I love Mattel's DC Universe Classics line

Wow, it's been a while since I posted. Probably because the last one had so much thought and introspection that it used up all my insight for a while. But the time has come to post again, and it's actually mostly going to be ABOUT toys, instead of about TOYS. If that makes any sense.

But first, a quick preview. Wizard World Philly was this weekend, and we got to see previews of three figures from DCUC Wave 6 - Hawkman, Kryptonian Life Suit Superman, and Mr Miracle. The Four Horsemen do amazing work on these figures.

I think Mr Miracle, aka Scott Free (yeah, that's kind of a lame name, especially knowing his talents are in the way of being able to break out of and escape anything) looks awesome, and Hawkman looks very promising. Can't wait to see a painted version of him, and I hope that he comes will all the pictured accessories (sword, mace, shield). I quite like the Life Suit costume, and think that Superman will be cool, too.

I should also mention that a picture of Darkseid's firstborn son surfaced earlier this week. I'm familiar with this character from the animated series (Superman and Justice League) and I think this figure looks awesome (although, as you may have noticed, I say that about almost every single figure in this line). It hasn't been officially announced yet, so we don't know when we'll get him, but I'm guessing wave six, since we only know of three figures from that set. Presenting Kalibak.

Anyway, moving on...

The point of this post comes from a thread on my new favorite forum The Fwoosh - why do I like the DC Universe Classics line? This is a (hopefully) more coherent version of my response in that thread.

Character Selection

From the five and half waves and two 2 packs that have been announced, wave 1 is the only one that I'm not interested in 4 characters or more. I didn't care for Penguin and Detective Bats, and wasn't too interested in Red Tornado or Res - until I opened Etrigan, and saw how cool the C&C piece was. I pieced together Rex from friends and eBay, and absolutely love him, though I'd never heard of him before this (I'm actually not very up on comics). I will get Red Tornado one of these days, I just haven't yet, I'm sort of holding out for the modern version.

From wave 2 on, I love almost every single figure, even the characters I'm not familiar with or overly fond of. I want every single one. This line has made me the closest to a completist I think I will ever be. I was originally planning not to get Black Manta or Gorilla Grodd, but once my case arrived there was no way I could get rid of them. They were even on my desk at work this week so I could see them all day. From the responses in the Fwoosh thread, every time we see a new picture of an upcoming figure, someone says something like "I didn't know I needed this figure until this picture." There are hundreds or thousands of character in the DC Universe, most of which I have very little knowledge of, but seeing them in plastic form, sculpted by the fantastic Four Horsemen, makes me appreciate them more, and want to have them all.

There are so many cool looking characters they're doing, for example, Superman Red and Superman Blue in wave 2. I've never read the comics, I've heard it was a lame story, but the look is quite cool, and I was extremely excited to learn both would be available. And they're great figures. Deathstroke, kicks Justice League butt in Identity Crisis, how could I not want that figure? A giant Solomon Grundy, Despero, Batman Beyond - awesome characters that I know from the animated series' I'm so happy I will have these characters in such a great line. Eradicator, Lobo, Nightwing, Robin, I could go on and on, but I'd end up listing ever figure that's been announced. It's just awesome, the random and wide variety character selection we're getting. They're not just focusing on Superman and Batman, or other more well know characters. I mean, we're getting Lightray and a super-robot version of Metallo.

Sculpting

Rex Mason, Aquaman, Etrigan, etc. They're all extremely detailed, and really well done. I really like the way all of these look. They've gotten me to go back and pick up figures from the DCSH line such as Darkseid and Mongol (man, I wish I had been collecting DC over the last two years, instead of just Star Wars). I really hope that Brainiac, Luthor and Supergirl get re-released, and there are others that I would also buy if they were. These figures all look so good, that characters I don't care for I want to buy. Black Manta as an example mentioned earlier. Hell, I'd probably even buy a Jimmy Olsen figure at this point, and I really don't like him. I can't really say much more about this, other than to point you at my DCUC Wantlist post so you can see all the pictures of the figures.

Articulation

I've always been a bit of an articulation junky - sure these aren't as crazy good as the Halo 3 figures, but they're so much better than DC Direct's figures, or the old Batman figures I have. There are a couple points of articulation that I think they would benefit from, but at the same time, I don't really miss them much, either. And they're hellalot better than anything we've gotten in the Spawn lines for the last few years.

Accessories

Aquaman and Black Manta have really neat tridents. Scarecrow (DCSH wave 1) has a crazy cool scythe. Superman Red/Blue have neat energy effects. Harley has a crazy big old mallet AND a gun. She can't quite hold the hammer, but still. DCSH 3 Batman had 7 batarangs, he also couldn't hold them, but seven's a lot. The Amazon figures come with cool weapons - Artemis with a bow and quiver of arrows, Wonder Woman with an axe and shield and Ares with an axe and a big old sword. Deathstroke comes with his own armory - a staff, sword, pistol, machine gun, and possibly more. Rex, the C&C for wave 1 had three accessories, that's more than EVERYBODY else in his wave (I think).

Price

Before discovering this line I had been buying DC Direct figures to get all the great DC characters. Frankly my dear, they cost too damn much. Especially some of the older figures - the Return of Superman figures are crazy - $100+ for Cyborg Superman? Holy Hell No. I only had to pay $25 for DCSH Cyborg Superman, and the new ones are $10-$12 (Target-CornerStoreComics.com), versus $16+ for DCD at FYE, the only place I can get them locally. I also quite like Spawn figures, but $13+ for a plastic statue is really grating. I much prefer an articulated toy for $10. And Star Wars figures are up to $7 each, and that's for a figure almost half the size of these.

Look and Feel

They have a cohesive look. They will all look great next to each other, rather than looking like they're from different toy lines. I love the animated series, but haven't been happy with the animated style figures, and I'm not crazy about movie figures either (excluding Iron Man). With DC Direct, each line is in a specific artist's style, which is cool and has it's own merits, but it's rare to get an entire set of Justice League figures, or villains, such as the Legion of Doom, in the same style, or even scale. The only lines I can think of off the top of my head are the 2002/2003 Superman and Return of Superman line, but most of those are prohibitively expensive, and the current Justice League of America line, which after wave 3 will have the entire, current Justice League membership in plastic. But at $15-$17 each. Oh yeah, and between the JLA Classified and Superman/Batman lines you can get the Justice League in Ed McGuinness style, and I'm only missing three. But where that's only the Justice League, with DCUC I can have the Justice League, presumably someday I can have the Teen Titans and Justice Society and Legion of Superheros as well as all their villains in similar styles.

In conclusion - I love DCUC

All that to say, I love this line. For the foreseeable future I will be buying every figure, and I will be more than happy to do so. I guess it boils down to something somebody said on The Fwoosh.

I love DCUC because all the characters I loved as a kid and still love as an adult are finally getting the figures they deserve.

And I get to discover new characters to love and buy figures of.

Girl Fridays Bonus

To make up for the lack of recent updates, here's a bonus Girl Fridays piece, in full colour...

Girl Fridays

Sorry I've been absent for the last few days, I've been busy busy busy trying to put together something special for the San Diego Comicon...

Sin Titulo Week 51

The newest installment of Sin Titulo is up now.

Girl Fridays

Doc Hero

Another Seaguy 2 model today, this time Doc Hero, the retired superhero. Since the defeat of Anti-Dad and the rest of the supervillains he hasn't had much to do other than ride the Eye-Go-Round at Mickey Eye Park, so he's stopped wearing his magnificent golden armour and dresses more casually. I changed the design of his helmet slightly, influenced by the mask of rapper MF Doom.

Meow

I sketched this the other day and thought it was a good preliminary drawing for a finished piece, and so I put it aside to re-draw and clean up later. Looking at it today I realize that the sketchiness is quite pleasant and re-doing it isn't necessary.

This is a significant step for me.

If He Says He's An Oil Man, You Will Agree

My favourite movie of last year was Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. I found it utterly captivating (enough to see it three times in the theatre and to buy the dvd) and I think the character of the misanthropic oil tycoon Daniel Plainview will go down in history as one of the all-time great screen monsters. It also gave us 2007's best pop culture catchphrase - "I drink your milkshake."

There is a very good chance that Plainview will be my Hallowe'en costume this year.

That is, if I don't do Anton Chigurh.

Freddy vs Jason

Sin Titulo Week 50

This week's Sin Titulo is now up. I'm two weeks away from celebrating my first anniversary...

The Other Side Covers

In addition to being nominated for a Shuster Award for Sin Titulo, I've also been nominated for Best Cover Artist for my work on The Other Side, which was also nominated for a 2007 Eisner Award for Best Limited Series.

Here are my covers for the series:

The Ting Tings

Holy shit, have you heard these guys?

That's Not My Name
Shut Up and Let Me Go
Great DJ

Hello, new favourite band.

For today anyway.

Last Son of Krypton

This is a preliminary study for a Superman drawing I'm going to do for the Shuster Awards. The sketch is only about 4 inches high, likely smaller than it appears on your monitor. I'm posting it here because I'm terrified I'm going to ruin it when I go to final so you might as well see it when it was good.




This may sound greedy as I'm already working with Grant Morrison, but I'd love to draw All-Star Superman. File under "Pipe Dream."

Seaguy 2 Models

The Seaguy model I posted a few days ago has already started making its way around the web, but looking at it now there's a few things that are wrong with it, which prompted me to do another pass at it. Here's the revision, and some of the other characters from the story.

Seaguy's costume has had a few changes from the original series. Grant Morrison has said that if the first series was the "child" Seaguy (naive, full of curiosity and wonder, prone to trouble), then this is the "teenage" Seaguy (knows too much to return to ignorant bliss, but still hasn't defined who he wants to be). His costume is less colourful this time - still keeping with the blue, yellow and black colour scheme, but black is now the dominant colour, and the blue is a much darker shade. I dropped the belt so he looks less like a toy superhero, and more like he's wearing a wetsuit. The "SG" logo was the trickiest part, I was never happy with the yellow oval of the first costume and so I spent almost a full day sketching dozens of variations until I found the "wave" design, which is still a callback to the previous costume design but more modern and nautical.

She-Beard has had a complete redesign, again, still keeping with the colour scheme of the original for visual continuity but otherwise entirely new. Her only real description is "Red Sonja. With a beard."

Seadog, whom we found out at the end of the last series is also the villain Lotharius, keeps his yellow stripey shirt, but I gave him white pants and boat shoes, which calls to mind the citizens of the Village in The Prisoner.

And finally Death, the Grim Gondolier, who claimed Seaguy's pal Chubby Da Choona as his own in issue 2 of the previous series. He still can't find anyone but Seaguy to play him at Chess...

More to come.

Girl Fridays

Adventure Ahoy

It was recently officially announced at the New York Comic Con that after 4 years of dwelling in Limbo, Seaguy by Grant Morrison and myself is finally returning. Seaguy was always intended to be a trilogy of books but unfortunately the first volume, The Wasps of Atlantis, underperformed and the remaining volumes were cancelled, leaving many readers understandably puzzled at the conclusion of the book. Despite the apparent low sales of the first volume, Seaguy fans appear to be everywhere, as it's always one of the most common books people bring for me to sign at conventions, and to this day I'm frequently asked about the other books in the series.

Finally, the wait is over and Vertigo has given the green light for the complete trilogy to be created. Slaves of Mickey Eye and Seaguy Eternal are to be published back to back in 2009. I have the first script and have begun preliminary work. Unfortunately I cannot reveal any plot details here, (but you wouldn't want that anyway, would you?), but I will be posting some of my costume sketches (most characters will be receiving makeovers) and other assorted drawings pertaining to the series, leading up to its release.

First up, Seaguy and his unpleasant replacement sidekick/familiar, Lucky El Loro.

Who do you want to be today?

I read several gaming oriented blogs, my favorite being Shamus Young's Twenty Sided. He participated in a round table 'discussion', which led me to a few other blogs. Reading around I found a post I wanted to comment on, but it required that I login to post. Since I am a member of far too many forums and communities as it is (more than I can maintain a good participation in) I thought I might as well make a non-collecting post.

Scorpia asks if we are what we play, prompted by a separate article (which I haven't read yet).

I found Scorpia's post rather interesting, and upon self-examination found that I am (not surprisingly) different than her, and those that commented on her post. While I will play a good character, more inline with my personality, it's usually not until after I have played through as someone opposite. Read on, if you dare.

To answer the question, Am I what I play, or do I play what I am? I tend to not play what I am. I like to experiment with character types that differ from my own. For example, when playing a game where the main character has some sort of mystical or superhuman abilities/powers I usually think it would be fun to be an all-powerful galactic ruler that doesn't really have to worry about the consequences of using and abusing their powers.

Take Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic as an example, or SW Jedi Knight/Outcast/Academy. I almost always play as an evil, dark side character first. I find it's more fun and interesting to act in ways and do things that I could normally never do in real life: force choke that jerk that took my parking place, fry the guy that's making me wait in line, punch the annoying guy that asks me for money everyday, take over the galaxy, etc.

Now, these are things I would never actually DO in real life, but I can't say I've never fantasized about doing some of them when confronted by some people. I do go back and replay these games as a more virtuous, or at least inherently good/helpful person, more inline with how I really act, and it's fun too, but I usually play games to experience things different from real life.

Now that I've actually thought about how I play games, it's no surprise to me that I really enjoyed certain games, despite the negative light it may cast on me. Like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, despite the fact that the main character is a completely homicidal sociopath, with absolutely no moral compunctions whatsoever, does whatever he deems is necessary to get a head (it usually involves killing someone or lots of someone's), who, if I knew someone like that in real life I would strongly be tempted to up and kill them, for the benefit of all humanity.

GTA: San Andreas was mostly more of the same, but in most ways, CJ was a better person than Tommy Vercetti, but he's still not the shining star of the community. But he does do a lot to clean up his neighborhood. He's very upset at the way the drug dealers have turned his neighborhood into a doped up slum, instead of just a slum. He starts a war on the drug dealers, and ends up killing two of his old buddy's because they're the ones that brought the drugs into town. He kills some really dirty cops. He gets himself and his sister and her boyfriend out of the slums, and improves their lives. And he balances it out by starting several gang wars, and bringing his gang out on top.

The GTA games are fun, in a do-very-evil-things-with-no-consequences sort of way, but they do have the draw back of being about people I can't really relate to at all. I never really felt like I was Tommy or CJ, that I was doing those things, but that I was watching (or participating in, I suppose) a movie about somebody else, and in Vice City's case, somebody that I really didn't like at all. Hitman on the other hand, was a lot of fun in a very different way.

Half the time I felt I was not a hired assassin, but a covert government special ops type person. The targets were almost always people that the world was better off without (which was often why you were hired to kill them). In the four games, the only mission I can think of that I actually regretted having to kill the target was when I was hired to take out a mafia stool pigeon. The rest of the missions – taking out the leader of a prominent drug-running, prostitution-ring, Chinese gang; rival assassins, ones that had been hired to kill the US President, by the Vice Pres so he could run the country; mafia leaders that kidnapped Catholic priests; dirty cops, etc, I really didn't have any problems with that.

Add in the fact that there are bonuses for completing the missions in as stealthy manner as possible, no extraneous kills (particularly innocent bystanders and law enforcement personnel), I don't have a problem relating to the main character. He kills people because he was bred to be good at it, and because he get's paid to. He gets no more joy from it than anything else in life (but then, he's also kinda like me in that he doesn't really have a lot of feelings and emotions).

I do usually prefer games that offer behavioral choices (such as the aforementioned SW games), because they usually have higher replay value since I can play both types of characters. However, "Choice" is not always all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes the choices look too much like this:

You meet a woman on the road who needs your help. Will you help, or murder her and steal her shoes? example by Shamus Young

I can't find the post right now, but Shamus once discussed the shortcomings of the choices system of Jade Empire. I haven't finished the game once yet (sorta got distracted by another game), and I was playing through as a good person, but his gripe is that the evil choices were less along the lines of Emperor Palpatine evil, and more like Billy, the middle school bully. You had the choice of helping someone, or punching them and taking their lunch money. Thinking back to Knights of the Old Republic there were some choices like that – you could save someone from being killed by loan-sharks because he didn't have enough to pay them off, and then turn around and take what little money they had – but it never felt as poorly presented, but it could be because I knew from the outset I was going to be a mean-spirited bastard and take over the galaxy (if the opportunity presented itself, which I assumed it would. What else would someone overflowing with Dark Side power do?) With Jade Empire, since I don't know if that's a possibility, I kinda feel like I'm just some random jerk picking on the less powerful, but with no larger goal in mind.

I think at this point I've lost my train of thought, or it's been derailed, or something like that. I feel like I've drifted off the topic, and I'm not sure how to get back, or if I should get back, so I guess I'll end it here. The point of all this was to say that I like to experiment with behaviors contrary to (or from the darker side) my nature, and that I'm glad there are games that let me explore my curiosity for such types of behavior, without the danger of trying to do so in the real world. Cause, Heave knows if I tried to ride a bullet bike like I do in the Grand Theft Auto games, I'd only get to do so once, which would terminate in a long reddish smear on the highway, or a splattered blob on the back of some truck.

The Mindless Ones

One of my favourite new reads is The Mindless Ones, a new comics review/analysis blog written by several regular contributors to the Barbelith community. Insightful and thorough commentary, well worth a read.

Ragnarockandroll

At long last I have finally finished the artwork for The Apocalipstix Vol. 1, and the book will be making its debut this summer at the San Diego Comicon at the Oni Press booth, and in stores worldwide shortly after. This has been a labour of love for writer/co-creator/good buddy Ray Fawkes and I, and we're thrilled to have it finally see print. The website will be up and running soon!

Round One: FIGHT!

I was asked to contribute a piece to Udon's upcoming 20th anniversary Street Fighter Tribute book. I originally drew the below piece but when project manager Jim Zubkavich showed me the layout of the book I was blown away by the quality of the pieces included and suddenly felt very underwhelmed by my own contribution. So I decided to do something else for the book which was a little more creative, freeing me to post this one here.

Sin Titulo Week 49

Better late than never, episode 49 of Sin Titulo is up now!

Calgary Expo Charity Piece

A couple of weeks ago I was invited as a guest to the Calgary Expo, which is as nice a comics show as I've ever been to in North America. Huge thanks to the organizers, Kandrix Foong and Laurie B, for inviting me and showing me and all the guests remarkable hospitality.

In return for being brought to the show, I contributed a piece of new artwork to the 2008 Expo Art Book, featuring art by all the guests and sales of which help support the Boys and Girls Club of Calgary. The original art was also auctioned off to benefit the charity.

The book had a "Western" theme, and I noticed that most artists contributed a drawing of some sexy cowgirl, so I decided I wanted to do something different.

I did a sexy Native American girl.

Mongul, Parasite, and Darkseid, oh my!

I found a couple DCSH figures from last year that I picked up for a friend on SWAN and since he wanted me to open and send them loose, I thought it would be fun to quickly pose them with my recently opened DCUC wave 2 figures. Behold.

Oh no, Black Manta's outnumbered, by Classic Aquaman, Superman Red, Superman Blue, and Modern Aquaman. What will he do?

Gorilla Grodd and Harley Quinn to the rescue!

Batman and Batgirl show up to help, but so do Mongul, Parasite, and Darksied! Chaos ensues!

Ka-me Ha-me Ha!

Dragon Ball Z was hugely popular in Colombia, when I was there in '98-99. I got to liking it quite a bit. Finally bought myself a couple of figures. Both come with removable shirt and interchangeable hands.

Goku and Super Saiyan Goku

Sin Titulo

For almost a year I have been writing and drawing a weekly webcomic called Sin Titulo, as part of the ongoing Transmission-X webcomics collective. It's a dark, experimental, and semi-autobiographical mystery story about a man investigating the strange circumstances surrounding the death of his grandfather. It's the first long-form comics project that I am writing as well as illustrating and so far I'm quite happy with the result. I was recently nominated for a Shuster Award (The Canadian Eisner) for Best Webcomic, so wish me luck!

Below are the first few pages of the story to get you started, and then click on the link that follows to continue reading.





Click Here To Keep Reading

The Cool Exec With A Heart Of Steel

I've seen the Iron Man movie twice now, and enjoyed it immensely both times. It's one of those rare summer blockbusters that has a (nuclear-powered) heart, thanks to a thoughtful script by the screenwriters of Children of Men (one of my favorite movies in recent memory) and superb performances from everyone in the main cast. I've enjoyed Robert Downey Jr in almost everything he's done but I think this movie is going to propel him into megastardom the same way Pirates of the Carribean did for Johnny Depp.

My only real complaint with Iron Man is the secret post-credits scene which serves to set up future crossovers with Marvel's upcoming superhero films. I know fanboys across the land are squeeing with joy but I'm not convinced that it's the best idea to start introducing convoluted crossovers into the movies - of all the people who I've talked to who have never read a comic book but who saw and enjoyed Iron Man, one of the things they responded to most was its "realism" - they liked the long sequences of Tony Stark building and testing his robot armour, which helped ground the movie and made it plausible to the audience (it's not realistic at all, of course, but pulls off the trick of feeling realistic). How will this same audience then react to the introduction of Thor, a magical Thunder God? Or Ant-Man?

Aside from that, though (and it's after the credits, long after the real movie is over and most people left the cinema, so it doesn't really count), it's a thoroughly excellent piece of entertainment.

Warm Ups

My 2008 Sketchbook "Warm Ups" is now available, after debuting at the Calgary Expo a couple of weeks ago. I will be selling copies of it at MoCCA, the Toronto Fan Expo, and the San Diego Comicon, and offering it for sale online shortly after. Some excerpts are below.