There are MOCers who take weeks or months to finalize their creations, there are those who want to release an MOC but who ultimately will never design it, and there are those like Blake's Baericks who are passionate about a subject and who are able to output many thumbnails in no time. With his particular style, he offers us a series of performances in Tolkien's universe, all very successful.

The style is researched, sometimes jumbled, and each MOC is filled with details, winks and improbable but innovative techniques which in the end form an interesting blend. The magic still works and that is the main thing. Don't dream, the LEGO LOTR & The Hobbit range will not be of this ilk, far from it.

So I present you these thumbnails here gathered, and if you want to know more about some of them, go to Blake's Baericks flickr gallery or his Brickshelf gallery.

And it's not me saying it, but LEGO. I contacted the manufacturer for two problems: Batman's blue cape missing from the set 6858 Catwoman Catcycle City Chase (see this article) and the color error of the hands of Two-Face and his two henchmen in the set 6864 Batmobile and the Two-Face Chase (see this article).

Regarding the Batman cape, it is sent to me by the LEGO after-sales service who recognizes that the absence of it is voluntary but embarrassing and does not hesitate to send this item to those who request it.

Regarding the 6864 set, LEGO confirms to me that it is indeed a design error on the box and that the minifigs were well planned to be delivered with the hands in Flesh. The error on the box will be corrected with the next production wave for this set.

If like me, you are annoyed that you did not have Batman's blue cape in the 6858 set which is still the cheapest in the range allowing you to get the blue version of this minifigure, contact LEGO by email and ask them to send it to you, it shouldn't be a problem.

We already knew the LEGO Comic Builder (see this article), a simple and ergonomic tool to create in a few clicks (okay, a few dozen clicks) a comic strip with the super heroes of the DC Universe 2012 range.

The tool is full of options and it is really possible to produce a clean and efficient comic. You can save in pdf format, print, modify, etc ... your creations.Be careful, we get caught up quickly ...

Click this link or on the image to access this tool on dedicated LEGO Super Heroes space.

Here is finally a first visual of the official minifigs of Hulk, Iron Man, Wolverine and Captain America (LEGO Super Heroes Marvel range) planned as indicated on the page of this catalog for April 2012.

Iron Man is similar to the minifigure presented at San Diego Comic Con in July 2011: The helmet is definitely too big. The screen printing is interesting, especially on the legs. The screen printing of the torso is different from that of the prototype and it's a shame ... it remains far behind Christo's. Note that the version presented here by LEGO is that of the Mark VI type armor seen in particular in Iron Man 2.

Captain America looks successful, his shield has a larger diameter than that of Christo's custom minifigure, from what we can deduce from this visual.

Wolverine is also sympathetic with his claws and interesting screenprinting on the face.

Hulk visual confirms the figurine also announced at the Comic Con, with a serigraphy which seems to me successful there too.

We also learn with this visual that the Marvel range will be entitled to a dedicated internet space as is already the case for the DC Universe range : MarvelSuperHeroes.LEGO.com. This space is not yet online at the time of this writing. We can bet that it will be in the coming weeks.

This is thanks to IG88 from the forum brickpirate that we discover this visual of the Santa Darth Maul planned for the set 9509 LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar 2012.

At first glance, I must say that I cannot find this concept of Santa-character-from-Star-Wars very interesting in itself, but with this image, I almost come to appreciate this Darth Maul who takes the torso of the santa yoda of the set 7958 LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar 2011.

The wink is nice because we already know that 2012 will be the year of Darth Maul: The packaging of the official Star Wars merchandise line is all dressed up with a visual of this character, TheEpisode I The Phantom Menace 3d spring in February and the horned Zabrak also miraculously returns in the animated series The Clone Wars ... (see this article).