vernacular for decades off the page and rendering them in a fresh three-dimensional way.

The Wishlist

I love the concept art for Captain America, Thor, and Hulk, and would have loved to see them come to life. For what it's worth, here are the top five other Marvel characters I would have liked TWEEQiM to tackle in the SubCasts format:

• Luke Cage (How great would this have been?!)
• Namor (Marvel's ultimate anti-hero in the ultimate format.)
• The Thing (He and Puck already have the proportions for the line, so it would have been cool to see where miQ and Thuy would have taken either of them.)
• Colossus
• Dr. Doom

Honorable mention: Beast, Daredevil, Nick Fury, and the aforementioned Puck. Not sure if it's because TWEEQiM hadn't gone there yet or what, but I had trouble getting my head around a female SubCast.