I love to collect things. I always have, because as a little kid it was drilled into me that collecting things was a good idea.

My grandmother worked at Disneyland from the day they opened in 1955 until the mid-80’s. Her career spanned nearly thirty years and all of it was spent in the shops of Disneyland’s Main Street. My grandmother loved the park and was on first name basis with Walt. She actually managed a number of the stores on Main Street and would interface with him about how it was going. At one point she managed the magic shop and Walt’s decree was that they would sell actual magic tricks that the sales people in the shop would have to know how to do. So, my grandmother took magic lessons and taught the other clerks how to do coin and card tricks.

I loved my grandmother very much, which not a surprise, because she was awesome. Certainly, most “non-evil” kids love their grandparents, but for my sister and I, it was a bit different because our grandparents (on both sides of the family) really pitched in on raising us. We were truly blessed with amazing grandparents. I would say it almost made up for how crap our actual parents were (almost).

I have fond memories of going to Disneyland after school and sitting around the park doing my homework. When I was 10 so (this would be 1980) Disney’s employee family ticket policy was that she could sign up to 3 people into the park a day, so I ended up at the park quite often. To this day, the smell of bus exhaust and popcorn brings back an almost dizzying wave of nostalgia. You couldn’t walk into the park without encountering that smell.

I knew a bunch of the people that worked on Main Street and would even sit “backstage” at the picnic tables eating with my Grandma. Often while enjoying lunch we would be surrounded by sweaty dudes in huge plush Pluto, Goofy, and other Disney toon outfits. I’m almost positive this is where my commitment to a “furry” lifestyle began … shit, to this day I MUST be dressed as Liver Lips McGrowl from Bear County Jamboree to get a proper erection.

The reason I bring this all up is to give a starting point for my collector bug and how I caught it. When I was born, my grandmother started buying porcelain Disney figures for me, one every few months. I think she may have done this hoping that the statues would be valuable someday (sadly they never were).

As an adult, my father told me a story that my grandmother would never tell. It seems she had been close to some of the people that worked in the animation department and they knew she was a single mom, so they had given her a couple of boxes of animation cells to decorate her kid’s room with. She had maybe 70 or 80 animation cells from the older classic films (Dumbo, Bambi, etc.) and they had those hanging in their rooms for years. Then one day she tossed them all. Sadly at the time they were not considered valuable, but later when it became clear just how valuable the animation cells would become, it was too late. I don’t think she ever got over that mistake.

So, by the time I could appreciate the idea of collecting things, I already had a HUGE collection of amazing Disney statues. Of course, a collection of super fragile glass like Disney figures was not the most satisfying thing for a little kid. “What do you mean I can’t play with them?”

As much as the idea of having a collection was compelling, the abstract nature of my Disney collection made it a bit more mellow. I had no idea how many of these statues existed. Did I have ALL of them? Were some rare? I had yet to experience what makes collecting fun: the chase, the hunt for that thing you covet, that rare hard to find last piece that completes your collection. But even without that part of the experience, I still loved it, and that seed set me up to become an avid collector. I just needed something to collect on my own terms.

Around the time I was figuring out what collecting was all about, something happened that really changed an entire generation of kids: STAR WARS. It was the most amazing thing to ever happen to 7 year olds in and around the year 1977. I remember my dad showing me a grainy black and white newspaper ad. It was a crappy knock-off ad from a local theater. They had a collage of shit stuffed together that looked terrible, including a guy with a glowing sword cutting a teddy bear in half (I had no idea what a wookie was at this point). I was not impressed by the ad, but as we all know now, the movie was amazing! I was a SUPER fan from the moment I saw a guy in white armor riding a dinosaur on the lobby card in the front of the theater. I LOVED dinosaurs and when I saw this I shit my pants (not literally, I was 7 and had mostly stopped doing that sort of thing).

Walking out of the theater, I was gripped by full blown Star Wars mania. My 7 year old mind had just been fucking BLOWN. I HAD to have Star Wars stuff! Luckily, Kenner stepped in to fill the void with poorly sculpted plastic action figures. They were glorious and I coveted every goddamn one of those figures. I kept them all in a giant black plastic Darth Vader head.

I would compare my collection with Brad, the kid across the street. That bastard Brad had rich parents (mine were poor) so he had an X-wing and a Tie fighter, but all I had was the land speeder. I was pretty jealous. But one Christmas I was able to trump him when my grandma got me the Imperial Troop Transporter. It’s pretty boring EXCEPT it had six buttons with prerecorded sounds from the movie, including C3P0!

Well, it was Brad’s turn to be jealous. Sadly, Brad didn’t deal with jealousy very well. Less than a week after getting the toy during an extended play session Brad casually stood up, whipped out his dong, and pissed all over my troop transport. I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes! That’s a double trauma for a nine year old, seeing your friend’s dong AND watching him defile your favorite toy. Holy shit I was upset, and you know what, the damn troop transport never worked the same after that. Instead of voices, the buttons made weird beep and click sounds. We decided it was still cool and pretended it was an alien race making the sounds, like some of those screwed up dudes in the cantina.

So, once again, I spend half the blog rambling on about stuff that has almost nothing to do with the topic! But here is the thing, rather than go into all the stuff at SDCC, I want to focus on the items I made a specific point of seeking out at the convention, which are limited edition screen print posters. Specifically, MONDO limited edition screen print posters.

I fell in love with these posters last year at SDCC and have plunged head first into full blown collector mode. Damn it, I was clean and sober, no real collecting for the last half dozen years. Sure I bought books, comics, toys, etc. but not sick desperate collecting, the sort of collecting that has you trolling eBay everyday looking for rare finds and good deals. Well, I am back to being a “collector”, and it’s all about these awesome screen print posters.

The first poster I bought was at SDCC last year, an amazing print by Ken Taylor for the movie Aliens. I was so blown away by the raw power of this image, art meets graphic design with such a powerful result it makes me almost light headed. On top of that, the pure red pigment ink has metallic flakes in it, it’s fucking amazing. (Clearly I am a huge nerd and REALLY passionate about stuff.)

SDCC is a really great show for these posters. MONDO has a booth and releases new posters each day. It was nice buying direct from the source but it’s also a little challenging. The limited nature of the prints makes it a bit difficult to be sure you will get the ones you want, and having meetings meant I couldn’t queue in line for hours to guarantee it. But I did manage to score a few and overall I was happy. Of course, the chase is part of the fun of collecting. If I could just get anything I wanted, where would the challenge be? I am a huge advocate of a little pain with my pleasure.

The Heavy Metal and Pan’s Labyrinth prints are beautiful. One of the things I love about the posters is the new and very graphic take on existing movie IP (almost all the posters are based on movies), some of them are just stunning and artists like Tyler Stout and Ken Taylor are really creating some amazing work.

That brings me to a bit of a reveal for that other great con, GENCON. Because I love collectable posters and just about everything I create starts out as an expression of something I’m passionate about, I have decided to make a collectable 12 X 36 poster for each of the HEX sets we do, starting with Shards of Fate. Sure, a poster really doesn’t have much to do with the game, but I really wanted to have a bit of the game hanging on my wall to remind me of HEX and celebrate something I love so much.

For this first poster, we will sell 125 of them at GENCON and 125 of them on our website (we have made a total of 300). We also have a very limited variant color (only 50 made) and those will be used as prizes at the show for stuff like winning a draft or sexiest Princess Cory Cosplay contest, as well as 20 online through promotional type stuff.

So here they are. I think our graphic designer Larry Renac did a GREAT job using Raymond Swanland’s art for this. One of the things you are not seeing online is the metallic and florescent inks; these will look amazing in person. Also, the alternate art prize posters will be signed by the entire HEX team!

Also, each of the posters will come with a code for a corresponding sleeve. FUN!

This is just one piece of the pie for GENCON. We have a bunch of stuff we are giving away. I am sure this Friday’s update will have more to share.

I thought I could leave you with a couple of set two spoilers! And a promise that we have huge chunks of content on the way. Right around the corner is a first pass at the tutorial (an important part of being able to invite more people into HEX) and the launch of set two is right after that. Best of all, hot on the heels of set 2, is the first big piece of PVE content.

The Spoilers…

First up is the Cottontail Recruiter. Talk about supercharging the shin’hare deck! I already love the shin’hare and this card makes them even better. And in PVE!!! Get these boots and it’s just bonkers! Every Runts of the Litter also gives you a couple of +1/+1 boosts to hand out to other shin’hare!

And finally, the NECROPHAGE SENSEI!

This is an amazing card in the shin’hare sacrifice deck with the potential to be a staggering drop in the mid-game. The Necrophage will give a great boost to an already strong deck.

Thanks for reading the blog. Clearly this one was a bit more personal. I imagine that the longer I do this, the more personal it will get (I will run out of generic crap to talk about and will have to fall back to my past). Hope you enjoyed it and I will try and get another one of these out in a couple of weeks.

Love, Cory

By coryhudsonjones - Jul 31, 2014