Tag Archives: dctv

Dec 15 2017

Legends of Tomorrow: The Atom by DC Collectibles

It’s no secret, I’m a big fan of DCTV. Well, not so much Arrow, because after pushing through two seasons, I still just couldn’t quite click with it, but the rest I really enjoy a lot. Legends of Tomorrow isn’t my favorite of the bunch, I think I’d rank The Flash or Supergirl a little higher, but it is the most ambitious, and overall it does a pretty good job of delivering the adventure each week and has had a great ensemble cast. Naturally, I’ve been picking up some of the figures here and there and today I’m finally opening one of the ones I was most looking forward to… Ray Palmer aka The Atom!

The package is pretty standard for what DC Collectibles is using these days. You get a mostly white window box, with a really weird blurred shot of the figure on the side panel and the name running up the opposing diagonal panel. The back shows other DCTV figures available, including The Flash and White Canary. The box is collector friendly, and while I’d love to keep it to store all the extras in, I don’t have the space, so this baby is about to get shredded.

So, I’ve got him out and I’ve spent some time playing around with him and there’s definitely some good and bad here. I suppose I should start off by saying that I happen to really dig Palmer’s A.T.O.M. Exo-suit design, as it’s like a cross between Iron Man and Ant-Man. Maybe not what comic purists were looking for, but the show has done a nice job making the character its own. And it’s damn cool to see Brandon Routh donning a super suit again. The tech-heavy suit certainly gave DC Collectibles a lot to work with, and as usual, and from the neck down, I think sculptor Paul Harding really knocked it out of the park.

The buck features an underlying black body suit with the red and blue armor pieces sculpted on, along with a web of silver rods connecting them all together. It’s a beautifully complex sculpt and there are so many little details to drink in. There are little clips and catches here and there, as well as some tiny sculpted rivets meant to be securing some of the pieces in place. The paint compliments the sculpt very well with some vibrant red and metallic blue, along with all that silver. Yup, when it comes to the look of the suit, I’ve got nothing but love for this figure.

Now, the portrait? Well, that’s another matter. I don’t know what happened here, but the best thing I can say is that it’s partially obscured behind the blue face shield. What you want to do here is display him so that you’ve got a light shining right on the shield and the glare will stave off what is otherwise a really unfortunate attempt at a likeness. The paint on the head is also a lot rougher than the rest of the body, and mine has a major stroke of blue slop carrying over from the chin strap to the skin. As I already mentioned, Paul Harding sculpted this figure, I own several of his pieces, and he’s an extremely talented artist. I think that’s reflected in the body, but, the head feels like it was done by someone else.

And then we hit articulation, and things continue to take a bit of a downward slide. The arms feature rotating hinges in the shoulders, hinges in the elbows, and the wrists are on hinged pegs. The lack of bicep swivels really hurts, but in this case I’m going to assume they thought it would break up the sculpt too much. The hips appear to be a standard T-crotch, but there’s also just enough lateral play in them to make me think there are some hinges in there. But I’m not willing to snap the legs off of him to find out. Below that, you get double hinges in the knees, and both hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. Again, no swivels in the thighs. There appears to be a ball joint under the chest armor, but I can’t get any movement out of it, and I’m afraid to try. The neck is ball jointed. Yes, there’s some useful articulation here, but some of it is a mystery and in the end the figure still comes off feeling very stiff. Not an uncommon thing for DC Collectibles, but here it just seemed to bug me a little more.

Mr. Palmer comes with an impressive four sets of hands. Two are fists and two are relaxed hands, and both are welcome. He also comes with a pair of accessory holding hands, but nothing to hold in them, so they’re kind of useless. He also comes with a pair of effect part hands, firing off his energy blasts. All of the hands are very nicely painted to match the suit, and I dig the energy blast effects a lot.

You also get translucent blue thruster effect parts, which clip into the back of the suit and in the lower legs. Again, these look fantastic and they stay in pretty well. The only downside is that with his limited articulation, there aren’t a lot of great flight poses to get him into.

I had really high hopes for this figure, and why shouldn’t I? I love the suit design, I love the character, and DC Collectibles has been doing a bang up job with their DCTV figures as of late. And don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to love here. The suit looks great and the effect parts are all really well done. But with a rough likeness and stiff articulation, the end result was rather disappointing. He’ll look fine lined up on my DCTV shelf, but I was hoping for something a little better than what we got.

Jul 21 2017

DC Comics Multiverse (Doomsday Wave): Supergirl by Mattel

It’s hard to believe it, but this is my first DC Multiverse figure. I’ve been largely avoiding this line because I haven’t heard great things about it and I’m still, YES STILL!!! bitter about Mattel killing off DC Universe Classics only to seemingly re-brand it over and over again in slightly different scales and styles. But, a friend of mine was looking to unload a wave of these for stupid cheap and so I took them off his hands, mainly for the figure I’m looking at today and maybe to satiate my mild curiosity.

The packaging is pretty cool, especially when comparing it to the likes of Hasbro’s Marvel Legends. You get a collector friendly window box that shows the figure off nicely and some character art and a little bio on the side panel. The character selection for this wave is all over the place, but the “Collect & Connect” Doomsday figure is motivating enough to get them all. This version of Supergirl is from the TV Series. It’s a show I started watching as a guilty pleasure, but it’s grown on me a lot. It’s upbeat and good-natured, and I like to think of watching it as passive resistance against the asshole impostor that’s walking around in Superman’s costume in the DC movies.

This is clearly a tale of two figures. From the neck down she looks pretty damn great. I really dig the design of her costume in the series and Mattel did a nice job recreating it here. The S-shield is actually part of the sculpt, as is all the piping on the torso and arms. The belt is sculpted, the pleating on the skirt looks natural, and the boots have little wrinkles here and there. The cape falls pretty naturally and it doesn’t even throw off the balance of the figure too badly. The paint is also exceptional for an off-the-peg Mattel figure. The blue they used for her top is deep and goes really well with the somewhat subdued red of the skirt, cape, and boots. The gold paint they used for the belt and the trim on the S-Shield is quite striking and both it and the red piping on the suit are applied with care and precision. This is surprisingly great stuff! And then you get to the head sculpt.

Woof! What happened here? I mean, I’m not expecting great things, but how the hell was this even approved? Melissa Benoist is an aggressively cute young lady and this is… WHAT IS THIS?  It’s hard to tell what lets this portrait down more, the sculpt or the paint, but in the end it doesn’t matter. It looks like Supergirl got stung by an army of Kryptonite bees and her face is in the process of swelling up and she’s trying to smile it off and act like nothing happened. YOU DON’T SHRUG OFF A BEE ATTACK, MS. DANVERS!!! Also, those printed eyes are just laughable. I will admit, that this head does not photograph well. It does look a little better in hand. At the right angle with the light shining just right, I can kind of see a little of Ms. Benoist in there, but not enough of to save it. What a shame.

Following hot on the heels of that facial disappointment comes the articulation. Now, what’s here sounds decent on paper. The arms feature rotating hinges in the shoulders and elbows, with swivels in the wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, and hinges in both the knees and hips. The torso swivels at the waist, has an ab crunch in the chest, and a ball joint in the neck. There are some obvious bummers here, like no swivels or lateral rockers in the ankles and no hinges in the wrists, but there are a few more problems worth mentioning.

The range of motions in the elbows sucks, mainly because of the way they’re sculpted. She can’t even do a proper hands-on-hips heroic stance. She can barely get right angles out of those guns. Also, the ab crunch hinge is designed so that she can only bend backwards. That’s helpful when trying to put her into a flying pose, but forward movement would have been nice as well. Besides, the sculpted hair keeps her from looking up anyway, so she still can’t really do a very good flying pose.

I was particularly interested in the scaling on these figures, and surprised to find that they scale pretty well with the old DCUC line. On the other hand, they scale surprisingly poorly against Mattel’s more recent Movie Masters line. On the plus side, Mattel seems to be producing all the DCTV figures in this line, so at least those will all display well together.

With some potentially bright spots, this figure still ends up disappointing. I’m pleased to say that it isn’t the kind of junk that I was expecting it to be, but between the limited articulation and the disaster of a face, it’s not hitting the mark. I think Mattel is getting around $20 a pop for these, which feels like a lot. If I break down what I paid for this wave, she’d be more like $8, so I’m not complaining. I’d still like to pick up DC Collectibles’ version of DCTV’s Supergirl and see how it compares. In the meantime, I’ll probably be revisiting the rest of this wave on future DC Fridays when I have nothing better to look at.

Nov 4 2016

The Flash (TV Series): Heatwave by DC Collectibles

I’ve been on a statue kick for the last few DC Fridays, so today I’m going to mix things up and open one of the ga-jillion DC action figures waiting on the heap in the corner. DC Collectibles impressed me with their TV versions of The Flash and Leonard Snart, so let’s see how they did with Heatwave!

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Mick Rory is part of the second wave of The Flash TV Series figures, although these have only been two to a wave so far. Nonetheless, the packaging is identical to what we saw used for Barry and Leonard. Heatwave is actually number four in the series. I still have to track down the third figure, Reverse Flash! Anyway, the packaging here is clean and attractive and totally collector friendly.

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Out of the package and Heatwave is looking pretty good, although I wouldn’t say spectacular. He’s wearing a fire-retardant suit from the Central City Fire Department, complete with scorched shoulder patch and CCFD printed across the back. The suit features some decent detail work, including wrinkles, some stitching, and pockets. I particularly like that they sculpted the steel plates on the toes of his boots. The paint wash over the suit looks good and kind of gives it a little sheen to simulate the flame resistant qualities of the material, although it really doesn’t match the fabric used in the show very well at all.

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The articulation here is the same as what we got with Captain Cold. The shoulders, elbows, and wrists are rotating hinges. The legs are ball jointed at the hips and have double hinges in the knees. The ankles appear to be on ball joints, but the cuffs of the pants inhibit most of their movement. Finally, the neck is ball jointed. The elbows here give a little better range of movement than Snart had.

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The portraits in this line have been a little soft, and Heatwave here is no exception. I think it’s a passable likeness to Dominic Purcell, but it could have used something in the way of whiskers and perhaps a more expressive face. Heatwave is a loose cannon and the rather calm expression here doesn’t reflect that.

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Of course, he wouldn’t be Heatwave without his flame gun and DCC has done an admirable job recreating it as an accessory here. There’s a hooked tab on the hip that looks like it’s supposed to fit into the slot on the side of the gun, but the connection is too loose to hold the gun. Luckily you cans till hook the hose on the top and have him wear it that way. The gun design itself is crude and ugly, just like Heatwave. The figure also comes with a total of three sets of hands. You get a pair of fists, and two pair of accessory holding hands, which seem rather redundant.

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Ultimately, Heatwave isn’t the most exciting figure around, but a lot of that has to do with the character design. I think DCC did a solid job recreating him here and he looks great displayed next to his partner in crime, Snart. To be honest, I’ve decided I’m going to be All-In on both the The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow figures, so Heatwave was a must have for me either way. I don’t know that I’d recommend anyone run out and buy him, but I’m not sorry I did.