In case you haven’t prowled the shelves of Wal-Mart, Target, or Toys-R-Us recently, here’s a list of just a few action figure lines available right now. I’m a figure collector, and to be blunt, besides some of McFarlane’s always-intricate and interesting lines (most of which aren’t even in regular toy sections– check Hastings or collector’s shops in malls for those) it’s been a typical year so far. You’ve got the same old Spider-Man movie line, trying to milk a little more cash out of the franchise even while it doesn’t have a movie coming out, and there’s alway a new Star Wars line, but they also usually look about the same. So here’s some of the new stuff, all of which can be found at Toys-R-Us.com if you don’t care to get out and find it yourself.

The Good

As I’ve said in previous blogs, Marvel’s having a really good year. Not only have they released two top-notch films in the same continuity, but that quality seems to have leaked over into their action figures as well. There’s nothing just brilliant about these figures but they’re nicely detailed, pretty realistic and come in brightly-colored, eye-catching boxes (important for collector’s like me who rarely open a new figure).

The Iron Man toys are immediately eye-catching because they’re not in your basic box. They’re on a flat card as usual, but at first glance, the plastic makes them look round, and the reds really jump out. These are 5.5-6″ figures, the perfect size to get a good amount of realistic detail and fun playability for kids who will take them out of the box. It’s hard for a figure to have much articulation if it’s too small, so when I was a kid, I never like my figures to get any smaller than this. The best thing about this line is that every figure looks like something out of the movie. All 3 of Stark’s various suits can be found, and there’s no obnoxious, weirdly colored versions. Just wait- we’ll get to those with Batman.

The Hulk figures look just like the Iron Man figures to me. Great articulation, great size, excellent box.

The toy shelves are looking a little more like they did when I was a kid with all the Ninja Turtles figures out, and it’s been like that for a few years now with the recent cartoon series, and now especially with the film last year. But for the first time ever, you can get a four-pack figure set of the original Eastman and Laird comic style Turtles. Beautifully colored like the original covers and wonderfully articulated, this is a very neat collector’s item and one fan’s have waited for a good long time.

The Not-So Good

These aren’t especially bad figures, but they’re not especially good, either. These represent the kind of mediocre toys I’ve seen every year since I was a kid. Some of them may even be worth picking up if you’re a big fan of the series, but more detail, thought, and marketing strategy really could have been used with these.

The new Indiana Jones line follows the Star Wars tradition of 3.5-4″ figures, and again, I think this is too small for much detail and definitely for much articulation. What’s neat about them is that they aren’t just from the new movie– a number of characters from all four films are included and it’s a very extensive line. I would guess the idea with these and Star Wars is the same: smaller figures so that more individual toys can be made. They can do more characters and keep their costs lower by using less material. That’s probably why 5-6″ lines usually have a dozen or less figures.

Worse than the size, though, is the package presentation. Somehow, this box manages to make it look like the figure doesn’t resemble Harrison Ford at all. He looks a little thrown together, and if it weren’t for the label, we might not even know it was supposed to be Indiana Jones.

But take a closer look at the figure itself. I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with this packaging, but it’s managing to make the figure look much worse than it really is. Maybe they should have put the hat on him.

The Dark Knight line really looks pretty good– good size, excellent detail– but the box is lame and isn’t eye-catching, and the figures are really hit-and-miss. There are several versions of the figure pictured above, and despite my qualms with the new costume, these are great because they look like the suit you’re going to see in the new film. But every Batman line has a number of goofy, weirdly colored suits Batman himself would NEVER wear, and why do that with a darker film franchise?

I just don’t think Christian Bale would make a good Power Ranger. And I get it. The assumption is that kids like to play with brightly colored figures. Maybe that’s true, but I had an extensive collection of Batman figures growing up, I played with them all the time, and I always wanted to create stories with my figures that seemed authentic, at least to me. I loved Batman comics and I loved the films, so why wouldn’t I want my Batman to look like BATMAN?

Sometimes the new Joker looks cool, and sometimes he looks like this… anyone who’s been in a cave for the last two years might take a look at this and think Michael Keaton is playing the role. This doesn’t look anything like Heath Ledger or the Joker we’ve been seeing in the previews. It looks like a dumbed down, cartoon version when, looking at the detail of that first Batman figure I showed you, there’s no reason it couldn’t look more like this:

This is a 1:6 scale figure put out by DC Direct. Of course I wouldn’t expect vinyl or cloth clothes on a regular $9-10 figure, but look at the face. He doesn’t look silly, he looks creepy, which is the mood of the film as I gather it from trailers. But there are some other good figures in the line, including a new Scarecrow and a very good Bruce Wayne ninja figure.

The Bizarre

These are figures that are really weird and probably shouldn’t have been made. The Mighty Muggs line is trying to be cute, but I think they’re just kind of disturbing.

As far as I can tell, they’re just doing Star Wars and Marvel figures for now, but if they catch on, there could be more. I think these are supposed to be funny in the same way Legos or Minimates are, but somehow I’m not getting it. They’re round, they have giant heads, and they’re huge hunks of plastic that can’t possibly be any fun to play with. If they were plush, that would be different. There are a TON of these, and they’re all a little creepy.

The one exception is Dr. Doom. For some reason, this one cracks me up. Maybe it’s the slanted mouth on his mask. Then again, I’ve always thought Dr. Doom was hillarious.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

All of the sudden, fanboys have one less thing to complain about. For the last six years, there’s been a lot of cursing Warner Brothers from the elite group of fans that were lucky enough to be paying attention to the WB just before it got completely pointless to see a little jewel of a show called Birds of Prey. We’ve been complaining because not only was it yet another worth-while series that was cancelled after only a half-season, but because WB refused to release it on DVD. I never understood this mentality. Back then, WB acted like it was the worst mistake they ever made, presumably because BoP’s ratings didn’t touch Smallville. But if you’re going to cut your losses in a world with DVD box sets, why not release it and make a few bucks off of your lousy investment?

Birds of Prey was a show set in New Gotham, loosely based on the comic book of the same name. The Huntress is actually based on the pre-Crisis Earth 2 version, Helena Wayne (called Helena Kyle in this series), the product of a relationship between Batman and Catwoman. She works with former-Batgirl Barbara Gordon (spitting-image from the comic played by Dina Meyer) who is now the computer genius called Oracle, after the Joker paralyzed her legs with a gunshot. They’re joined in the pilot by Dinah Lance, the future second Black Canary. The show came out of another premise conceived prior to Smallville for a young Bruce Wayne series. It would have happened, except Warner was already developing plans for Batman Begins and they didn’t want Bruce Wayne’s pre-Batman career to be portrayed twice, simultaneously. Kryptonsite somehow got ahold of the pilot script for that series, and you can read it here (and it’s very, very good). So instead, Miller and Gogh went with Superman and thus Smallville was born. But with Smallville’s hugely successful first season, they came up with Birds of Prey, pitched it, and got it made. Unfortunately, it wasn’t received by fans as quickly and it was cancelled after thirteen episodes. Though it’s one of my favorite shows of all time, it did have one inherent flaw that may have helped to kill it– it was Gotham City without Batman. And the only way to do that would have been to either kill him (which is never a good idea– see the blog I wrote way back in November) or have him get scared off by the Joker wounding Batgirl and killing Catwoman. They did the latter, and though Batman is portrayed as legendary and epic in the pilot as I’ve ever seen him, I think it made a lot of fans angry. Batman just wouldn’t do that. But it’s neccessary for the premise to even work, so I found myself able to forgive them for it.

Apparently, Warner finally changed their minds about releasing it. On July 15th, Birds of Prey will finally join the ranks of failed series to be available on DVD, along with such post-canceled DVD successes like Firefly and Patrick Warburton’s live action The Tick. Why did the suits finally change their minds? The obvious answer is The Dark Knight. The series is being released only three days before the film, so it must be a tie-in. They probably figured it would be good hype for the movie and if they were going to make any money on it at all, now would be the time. As much as I’ve been missing this from my shelf for the last five years, I have to say, it was a brilliant move. A lot of people are bound to see it in the store who watched the pilot or maybe even several episodes but it’s been so long they’ve forgotten about it.

But I wonder if there’s another reason, as well. In 2002, there weren’t any big cancelled shows on DVD quite yet, but it was coming. Perhaps some companies are aware of the lighting that struck with Firefly, a show that, in retrospect, never should have been cancelled at all. Box set sales for that show went through the roof, and it was popular enough to make history, being the first series cancelled before a full season that became a major motion picture (Serenity). I think a lot of shows get cancelled before enough people get a chance to try them out. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, Star Trek: The Next Generation struggled to get any attention at all and didn’t really find its legs until the third season. After that, it was the biggest rage on television and had the highest ratings at the time. If a studio releases a cancelled show on DVD now, it’s popularity has a good chance of coming after the fact.

I hope the sales of Birds of Prey go well. If it becomes another phenomenon, I think it could lead to a mini-series or a TV movie. That may be weirder in this case, since the actresses are all six years older now, but I’m still crossing my fingers. Birds of Prey was what Smallville should have been, in story, in character development, in pacing, in everything. It wasn’t the same contrived story every week, wrapped up in a different package, though at the beginning, it did fall back on the freak-of-the-week formula. Happily, it jumped out of that very quickly. Helena and Jesse Reese’s relationship was infinitly more complicated than Clark and Lana’s, and he discovered her secret in just nine or ten episodes, which allowed their relationship to be explored and to grow, while it took Lana six and a half seasons to discover Clark’s, while in the meantime, their relationship went in circles. Birds of Prey created fun new characters while using others from the Batman universe in new ways, but still keeping true to the originals. And, happily, the crew had enough advance warning that the show was being cancelled to make a final episode that wraps up the season arc nicely, without being too rushed, and gives it some closure.

The only special features I know about right now are the unaired pilot (which I’ve actually seen– it’s just like the real pilot, only a much less talented actress is playing Harley Quinn; it’s barely worth your time) and the entire three season run of Gotham Girls, which is a flash animated series of mini episodes featuring characters with their original voices from the Bruce Timm Batman Animated Series. I hope they’ve also included some BoP episode commentaries.

If you never had a chance to see it, pick up a copy or rent it on Netflix. If you’re a Batman fan, it’s definitely worth your time.

 LLAP

 -Cap’n Logan