The Le: Favorite two DC?

Jason Mical: Confession time: I was always a True Believer during my youth rather than a DC guy. But Batman is right up there with the best of them. If we count Vertigo, then the Sandman series (or the Endless as a 'team') too.

The Le: Favorite two Indy?

Jason Mical: Hellboy. And Groo. Does Groo count, even if there's no 'Clix of him (yet)?

The Le: Yes, Groo counts, unless you are slow-of-mind mendicant. Do you think they could ever incorporate a Groo type figure into HeroClix? (I think Usagi Yojimbo and Lone Wolf & Cub would be pretty cool too)

Jason Mical: There was actually a push to do a Groo figure at one point, which I will admit was led by (and pretty much only 99% involved) me. I approached Mark Evanier about it and he seemed interested, but nothing much became of it beyond that point. Brian Dugas sculpted a Groo figurine for me as a one-off commission, but it looked like all the other raw sculpts - brown and metallic (his swords were metal.) Normally the sculpts are made for molds, and then the molds are used to create figures you can paint, you can't paint the sculpt itself. So I never got a painted version of him, and actually I gave him back to Brian before I moved to London. As far as I know, Brian still has him somewhere. I hope so, because I'm going to want him back!

I think the main reason Groo never went forward (and a lot of other indie stuff, like Usagi Yojimbo) is that there simply wasn't enough interest among the fans to make it financially viable. Even some of the collector's packs didn't sell as quickly as we wanted them to; there weren't enough completists out there in Clixland to justify doing things like Groo, whose fanbases were so niche that there wouldn't be a wider appeal either. Which is really too bad, because including the Indy stuff was one of the best things HeroClix ever did for itself in terms of character diversity and reach of the game.

The Le: You also mentioned IndyClix, which I felt was highly underrated. The overall dials had some low values, but there's some real gems in there. Any idea why Judge Fire, Stix, and a bunch of others never made it to the United States? Any other nuggets of info about IndyClix that we don't know about?

Jason Mical: Yeah, IndyClix really did have some great stuff in it. The thing about Indy comics is that a lot of characters do tend to be pretty similar - Blades/Claws/Fangs makes sense when you've got a bunch of ninjas for example. I know the dials have been criticized as not being as good in-game as others, but my take was always that 'well, they're character-accurate and that's what's important.'

We brought the EU versions of IndyClix along to conventions and I think they were even offered through Diamond at one point, but I could be mistaken. It was an experiment to release them exclusively in the EU. I can speculate about the reasoning behind it but to be honest I don't know why that decision was made. If I had to guess, it was to energize Clix sales outside the US where they were always somewhat weaker by offering figures that would appeal to EU audiences.

Other nuggets, let's see. I can confirm there was a Spawn 'Clix (I've said this before on HCRealms, but it's a cool story so I'll tell it again.) Two paintmasters were created and a dial was statted out, but it was never actually 'manufactured' - there was never a version with printing on the dial I mean. One paintmaster went to McFarlane, who ultimately decided not to allow Spawn to be used in the game, and the other went to our sales guy. I've heard a couple of conflicting reasons for why the character wasn't manufactured, one being that McFarlane wanted his cape to be cloth, the other being that McFarlane didn't like the sculpt and wanted to do it himself.

One idea that we had with Indy at one point was to do a new comic 'talent search' at San Diego Comic-Con and create a collector's set of 'rookie' figures, kind of like rookie baseball cards. If the comic became popular, then we could say 'hey, rookie version, check it out!' It was a really good idea (Szubski's idea now that I think about it) in terms of collectability, but unfortunately I think myself and maybe 50 other people would have bought them, which would have been a financial disaster. Probably why it didn't go ahead, but it was out there at one point.