Mattel seems to be rushing out the 4-inch Young Justice figure with great haste. I just recently found all of Wave 1 at TRU, when Wave 2 started popping up all over online. I was able to pick up the first three figures of Wave 2, and I’m still hunting for the third. Today we’re going to take a look at Superboy and the first adult superhero in the line, Captain Atom.

Yep, there’s the same packaging we saw for Wave 1. I still like it a lot. The deco is very colorful and comic book inspired and the big bubbles display the figures very nicely. If anything maybe the bubble is too roomy. I still think it’s really clever the way the package uses an illustrated false back under the bubble to conceal the Collect & Connect pieces for the Hall of Justice. If you want to display these guys carded, the presentation won’t be marred by chunks of a building. The back panel of the cards have the character profiles and portraits and an illustration of what C&C piece you’re getting with the figures.

Let’s look at Superboy first. He’s a really solid likeness that once again relies more heavily on paintwork than sculpting. The head sculpt, however, is extremely well done and fits the animated character perfectly. The rest of the body also falls in line with the overall likeness, with his simple S-shielded black T-shirt, blue jeans and black boots. Astute collectors will note that Superboy uses the same torso and arms as Aqualad. The figure still looks fine, even with the reuse of parts, but considering the price point here, it does bug me a bit. It’s most noticeable in the arms when the two figures are standing next to each other. Superboy comes with an odd accessory, which looks like he ripped the exhaust system out of somebody’s car. In reality, it’s probably just supposed to be a piece of metal he’s bending with his super strength.

Next up is Captain Atom. I was pretty happy to pick him up since I don’t have either the JLU or the DC Universe Classics versions, and so this is my first figure of this character in my collection. Although, in fairness, I would have rather had Mattel do Red Tornado in this wave instead, since he’s more prominent in the cartoon. Captain Atom is a completely new sculpt, making him bigger and a little bulkier than the kids. His paintwork is as simple as it gets. He’s all silver with red boots and gloves and his red emblem tampo’ed on his chest. Nonetheless, the paintwork is all pretty sharp. Despite being a new sculpt, Atom’s hands are in almost an identical position to all the kids, which is just sort of weird. Atom comes with a piece of energy that clips onto his hand. The effect on this isn’t so great, but Atom is still a sharp looking figure.

Yes, I’ve now got two more pieces of the Hall of Justice, but I’m not going to show the progress until I get to the next figures in Wave 3: Vandal Savage and Black Canary.

These figures continue to be a guilty pleasure for me. I still think they’re over-priced and under-articulated and now the reuse of parts isn’t making me much happier. And yet I still dig them on some level and will be continuing to buy the line. I wouldn’t go recommending them to anyone who isn’t already in love with Mattel’s Infinite Heroes or JLU lines, because I think they’re likely to disappoint everyone else. I was able to get this pair plus Vandal Savage off of Amazon at regular retail price and even netted some free shipping. The fourth figure in the Wave, Black Canary, is going to be a little bit more difficult to score at the retail price. Looks like she’s going ot be Cheetara all over again. [I was actually able to score her off of TRU’s website a few days ago, so I’ll have a look at Vandal and Black Canary in a few days! -FF]

Last time we checked out Aqualad and Icicle Jr and now it’s time to take a look at the ketchup and mustard twins. In retrospect, I probably should have split these guys up since they feature the same red and yellow coloring on their uniforms, but then they’re also both dicks toward Artemis when she first joins the group, so I guess they have a lot in common.

It’s the same packaging we saw last time and I still like it a lot. It’s colorful and the huge bubble really shows off the figure well, while hiding the unsightly Hall of Justice piece behind a cleverly concealed card made to blend in with the cardback. the back panel of the card has an illustration of the character, a little blurb about him, and reveals what the other figures in the line will be. The overall deco of the package really draws me in and makes me want to spend ten dollars on an under sculpted and under articulated figure. Damn, you, Mattel!!!

Let’s kick it off with Kid Flash. The head sculpt is great! From the goggles and lightning bolts coming off his hood right down to his little douchebag smirk, Mattel has certainly captured the likeness. From the neck down, though, there’s precious little in the way of sculpted detail, apart from his gauntlets. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to see that it is a new body and is notably and correctly shorter than the other members of the gang. His costume is characterized by a nice bright coat of red and yellow paint and a red lighting bolt tampo’ed on his chest. As much as I hate pre-posed figures, I’m almost tempted to say Kid Flash might have benefited from some, since you can’t really get him into a good running pose. Kid Flash comes with one accessory: A bag of fast food. It’s pretty useless since he can barely even hold it, but then I think it’s kind of awesome to own a figure that comes with a bag of takeout.

Moving on to Speedy. He enjoys the most unique sculpting of any figure we’ve looked at so far. The head is pretty solid, with the hat sculpted onto the head , complete with feather, and the mask painted on his face. While his torso appears to be the same as Aqualad’s, there’s a sculpted belt and “skirt” added over the hips that makes the shirt look more like a tunic. The high collar and strap across his chest are added with paint apps. His arms also benefit from uniquely sculpted sleeves and gauntlets, and his legs have sculpted heavy boots. Naturally, Speedy also has his quiver full of arrows. It’s permanently plugged right into his back. Speedy comes with his trusty bow. Mattel could have probably gotten away with just using paint apps for some of Speedy’s sculpted bits, so it’s nice to see they went a little extra on making this guy unique.

The articulation on Kid Flash and Speedy is the same as Aqualad and Icicle Jr. You get the basic four points of rotation: Shoulders and hips, and you get ball jointed necks. Again, this is really unacceptable in this day and age, not to mention at this price point, but I guess Mattel got away with it throughout the JLU line, so and decided not to mess with success.

Ok, so having looked at the entire first wave, what can we make with the Hall of Justice C&C pieces so far?

                                    

There it is. Not too much to look at yet, but you can definitely get an idea of just how big this thing is going to be and what it’s going to look like. I’m extremely impressed. Early reports suggested that the pieces don’t lock together all that well, but I’m finding the opposite. This is a pretty sturdy construct that holds together extremely well and looks great as a backdrop for the Young Justice figures or even the JLU or Infinite Heroes lines. Hell, even though it’s  out of scale with the DCUC figures, they still look great posing in front of it.

And that’s Wave 1. I know I should be coming down on these figures like a ton of bricks, but I’m still digging on them. Sure, I wish they were better articulated. Sure, I wish they had a bit more detailed sculpts. And most of all, yes, I wish they cost less. But I just think the simple execution works well for an animated series like Young Justice. But most of all, the main reason I’m pursuing this line like I am is to get the Hall of Justice completed. It’s really is going to be cool and offer up a whole bunch of great display options for my various lines of DC Universe figures.

I humbly beg your collective pardons if you’re getting overloaded with my features on DC figures. It wasn’t my intention, but as always FigureFan is about what I’m buying and Mattel’s DC License has been getting a lot of my dollars lately. I begrudginly started watching Young Justice back when it first aired and much to my surprise, I quickly fell in love with it. The animation is amazing, and the rest is a charming mix of great action and really cheesy fun. I’m also pretty happy that the elder Superheroes play a fairly big role in the show. Still, I was really on the fence over whether to collect the 4-inch line. As we’ll soon find out, they aren’t exactly amazing examples of action figure craftsmanship, nor are they anything even close to resembling a good value, but in the end two things won me over. 1) My enduring affection for the Infinite Heroes/JLU line and 2) The Collect & Connect Hall of Justice. Ok, enough rationalizing, let’s look at the first two figures.

The figures come on a simple bubble and cardback. I like the deco used here, which is obviously heavily influenced by the Infinte Heroes line. You can see all the main characters illustrated on the cardback, and yes that includes the two chicks (Artemis and Miss Martian) who apparently won’t be included in the initial planned run of 12 figures. Huh? Anyway, the packaging is deceptively simple as it features a concealed compartment behind the figure that holds the included piece to the Hall of Justice. The back of the card shows off an illustration of the character, a short blurb about the character, illustrations of the 12 figures planned out over three waves. You also get a printed card that shows you all the pieces for the HoJ and how to snap the whole thing together.

Aqualad looks pretty good. He’s well proportioned and the head sculpt is quite faithful to his animated counterpart. There isn’t a whole lot of sculpted detail on the body, apart from his hands and bare feet. He is wearing his backpack, with the hilt to one of his aqua swords in place, the other one is missing as the other sword comes as an actual accessory. Like all the Young Justice 4-inch figures, Aqualad feels like a mix of Infinite Heroes and JLU. You get the slightly more detailed sculpts of IH and the bare minimum 5-points of articulation that was standard for JLU. Unfortunately, these guys are two big to be in scale with the Inifinte Heroes figures, and designed too differently to be at home with the JLU figures.

With little in the way of sculpted detail on his body, Aqualad uses paintwork to make up his costume, which includes the blue water/energy tendrils that wrap around his arms. Overall the paint is pretty good, particularly on the face. There isn’t the usual slop and bleeding here that I found on a number of my JLU and IH figures.

As mentioned, Aqualad comes with one unsheathed aqua sword. It’s a decent enough accessory complete with a translucent blade, but Aqualad can’t really hold it very well, and when he does it’s just off to the side and not in a good action stance. He looks great standing there, but don’t expect to get any great action poses out of him, as he does just have the five points of articulation. At least his head is ball jointed.

Next up is the only villain of this initial wave: Icicle Jr. I can’t for the life of me remember seeing the episode he appeared in, so I can’t really compare him to his animated counterpart. He is, however, a pretty cool looking figure. His arms gradually turn into semi-translucent ice claws toward the ends, which makes for a really nice effect. The head sculpt is excellent as is the paintwork on the head. From the neck down, there isn’t a lot of coloring on the figure and apart from his arms and bare feet, there isn’t a lot of detail in the sculpt. Icicle Jr. doesn’t come with any accessories.

One major annoyance is that neither of these figures want to stand up on their own and they don’t come with figure stands. Luckily they work pretty well with the huge sack of generic action figure stands I keep on hand.

The pair of Hall of Justice pieces aren’t worth much at this point, so I’m going to hold off until tomorrow’s look at Speedy and Kid Flash to show what you get when you’ve completed the first wave of four figures.

Wait… How much do they cost??? Yeah. The good news is that if you’re used to hunting JLU figures, then you’re probably used to paying $10 for very simple and poorly articulated figures. And that’s exactly what you pay for these guys if you can find them on the pegs. If you’re forced to go online, some of them are going to cost a lot more, and that’s a tough sell since $10 a pop is a pretty hard pill to swallow for this line as it is. I was able to find all of the first wave at TRU, and I ordered three out of the four figures in wave two for the same price. But right now the only way for me to get Black Canary is to pay double for her. Now, I’ll concede that some of the price of admission is going toward the HoJ piece, but unless you’re buying every single figure in the line (all 12 of them, including two repaints) that’s going to be small consolation.

I like these figures, I really do. They really capture the spirit of the cartoon very nicely and there’s something oddly satisfying about their simplicity. But when it comes to complexity of sculpt and accessories and articulation, these guys fall so far behind other figures lines in this scale it makes the price tag seem like a real rip-off. Think about it. Ban Dai sells their new 4-inch Thundercats for $7.99 and Hasbro retails their current at or below that same price. Bottom line, you need to be a certain kind of dedicated collector and/or unabashed DC whore to collect this line. But then the unbelievably awesome C&C Hall of Justice backdrop doesn’t hurt either.