milk and cheese: dairy products gone bad - coming soon

i remember (vaguely) the first time i thumbed thru a Milk&Cheese comic (@ Bras Basah 2nd flr - Uncle Raymond's comicshop). was near decades ago, during the "height" of black&white "alternative" comicbooks (ie: non-superhero) period of my life, back when i'd discovered that there were more to just "four-color spandex" - and beyond the hatchet-jobs that were a dime-a-dozen mutant-mini-animals-with-kungfu (except TMNT :p), there were the anthologies that had grabbed my attention (ie: Drawn&Quartely, RAW) ... and the hilarity and maniacal hijinks of M&C has since scarred my teenhoodpsyche since left an undeniable impression in my memories and were the only rare few characters that had stuck with me til now ...

"And from a simple sketch on a bar napkin, years and years of comics were born" - so goes the origin of Evan Dorkin's MILK & CHEESE; "Dairy Products Gone Bad" (gotta lurve the tag) and since the last time i'd featured the proto-sculpts of the vinylization of the duo, bigger steps have been made and are poised to fill thy toy-shelves soon:

i had a chat with Evan a coupla weeks' back, before his MOCCA-show
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TOYSREVIL: tis been a while since my last feature on M&C - what's the current status of the Milk&Cheese figures? is Slave Labour Graphics still producing them?

EVAN DORKIN: The figures are in production, they've been working on final manufacturing while we've been finishing up the box design. The only revision that needs to be taken care of --if it hasn't already been addressed -- is the broken gin bottle, which the factory kind of botched. They blew up the label too big and the lettering was off. I assume that's been fixed by now. Also, the "holding" hands on Milk & Cheese are being switched, Milk holds objects in his right and Cheese on his left, to match the way they run around in the comics. Color revisions are approved, and unless someone's lying to me they've addressed any engineering problems the figures have had. So, we're just waiting for the factory to crank these out, I guess..


TRE: and we can't wait for them to be cranked out soon! you mentioned on your blog that they might be at SDCC, is this still on track?

EVAN: Dan at SLG is hoping they can have some sets air-shipped to SDCC. Obviously this isn't guaranteed by any means. This has been a long, drawn-out process which we began over a year ago with these particular sculpts by Mitch Martinez, we already went through a false start with another sculptor about three years ago or so. I just hope we're close to done on this and in the end we'll have a nice set of figures to show for it. I can afford to be patient because I won't be at San Diego, but I do hope we see them sooner than later and it would be great for SLG if we had these available at the show.

TRE: sounds like a plan! alternatively where else would they be available at? inquiring M&C-fans wanna know!

EVAN: Any comic or hobby or toy shops that ordered them, SLG's web site and I'm sure SLG will bring sets to their convention appearances. I might have them at shows Sarah and I appear at. I'm hoping shops like Toy Tokyo, Kid Robot and Super 7 et al will carry them, but I have my doubts based on initial orders. But people can always check out http://www.slavelabor.com once they're out for internet ordering information.

TRE: looking forward to them Evan (folks, go ,bug your retailers about them, yeh!) how big are these monsters anyways?

EVAN: Milk is about 7", Cheese is about 5 and 1/2". They're taller if they're hefting the stick with the nail in it.  They're a pretty good size, we couldn't make them as big as I originally wanted due to economic reasons, and packaging them together would have been difficult. Shipping would be higher, as well. All things I never considered, but Dan has done some toys before so he was on top of those things. I wish they could be life-sized and could hold real bottles and beer cans, myself.

TRE: nigh-decent size, IMHO and pretty nifty too! the life-sized ones would be pretty hilarious, i can imagine them running around the convention aisles, "threatening" folks with their broken bottles et al to buy their figures LOL ... is the packaging finished at this point? i see loads of goodies on your blog as well :)

EVAN: The package design is finished, Sarah completed the coloring, extra graphics and template assembly this past Monday and sent it out to SLG. I drew a new Milk and Cheese strip for the back panel, all-new images for the front, sides, top and bottom. I think it'll look pretty good. I'm not a designer but Milk and Cheese have a sort of built-in graphic design based on the look of the strips that we adhere to whenever we do a package or merchandise design. Most everything is hand-drawn and lettered, save for the legalese, credits and choking hazard warning. I'm hoping we might be able to upload the full-color design elements on my LiveJournal soon, but we're getting ready for a comic festival this weekend and also have some deadlines so we're pressed for time. And the files are really big and need to be worked on, and I can't do anything on a computer other than e-mail and e-bay, pretty much.


TRE: aren't we all slaves to technology cruising frantically down the cyberhighway, yeh? *heh* - now the tricky part; is there a price-point for M&C at this point in time?

EVAN: They were originally priced at USD$60 for the set, which includes both Milk and Cheese and three accessories they can hold; broken gin bottle, hammer, and a stick with a nail in it. I don't know if that price will hold when they're released due to the costs rising on the project. I know we have been trying to hold the price down as much as we could, ultimately, the price point rests with Dan and SLG, he laid out the money and he can only stick his neck out so far to keep the price down that much. I think $60 for two figures and extra pieces of a decent size is pretty good for a small imprint, limited run vinyl project, and I hope the price can stay close to that.

TOYSREVIL: personally, for the size and quality i've seen so far on these figures, the price is uber-reasonable, IMHO - just hoping folks will pick-up on these (but not before i scrounge around to get a set first! LOL) - cheers for your time and trouble Evan and good luck with M&C :)