DEEP DISH THEMES:
By The Slice:

ORIGIN: In the 1930s, scientist and explorer Dr. Bruce Dickson attempts to climb Mount Kalpurthia in the Himalayas. There, he encounters the lost civilization of Kalahia, which possessed extremely advanced technology. The Kalahian people expose him to a mutagenic substance which alters his body to give him the same physical abilities as they had: eternal youth, and tremendous physical resilience and flexibility, including the ability to become "thin", or rather, flat. Dickson learns much of their advanced technology, and falls in love with Olalla, daughter of the Kalahians' leader. He and his new love travel to the outside world and become superhero contemporaries of Captain America, the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, and others.



PROS: I remember when I first pulled this guy from a pack and I did a "WHO?" when I saw him. I remembered thinking that he looked kind of neat and his dial wasn't all that bad either. I put him on a few teams in the MANY sealed games that went hand in hand with the Avengers set, and he performed pretty well...not a show stealer or a diamond in the rough or anything, but he was worth his points for sure. His dial full of plasticity makes it so he can't be tied up very easily and that he is going to make sure that you have to deal with him before moving on to the bigger and better targets. That might actually be his greatest attribute. He makes you either deal with him or waste actions trying to get away from him because he's not worth the points to mess with since he has six clicks of life for just North of 60 points. Should you fail to break away from him you now have to deal with his Blades/Claws/Fangs that he has on 2/3 of his dial. He also gets Perplex on the two clicks that don't have B/C/F to give a friendly character a bump or to make an opposing character easier to deal with. All in all he's a thorn in your opponent's side that they will have to deal with in one way or another.

CONS: If you can get a fellow Defenders team ability character next to him to get use out of his team ability, you'll likely get even more use out of him, but otherwise his defense is only average at best. He does have a sprinkling of damage reducers at the top of his dial and some damage evasion at the end, but they're powers that are likely going to get tested as he is more likely to be smacked for some damage than players are likely to attempt a difficult break-away roll. His attack values are consistent with what power levels were at the time, but they haven't held up well. It's one of the reasons that I do these articles, though. I want to show what it would look like if we dragged some of these one-shot pieces into the future and show what their dials would look like with the advantages that exist in the modern game...and this is one Golden Aged character that really needs some modern love.

Other Players' Comments/Reviews: Using the Inline dial system, just click on the word bubble next to the character's name and it will take you to the units section comments!

KEYWORD THEMES: (Named Keywords are in bold)

Invaders: This keyword has gone a little bit stagnant in the last couple of years with only a small handfull of characters to have it. Thankfully, I would bank on that changing in the Nick Fury set that comes out next month, but for now I have a somewhat small pool of characters to choose from. I would actually use the rookie Captain America from the Founding Avengers Fast Forces, the Secret Invasion Namor (soooo good), Bucky from Avengers, and Thin Man to make a really effective 300 point Invaders theme team. You've got Captain America, Bucky, and Thin Man running some mid-range and close combat interference while Namor (Again...SOOOO good) just comes in with an Ultra Heavy and can take out a LOT of pieces in one Charge/Flurry attack.

NON-KEYWORD THEMES:

Liberty Legion: This one is a little tricky since they haven't made many of these characters (Again...HOPEFULLY in the Nick Fury set they will!) You're going to have to concede to using stand-ins for the time being if you want to play this team, but thankfully since this isn't legally a theme team by keyword rules, stand-ins aren't going to exactly ruin your strategy. For Jack Frost a simple Iceman substitution would work just fine. You could also play with the Whizzer SR Prime in place of the golden age Whizzer. Same name...same basic power set. Hopefully in time these concessions won't have to be made, but for now they'll do to get the basic idea across.

V-Battalion: This may be borrowing from several different iterations of Citizen V or people that have been part of the battalion over the years, but if you play with Thin Man, Union Jack, Citizen V from the Avengers set, the Dallas Riordan bystander, and the Baron Zemo from Chaos War, you have a pretty comprehensive V-Battalion and you're just under 300 points. It leaves you 13 points to do with as you will. I would actually recommend putting a utility belt on Citizen V to make him a little more competitive and drag him into the modern era a bit.

DEEP DISH DO-IT-YOURSELF:

In this section, I share with you my own homemade dials for these poor characters that have only ever had one or two versions of themselves realized. I'll try not to get too fanboyish with them, but I'm not making any promises! I also invite any of you who like to make fan dials to please share your versions of these characters as well by using the DIAL GENERATOR in the units section on HCRealms.

#014 Limited Edition Thin Man
Team: Defenders
Range: 0
Points: 75
Keywords: Invaders, Liberty Legion, Past, Soldier, V-Batallion

8 10 17 2

8 10 17 2

8 9 18 2

7 9 17 2

7 10 17 2

6 9 16 1

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

KO KO KO KO

Nothing is an Obstacle: Movement: Ignores Elevated Terrain, Hindering Terrain, Characters
Stretch Impossibly Thin: Thin Man can make close combat attacks on characters that are within four squares and line of fire. When drawing line of fire, Thin Man can use (Improved Targeting) Ignores Characters
Slip through the Cracks: Thin Man can use Phasing/Teleport and Stealth
Stretch to Absorb Impact: Thin Man can use Combat Reflexes and Toughness

This wraps it up for this installment of Deep Dish Themes: By the Slice. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to read it and thank you to IceHot and the others who boisterously nominated Thin Man! Feel free to post what you think about the article and just like regular Deep Dish Themes, feel free to nominate a character for an upcoming edition of Deep Dish Themes: By the Slice! Join me on 7/22 when I catch you on the rebound with Deep Dish Themes: By The Slice featuring BOUNCING BOY!

Got to say I love this piece! Thin Man is a certainly unappreciated, dirt cheap Invader. Notably, he offers one of the few non-combatant Leadership figures for the team (add 12 points for a back-row Contingency Plan figure).

One Invaders team I've put him on for kicks is the following:

Namor 150
Cap and Bucky 138
Human Torch 85
Toro 64
Thin Man 63

Invaders @ 500 points

Have Ice Cube Cap and the Avengers set Winter Soldier (70 points) on the sideline. Split the duo into them on turn 1, having Winter Soldier offer cover fire for the others while Cap counts down. Thin Man offers tie-up, specifically, for this roster, while Torch and Namor are your primary early game offense.

I loved the character in the New Invaders storyline a few years back and was very happy to play that theme when the Avengers set came out, giving us Blazing Skull, Union Jack, Spitfire, Toro, Bucky, Cap & Bucky, U.S. Agent, and SI giving us Jim Hammond and possibly the best Namor fig out there.
The Thin Man was an intriguing character in the comics and that made it even more fun to fit him on the team.

I agree with your pros and cons and especially enjoyed your cons, particularly about your reasons for writing about characters like him. Nicely done and much appreciated.

Your take on his new and improved dial is terrific and nicely costed. I would love to see that dial on a new version of him.

All in all another terrific article and I'm looking forward to seeing more of them.

You know who we really need a new version of? Mr. Terrific, the 3rd Smartest Man in the world and invisible to all technological detection. There hasn't been a version of this guy since the REV days if I'm not mistaken.

Not counting the Golden age version, yes, you are absolutely correct on all counts. I'd LOVE a new one. A T-Spheres power/trait would probably be AMAZING.

Great article. Really hoping he makes an appearance in the upcoming Fury set.

I think Darkhawk would be a cool by the slice candidate. Sadly, there's only two versions of him, and I think both are pretty good pieces.

Also, I have to ask: what comic is that image that they based the figure's sculpt from? I love it when WizKids does stuff like that.

I just lifted the picture off the internet so I don't know where it is from, but it is indeed the sculpt's origin

YES YES YES!!!! I am so glad that you covered this guy. I still sneak him on golden aged teams today! By the way your custom dial is masterful. I would play it until the game ceased to exist.

Please do Blazing Skull next!

One of the greatest injustices of power creep is that it hurts all these characters that are not likely to be remade any time soon, or at all. I think he could still be fun to play in a larger point game where you could work something out to get his defense higher with that Defenders TA in order to make him hard to hit and hard to slip away from.

I agree. I've been reading a lot on the Marvel Unlimited app and it is always fun to find the panel that inspired a sculpt.

I really enjoyed the read. Thanks!!!!