Recently, in a small community I’m in. It was discovered that one of Marvel’s character designs was based off of the set; Maxilos and Spinax.
In 2008, Marvel Comics published Thor: Reign of Blood #1, The comic featured a scene where Thor piloted some sort of armor/mech named the Blood Colussus.
Look familiar? It should, the head and spine design is based off of Spinax’s/The Energy Hounds’ while the body is based off of the Maxilos Robots’ design. According to popular fan wikis it was based off of the set. Although I personally wouldn’t doubt it, the head design is a 1:1 to Spinax, you can also infer that it was heavily inspired by the set as the comic was published only a year after the set came out. Anyways, I thought it would be neat to share this info for any Marvel fans and Bionicle fans alike. I also find it funny since Marvel is the life-long rival of DC, who published the actual Bionicle comics.
I find it hilarious how LEGO feels the need to make as many Marvel-based sets as possible, without realizing that some of their own designs have inspired Marvel.
LEGO really underestimates the potential of their original themes, I can tell you that.
There’s no doubt that this thing was inspired by Maxilos and Spinax. Besides Spinax’s spine and head there are quite a few recognisable elements from Maxilos that I have found
In a similar vein, I’ve always felt that this Magic: the Gathering card looks an awful lot like it has a Rahkshi spine. It was released late 2003, so the timeline makes sense to me.
The first book in Polish sci-fi novel series for teenagers “Felix, Net & Nika” features a robot character on the back cover which looks heavily Rahkshi-inspired. It’s a character that appears at the end of the book and I recall he was even described as “resembling a life-sized Bionicle model”. Unfortunately I don’t have the book anymore, so I can’t find the exact quote.
Isn’t that from the same comic book about Thor? Maxilos has some Metru feet on him, so maybe Thor in this scene is standing on that monster inspired by Maxilos and Spinax?
Like, it’s super cool that it’s there, but I get this weird feeling seeing actual Bionicle pieces in a Marvel comic.
It’s only made even more uncanny by the fact that they draw the Blood Colossus super edgily…like, it’s got actual blood pouring off it, and the subject matter of the actual comic is pretty dark.
Nice find, though, this is pretty sick (and borderline copyright infringement).
Yeah no.
This is far removed from tracing. One is literally copying another artist’s art, the other is using a physical item a a reference to draw your own art – something most artists do anyway. That is nowhere near a fair comparison.
As for being copyright infringement – pretty sure that’s not the case. This is a drawing of what is technically a moc. Lego does have a copyright on their parts and characters, but this is neither a part nor an actual Lego set.
Well, there is the panel with a very clear shot of a Metru foot, wholesale.
Of course, as said, this is technically “Legally Distinct Maxilos and Spinax,” so the Blood Colossus as a whole is legally safe, albeit a questionable choice for a mainstream comic.
I’m fairly certain the higher-ups in charge of this Thor book didn’t know or care what “them Bionicles” were and potentially the writer didn’t give any indication to the artist what the Blood Colossus should look like.
This is a common thing in mainstream comics. Unless it’s important to the character or they’re working off of someone else’s design, the artists are usually completely responsible for the artistic choices. Since the Blood Colossus seems to only appear in this one issue, and even then only for a few panels, I would bet money the artist was just told to “draw a big, scary robot” and nothing else. The Blood Colossus’ actual design wasn’t a concern for either the writers or the publishers.
The fact were only discovering this (for the most part) now kinda shows how the comic industry is dying. Its been approximately 13 years since this issue came out or so.
This one I feel definitely crosses the line between reference and into copy right infringement. Compared to the ultra kaiju Micalas and Antlar appearing in the fantastic 4, for like a panel each. another good example of references is Matt Frank’s work on idw transfomers and how he threw in a couple of kamen riders and the red dragon thunder zord.
You might say lazy, but I think it’s actually kinda smart (though, admittedly, a bit dubious).
Comic artists are always on tight deadlines. I’m sure the artist for this book could have spent time designing a completely original robot, but honestly, in the industry, it would have been wasted time and effort.
As I said before, this mech was never seen in Marvel comics again; in fact, I believe, from what I’ve seen, it’s actually destroyed. And even then, it’s only in a handful of panels and doesn’t seem very important to the overall narrative. That fact, along with the likely deadlines and the very likely possibility that neither the artist nor the writers/publishers knew or cared what a Bionicle is, probably resulted in this really weird Easter egg.
That, or this artist is a genuine fan of Bionicle and went the extra extra mile to sneak one in. I think it’s a very real possibility. Bionicle has cameoed in dozens of television shows and books.
In fact, the Bionicle Wikipedia page has a whole list of such cameos, one of them even being a direct mention of the name “Bionicle” in a Spider-Man book.
Either way, it’s a neat little thing for us fans, if not odd.
How did I not notice, I read this comic 100 times and owned a Maxilos. But to be honest it’s pretty hard to notice under all the blood, skeletons and over the top 2000s edginess
