As a collector who often seeks to complete ongoing collections, I can appreciate what Scott Beatty is going for in his 200-page tome, The DC Comics Action Figure Archive. Indeed, I’ve learned to love the process of archiving things both as a librarian and as an overactive collector who needs to keep things organized lest they ultimately serve as the seeds of my destruction.

The DCCAFA is full of great photographs of toys, cut out arranged in a familiar ‘DK Guide’ style against white backgrounds, with clear labels and brief descriptions that include information about the year of production, the company of origin and accessories that each figure came with. The figures in the book (all, obviously, based on DC Comics characters, so no Spider-Men here), range from companies like the now-defunct Mego, Kenner, and ToyBiz, to Hasbro, DC Direct, and Mattel - all of whom have produced DC toys at some point and get equal time on the pages. This collection of toys displayed next to each other, especially in the vast Batman section, really shows the evolution of the action figure as both collectible and plaything, while the entire book presents the lowly action figure as a not-so-lowly evolving art form and idea that is somehow granted further validity by putting it all in a big, hardcover book. You know, like when you put pin-ups in hardcovers and suddenly they’re ‘art’ and not ‘perverse’.

The discussion of figure making and figure history is minimal as the author presumes a certain level of previous experience with figures on the part of the reader, with the book’s main focus being on the toy photos peppered throughout the columns of descriptions. It serves as a survey of very basic figure information, and an excellent starting point towards completing your own collection. All of the figures are arranged alphabetically throughout, though by character name, and not the series that they appeared in. Most listings are only a few words, with actual pictures appearing for random figures throughout. While I’d love to see every Lex Luthor standing side by side, this is, again, a ’starting point’.

By the definition of the book, ‘action figure’ includes things like Minimates and Pocket Heroes, but omits statues and static things like Heroclix and pewter figurines.

Despite the thoroughness, the book cuts off in the middle of 2007 - which is one of the perils of paper publishing encyclopedic references, especially in a digital age. Mattel’s DC Universe and JLU lines, and DC Direct’s many line, have made significant additions towards this archive in the short time since publication. The pages aren’t arranged in a format that would be especially welcoming towards an updated edition (though there’s a ton of white space on every page) - so don’t expect an ‘every toy ever’ perspective, but so look forward to the pretty pictures. Page 130 seems to omit the DC Superheroes Mongul figure that was released in early 2007. but I’ll allow that it was probably released on the cusp of when the book was being sent to the publishers. Also note that page 140’s ‘The Penguin’ (in the upper right hand corner) has the wrong image attached to it. The pictured Penguin is actually from ‘The New Batman Adventures’, and is very different from the details listed for ‘The Batman’ Penguin. Page 109 misidentifies two of the Killer Crocs listed on the page. So what I’m saying is ‘proceed with caution, but remain delighted’. This is probably the last point that the entirety of the DC action figure world can be encapsulated in a single book this handsomely.

Okay, I know that I talk about action figures. A lot. What I hope to communicate in these little talks, more than anything, is that there is a toy for everyone. Sure, a vast majority of well-known action figures focus around superheroic characters or movie properties, but they’re so much more. They’re figural reminders and representations of things we like - and I guarantee you that there’s at least ONE for everyone.

And more and more, there’s one OF everyone. I’m not even sure if I can count the figures created in the likeness of Johnny Depp in his various personas, or the growing collection of through-the-ages Elvises (Elvi?) - but even behind the scenes, and usually fairly camera shy, we have the creators, thinkers and artists behind the things we love. While it’s uncommon that these guys ever get too much personal exposure, they do get a lot of intellectual respect, and recently, action figures of themselves. And almost always, it’s really clever.

The first action figure / creator item that came to my attention happened within the Muppet Show line of action figures by Palisades. Through a limited edition, Collector’s Club only event, Palisades created a complete action figure of Jim Henson. Of course, since this was a Muppet line, they created the figure of Henson in his Muppet form so that he’d blend in with the rest of his creations. The actual Henson Muppet appeared on the show a few times as a background character, but the posthumous homage to Henson as a Muppet, godfather to such a vast and interesting array of creations, was both appropriate and moving.

Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, also appeared as an action figure created by ToyBiz. While Jackson didn’t appear onscreen, (and please correct me if I’m wrong - there was a lot going on in those movies), he appeared as a rare Hobbit figure, right alongside Frodo, Sam, Pippin and the like. In properties where there are large, generic races of things and armies of faceless warriors, one can often find the face of a crew member or other important behind-the-scenes players slipped in among the masses. Peter Jackson also made an appearance as a Corsair Warrior in a line of statues created by Sideshow Toys.

Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn, collector of baseballs, controversial personality, and toy revolutionary, possibly made the earliest appearance of a creator-as-action-figure. While not an independently released toy, McFarlane was a pack-in accessory in the Spawn Alley Playset, as ‘Todd the Bum’. The whole McFarlane toy company has always had a bizarre sense of humor. The figure was later re-released through the collectors’ club as ‘Todd the Artist’.

Of all creators, George Lucas has had the most figures made of himself - all of them limited edition and usually only available in special giveaways, conventions, or online shops. He’s appeared as a Stormtrooper, a Rebel Pilot named Jorg Sacul, and also in a Lucas family four-pack, which features likenesses of the whole Lucas family (two of whom have appeared in the Star Wars films in one way or another). Within this pack, Lucas is re-named ‘Baron Papanoida’, and is again given an alien biography to back up the figure - but he’s never really been great with creating alien names. Unofficially, Lucas has made a fourth appearance in the Star Wars McQuarrie Concept collection of figures. These are an ongoing line of figures (mixed in with regular Star Wars assortments) that are based on the original artwork of Ralph McQuarrie, the artist who painted an array of characters and scenes to pitch the Star Wars trilogy to producers. McQuarrie’s painting of the original Han Solo bears a striking resemblance to a young George Lucas. While there’s no official word that this is actually based on Lucas, I’d bet my Death Star on it. Or at least, like, twenty bucks. Ralph McQuarrie has also recently been made into an action figure, conveniently and respectfully named ‘General McQuarrie’.

Quentin Tarantino recently appeared as an action figure also, after he made an on-screen appearance in Grindhouse. In an action figure line with only four figures, he was one, and because of his twisted sense of humor, his figure was simply called ‘Rapist #1’.

We also can’t forget about the immortal Stan Lee - finally made into an action figure during this past summer’s convention season, Marvel Legends style. He features an interchangeable head that he can switch out with Peter Parker, so he also doubles as Spider-Man in some bizarre, old-man way.

And there are surely many left to come. The dreams of us lowly creators becoming action heroes, or at least figures, are becoming more realistic. Be sure to keep an eye out for the Collin David action figure - sometime in the distant future.

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I wasn’t gonna buy ‘em. I was really going to let my first wave of Marvel Legends in seven years just pass me by, and I really wasn’t going to care. I was unenthused about the eight featured characters, and I wasn’t that excited about Hasbro’s execution of the line to date, either. Sure, that She-Hulk knocked my socks off, but it’s She-Hulk - it’s impossible for that to NOT happen. Alas, I’m also a complete sucker for a good sale, and when Hasbro Toy Shop handed me a 20% off coupon, I buckled - and they even sent me a sizeable die-cast Hulk figurine for free. You win this time, you purveyors of addictive plastic!

It’s not that Hasbro does a bad job with the Marvel Legends line - it’s just that ToyBiz did such a GREAT job with them. Despite Hasbro’s long history with action figures, they just haven’t been able to really capture 6” scale Marvel characters since they took it over. So, why do I continue to collect them? It’s probably an unhealthy habit, or that pure rush of excitement that comes from exploring a new toy - no matter how shoddy it might be. Maybe, just maybe, I need more social contact that isn’t with things 1/12th the size of me.

Included in this third wave from Hasbro (called HML3 in nerd-shorthand), or ‘The Brood Wave’ (because of a buildable Brood Queen figure that comes in many pieces packaged in with each main figure) are First Appearance Captain America and Bucky, Marvel Girl, Black Knight, Danger, Astonishing X-Men Cyclops, Colossus from the movie X3, and a Hydra Soldier.

Among the eight figures in the set, the quality is all over the road, both in character selection and the plastics used. One might expect that a singular wave of figures would use a consistent grade of plastic, but that isn’t the case, and it creates a kind of schism. Colossus, Danger and Black Knight are made of disappointing hollow plastic parts that feel cheap and don’t take paint very well, while Marvel Girl, Bucky and the Hydra Soldiers use solid, thick, and slightly pliable plastics, and the other figures fall somewhere in between. In the case of 6” scale, articulated figures, going slightly pliable is the way to go - it prevents breakages, seems to take paint better, and allows for a smoother motion along points of articulation. If you go too brittle, you’re just asking for a Krazy Glue accident.

The character choices for HML3 are also all over the place - though Hasbro mostly made up for the weirdness by releasing a whole surprise wave of eight different Fantastic Four figures immediately before the release of these. Still, slopping X3 movie figures into a ‘Legends’ line always leaves me with figures I don’t want to have lying around. Hasbro’s been doing this since their first wave, pushing Jean Grey and Juggernaut into the collection, and into spaces that could be occupied by more relevant folks. Because of this, Colossus is going on eBay pretty soon. I enjoy the presence of Golden Age Captain America and Bucky, but we DO already have two Captain America figures - as well as at least three previous Cyclops figures. Black Knight is a welcomed addition to the lineup, as he’s an important Marvel character - but Danger? She’s relatively new, and while she was the villain in a pretty good story, I can’t say it’s worth making a figure of her just yet no when there’s Machine Man, the Inhumans, and Arnim Zola left to be made.

Strangely, my favorites are the Hydra goons. ToyBiz was trying to work goons into Marvel Legends for a few years before they finally had to give up the license. As I recently spoke to in my ‘Army Building’ entry here, we’ve never had a whole crew of mindlessly loyal Marvel drones to fight and display. From what I understand, the Soldiers were originally an unused ToyBiz design, and since Hasbro has use of all previous figure molds, they’ve brought it into fruition - though allow me to conjecture that the gun holster on the goons’ belts once actually held the gun that they came with, but was sculpted closed by Hasbro to save a few fabrication bucks. I don’t know this for a fact, but ToyBiz woulda given me a place to stick the arsenal. Especially since it’s almost the exact same size and shape as the gun. To date, I’ve found and purchased five goons.

As usual, the big ol’ Brood figure (also an older, unrealized idea) has all of the attention to detail and high quality plastics that’s so random in the rest of the wave. I always love the larger, frightening figures, and the process of assembling them - Blob notwithstanding.

So, consider this a very mixed review, combined with the fact that I’m still excited to see the fourth wave of these - as well as the mysterious Hulk figure line, and whatever Hasbro decides to do with the Iron Man movie. They’re secretive and sneaky that way. Check out a full photo gallery of these in our Community Section!

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It was an exciting week for toy hunt-and-findery. After a dry spell that seemed to last as long as my involuntary celibacy, the local stores are suddenly teeming with DC Super Friends, Superman Cyborgs, and most recently, Legendary Comic Book Heroes. No more resorting to the internet and hefty shipping fees for me! I can live a completely fulfilling life without bidding wars, thank you.

Legendary Comic Book Heroes, or LCBH for short, is the newest line of action figures from a company called Marvel Toys. See, after a company called ToyBiz suddenly had their license to make the wildly popular Marvel Legends figures pulled out from under them, ToyBiz changed their name to ‘Marvel Toys’ (a division of the Marvel Comics empire, still) and immediately set to work on their plan B - a series of indie comics characters done in the same style as their superarticulated Marvel Legends. Hasbro might have taken over the official ‘Legends’, but Marvel Toys would be making toys that you could use with Hasbro’s stuff and have it all fit together aesthetically. They’d bring the word ‘Legend’ with them, and they’d even bring the awesome build-a-figure concept on over, and hopefully, their audience would follow.

Whether or not the characters are ‘Legendary’ is a subject open to debate. While none of them have the rich, decades-long histories of DC and Marvel characters, they do have a certain nostalgia value for actual comic readers, or anyone casually perusing the racks around the mid-to-early 1990s. That’s when all of these seven characters were created - right when the comic explosion was happening, and immediately before the big comic bust that all but invalidated them. Because of the quantity of profiteering half-assery that was happening around this time, it was hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and man, there was a lot of chafing going on. I still have scars.

So, what went into the selection process behind these figures? They were certainly culled from some of the better works coming from labels such as Image Comics, Top Cow (an offshoot of Image), Dark Horse, and 2000 AD. Other popular indie characters have rights tied up with perennial pariah Shocker Toys, who seem to be perpetually tied up in ‘development hell’, but the list of desirable characters is a mile long, from superhero comics to non-heroic tales. The build-a-figure Pitt character in the first wave of these LCBH figures didn’t last more than 20 issues and a few guest appearances in other books - all of which amounts to less than two years in the limelight. So, the term ‘legend’ is applied VERY loosely. Still, I have a fondness for Pitt and these other characters, because they were new to comics at just about the same time that I was new to comics myself.

Included in this first wave of six are Witchblade, Mike Allred’s popular and strange Madman (which was just collected in a complete omnibus), Judge Dredd (of cinematic fame), the Savage Dragon (one of the longest running creator drawn and written comics of all time, and also star of a short-lived cartoon show), Ripclaw and Superpatriot. Collect all six and build a super-large Pitt figure, which is a great impetus to buy all six, because I’m still not completely certain who Superpatriot is. Of these six, there are two ‘variant’ figures that differ from their main versions - a Superpatriot without a mask and with a different arm, and a Savage Dragon wearing a shirt, instead of his bizarrely hairy chest.

So far, they’ve been spotted at Wal-Marts with a price tag of about ten bucks each, with the two accompanying 2-packs appearing at Target. The 2-packs consist of a pairing of a character named Panda and a guy named Mack, as well as the much more well-known Conan the Barbarian and his archnemesis, Wraarl. McFarlane Toys might have made some fine Conan statue toys a few years back, but these guys can move around. Does that make them better? The nerds are in an eternal smackdown over just such a topic.

For a collector, it’s exciting to see these, if for no other reason than their quality is setting an industry standard of what can and should be the minimum of what an amazing action figure should be. People have already dissected the Savage Dragon’s body and painted him up like The Venture Bros.’ Brock Samson, and a Tick can’t be too far behind.

Stay tuned to see how they stand up to intense scrutiny!

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For a second time, I was called upon for my curatorial expertise in filling the display case in the childrens’ section of the library. The basic instructions? Bring in something you have a lot of, preferably relating to books. And, oh yeah, fill four shelves with it.

Immediately, my mind spun into the possibilities… collections of robots or dragons, Star Wars or Trek, Batman… what DON’T I collect? I settled on my Marvel character collection, exclusively in Marvel Legends form (with one Marvel Select, but who’s counting?). I’ve lamented and rhapsodized over these figures before, their shaky transition between the hands of ToyBiz and Hasbro, excitement over future figures and disappointment in how the final produced figures might have looked, but I figured that I could absolutely fill four shelves with them… and I had to make it good. I was going to set it up this time.

There was a time when I was unconcerned with what character fit onto which team, as long as they all looked neat together. Having a Dr. Octopus right next to a Hulk didn’t create any cognitive dissonance, but as I became more familiar with the literary history and exploits of the characters, these concerns emerged. Sure, I’ve always kept my Marvel stuff and my DC stuff in very different areas of the room, lest we be stuck in some kind of poorly-written Marvel / DC crossover (because really, they all sucked bigtime), or even worse, another Amalgam universe. Or, holy jeez, another ‘Stan Lee re-writes the DC Universe’ train wreck and the survivor’s guilt that we all felt. So Marvel was going to take a trip to the library, and DC was staying home this time, perhaps for a later display.

[An array of Avengers, including Thor, Giant Man, Wasp, Spider-Woman, Iron Man, Ms. Marvel, Quicksilver, Captain America, She-Hulk, Luke Cage, Hawkeye, Vision and Scarlet Witch]

I settled on dividing the display shelves into four main areas : the X-Men, the Avengers, some Bad Guys and the Fantastic Four & Miscellaneous other heroic folk. The library’s director had made a comment that the orcs from my previous Lord of the Rings display might alarm children, so I decided to keep the bad guys on the top shelf, out of the eyeline of smaller children. I was also told that my Scarface-with-ape-head shirt might scare kids, and to stop dropkicking the more obnoxious runts into the stream. I’m not allowed to do anything, man.

Ultimately, though, any display including a 16” Galactus would be an automatic winner. He’s my piece de resistance. Which is French for ‘awesome space-conqueror’.

[Thanos, Green Goblin, Loki, MODOK, Galactus, Dr. Doom, Mojo, Blob, Magneto]

I’ve never really has such a nice space to display these guys in, since I’m usually relegated to Wal-Mart-purchased do-it-yourself shelving in a very dusty area of the house. I made an effort to determine the most widely recognized and traditional costumes for these characters, since many Marvel figures have movie versions, Ultimate versions, ‘New’ versions, First Appearance versions, and even ‘that one time in 1992 when Rob Liefeld got ahold of us and we still have nightmares about’ versions.

The thing about the childrens’ floor is that it’s a sweltering little division of Hell itself. Not so much in theme or content or even amicability, just in temperature. For some reason, out cooling units have perennial problems, and the upstairs floor is nigh unbearable. Since plastic is such a pliable, resilient and ultimately malleable material, even slight fluctuations in temperature will cause knees to expand and buckle, toppling figures from wherever they might be standing. I know it’s summer not by the crickets or leaves on the trees or my thoughts turning to romance, but by being woken up at 4 AM by Martian Manhunter clattering to the floor and taking Flash and Mr. Terrific with him. These things don’t happen in the winter, leading me to conclude that either our ghosts hibernate, or it’s a product of atmospheric heating.

The display figures take the occasional faceplant. It was at least two days before I got back into the display case and thwarted Dr. Doom’s obvious attempt to project himself through the restraining glass. More often than not, though, the Marvel display is met with delighted inquiries and enthusiasm, and I bashfully admit to ownership of the items contained therein. I’ve met a woman who used to illustrate for Marvel Comics right in my own hometown, and when someone asked “Top shelf, far left?”, I could tell them, “Why, that’s Ultron! Enemy of the Avengers!” I very quietly added ‘please kill me’, but no one heeded my pleas.

I’ve found so much more pleasure in interacting ABOUT the collection than owning it, and just keeping it in Tupperware drawers until I find the next opportunity to display it. In addition to continually inspiring me, the odd guilt I have about collecting (and not, you know, saving the world) is being alleviated by being able to share the fun and joy that I get from looking at these things with the strange denizens of my tiny mountain valley town.