During Comic-Con, the DC Collectibles team invited me over to check out some of the new selection of figures and statues coming to your favorite hobby shop and toy store in the next few months – and I took some not-terrible photos! Mostly!
Without a whole lot of preamble, let’s get a good, up close and personal look at some of the toys that will be clamoring for your money in 2014 and beyond.
DC Bombshells
DC Comics readers may remember the Bombshells variant covers from June, featuring some of the heroines (super and otherwise) of the DCU re-imagined as 40’s pinup models. DC decided to reproduce those covers with a collection of statues featuring Zatanna, Mera, Lois Lane, and my personal favorite, Hawkgirl, whose statue goes above and beyond the assignment, throwing in a little Dave Stevens influence for that little extra something.
Batman: Arkham Knight
Even if Arkham Knight has been pushed back to 2015, we can still get a nice, clear look at some of the villains in the Bat-game sequel. Standouts are the Scarecrow (who continues to get minor but interesting tweaks to his design between the Arkham games), and the Knight himself, the mysterious new heavy who’ll be putting the boot to Batman.
Arrow/DC Comics Designer Series: Greg Capullo
Seriously, can we just get a bunch of Arrow play sets? The CW series has receives a collection of performer-perfect toys which are kind of crazy with the level of detail (get a load of the little glaring eyes on the Dark Arrow).
And I wish I’d gotten more shots of the Greg Capullo-inspired Batman figures. Neat little detail that I’d forgotten about during his comics run: Batman has little purple gloves.
Batman: The Animated Series/New Batman Adventures Prototypes
Look, I know it’s cliche, but DC can just go ahead and take my money already for these very, very fine figures based on Batman: The Animated Series. We even got an early look at the New Batman Adventures redesigns which offered more angular, darker takes on the DC Animated U characters in later seasons of the series. What they lack in articulation, these figures more than make up for in accuracy.
Mr. Freeze, in particular is great (sorry for the lack of focus on the pair of images here), but I wouldn’t turn down the Man-Bat if one ended up on my desk. I’m really curious what the final painted Killer Croc and Baby Doll will look like (and please, please sell them in a set, DC).
…and here are some other things!
Finally, you can see a range of artist-inspired statues including Cliff Chiang’s dynamic Wonder Woman, Francis Manapul’s take on Batman, and Gary Frank’s Superman which seems to have a slightly too-large head. DC also trotted out the new line of DC Scribblenauts figures and it feels really weird to see a wee lil chibi Constantine in the mix.
With the exception of Man-Bat, the Animated Series figures are actually insanely articulated, some of them just hide it (like Mr. Freeze). The upcoming prototypes just haven’t had the articulation added yet.
Malcolm Merlyn is not called Dark Arrow. It’s the Dark Archer.
You guys really need to get these pictures in a gallery format. It is beyond annoying to have to click through every single picture individually.