Somehow I managed to remain completely unaware of this until this past weekend. I’d noticed the scarcity of updates on Action-Figure.com of late, and read Adrian Faulkner’s post about his plan to retire from the site and pass it on to others, but I didn’t know anything about the “Internet dramaz” he referred to.

Some of that drama was revealed last week in a blog post by Paul Nicholasi, a.k.a. Nomad. Nicholasi asserts that he had some sort of understanding with Faulkner that he would take over the site when Faulkner left, but then Faulkner turned around and sold the site to someone Nicholasi alleges Faulkner described as “a bit of an idiot, but he has money.”

You can read Nicholasi’s whole post to get the story, but here’s my first-read impression of what happened. Nicholasi mentions earlier in the post that at its peak, A-F “topped 3 million hits in a day” and “pushed through 40k in affiliate sales for Sideshow Toys.” That’s not chump change, and given that Faulkner had founded the site, I would guess–although I have no inside information here–that selling the site and getting some money out of it was a lot more appealing than just handing it over to Nicholasi, no matter how much work Nicholasi had done for the site over the years.

I can’t blame Faulkner for wanting to make some money off the site he founded. But all the stuff about “hacking” and “police investigations” and so forth casts a dark cloud of suspicion and negative impressions about the whole thing. It’s just ugly.

The sad truth is that Action-Figure.com hasn’t been a relevant force in action figure news for some time now, having been usurped by TNI and the various toyline-specific websites and blogs. Nicholasi’s plan to expand the site to other geek-related topics was ambitious, but given the strong competition in that market (IGN, UGO and Enewsi, just to name a few) it would have been a very tough road to hoe.

So what happens now? I have no idea. I hope Nicholasi lands at some other toy site and continues to provide his excellent brand of toy coverage. And I wish Adrian all the best with his family and health issues. But it’s a shame it had to end this way.