JSA Wave Two: Cyclone Stands Out (and Up!), but it's Hourman by a Nose

My blog post output has been slowed down recently as a result of nothing more sinister than the very busy start of a new school term and the rescue and adoption of a beautiful new kitten to add to the AFB animal menagerie, so, there's a bit of a backlog of toys and statues waiting for a look-in. I generally to look at things in the order of purchase, but I picked up the DC Direct Alex Ross Justice Society of America Wave Two figures last week, and I felt they needed some urgent attention.

I could take or leave many of the newer members of the JSA, and as it looks like DC Direct hasn't committed to this series beyond Wave Two, I'm glad we've not had to suffer too many of them. Stargirl and Cyclone are the youngest members of the team, but also some of the more interesting, so they both definitely warrant a figure. Stargirl is already a seasoned veteran in many ways, and Cyclone, as well as being a legacy character that goes straight back to the early JSA, has such groovy powers, especially the way she can grow SO tall.... what?

Yeah, no. While I wouldn't put it past Alex Ross to retcon or reshape any character, this has to be a boo-boo of the kind that only DC Direct seems to manage. Yes, Cyclone is Giant Girl in Raggedy Ann stockings, and it's not due to her wispy hairstyle. She's just plain huge. In fact, she's taller than Superman and Hourman, without factoring in the hair. It's a shame, because this is an utterly beautiful figure. I'm going to get around this in my display by putting Cyclone on a flight stand (and putting another figure in front of her to hide the lack of articulated ankles).

Stargirl is a really lovely piece. I'm not totally wild about her face - it looks a little bit old, but then this is a Ross-styled line. Her outfit is very well done,a and in fact paint on all of the figures is excellent. The biggest niggle with Stargirl is articulation. The DCD standard issue fixed ankles means lots of fiddling with other joints to make sure she's stable.

You'd think that Giant Cyclone Girl would be the most disconcerting thing in this wave, but wait until you see Hourman's nose, which shouldn't be hard. Just try Google Earth for Canberra, Australia. My lawn needs mowing, but I doubt you'll even see it. Good Lord, that's a big schnozz! It looks like the sculptor forgot to include a nose, so they had to be applied later. Shame, because the body is a great improvement over the Total-Justice style Hourman body from the previous JSA series. Awful, awful, awful.

Kingdom Come Superman is here too. He and Hourman are the clear pegwarmers of the wave, most likely because they've both either been done or re-released recently. Oh, and because Hourman is horrible.

While I'd rather have a non-artist specific JSA from DC Direct, I accepted the Alex Ross series because it seemed the only way to get figures of these great characters. Wave One was passable, but the Cyclone and Hourman hiccups here are potential line-killers. There's several great characters in the JSA world that really deserve their time in plastic, so here's hoping DCD gets it's act together or, more likely, Mattel shows the Modern Age JSA some more love in DC Universe Classics.

You can see more pics at Facebook, discuss this at the AFB Forum, and comment on this post to enter the May AFB Comment of the Month Contest.

Until next time!

More JSA Magic from the Golden to the Modern Age

It’s always too long in between chances to show off my new customs from Lars, one of the true masters of the custom world. Over the last couple of years Lars has been helping me round out the ranks of both the Golden Age and Modern Age Justice Society of America, and it’s always exciting to get the latest instalments.

Technically, Stripesy is working more towards a Seven Soldiers of Victory collection than JSA, but he’s still from that Golden Agey JSA world, and looks great next to the custom Star Spangled Kid Lars did for me awhile back. This is just an amazing piece of work, so exciting and captures Pat Dugan as Stripesy perfectly.

From one of the oldest heroes to one of the newest, we have Mr America to further fill out the Modern Age JSA collection. While he’s been one of if not the most underutilised new characters in the team, I love his look, and what Lars has done here is amazing. My photo doesn’t do the work on the white section justice – is has a light blue wash and the buttoned-down look to give it depth and strength. The detail on his cape is equally incredible.  He even comes with his own little custom whip! Amazing job Lars!

There’s a glimpse here of how each fits in to the GA and MA JSA displays, and you can see more pics of this at Facebook. You can also discuss this at the AFB Forum, and don’t forget you can enter the July AFB Comment of the Month Contest by commenting on this post.

Many thanks to Lars for another great effort!

Until next time!

JSA Series One: Could’a Been, Should’a Been……

After the debacle of DC Direct’s first attempt at a Justice Society of America line (mini Atoms anyone?), I took the attitude that if we needed an Alex Ross-inspired series to get the JSA back on the shelves, then it had to be. The main things that many of us were worried about we saw the advanced shots of these were the face sculpts of the older gents (wrinkle city) and the scale looked huge, perhaps even bigger than the Justice series.

To get those two things out of the the way, yep, Flash and Green Lantern are wrinkly. I’ve read various statements about how overstated this is, and my reaction is somewhere in the middle. They’re represented older than I’d personally like to see, but they aren’t horribly wizened as I’ve read in a few places. Alan’s cheeks look a bit sunken, or perhaps it’s his almost buzz-cut style hair that makes his face look a bit thin, but that bugs me more than the wrinkles. Jay’s eyes are a bit bugged or his eyebrows are over painted, either way they stand out a bit more than I’d like.

As for the scale, they are Justice-sized. Have to give credit that at least DCD didn’t create a third scale, which is what we feared, and if you want to create a DCD Ross-verse these stand quite nicely with the Justice figures. If there’s anything commendable about these sculpts, it’s that they’re not as bulky as the Justice figures were. Jay and Alan have bodies that are more realistic for their age, not overly muscled, and Starman and Sandman are more normal body types than some of the stocky Justice figures.

Starman is made of what looks like a translucent material with glitter stirred through it to make the star effect, and it works nicely, better than what they would have looked like had they been painted on I think. To make this figure and not make a bearded Thom Kallor extra head would have been a crime, and thankfully this is included, and has to be one of easily swappable extra heads DCD has done, so thumbs up for that. He looks great in both versions.

Sandman has turned about much better than I feared. As I said, while these share the Justice scale they don’t have the same bulk and so Sandy actually works out quite well. It’s a great sculpt, and his trench coat is especially well done. He comes with an extra left hand – one regular, one which shoots Sandman gas (I don’t know what it’s called…). Only complaint: a removable mask / extra head would have been great here. Being a mad Legion fan Starman is the pick of the bunch from a character selection perspective, but from a figure and sculpt perspective Sandman is definitely the highlight.

When I pop these on my MA JSA shelf, it’s Jay that really stands out as being too tall, but of course this is a mishmash of old and new DCD figures, customs and a few DCUC (I had to replace that terrible DCD Mr Terrific with the wonderful DCUC version) so they’re all over the place anyway. Starman and Sandman work for me, but Jay and Alan are a shame – 1/2 an inch shorter and better face sculpts and these really could be winners. Instead, JSA fans have to hope that DCD will commit to this line long enough to get at least the core roster, if not the whole team. I’m not a scale-ist, but those that are won’t find these a match with anything JSA they’ve had before, and therein lies DCD’s ongoing arrogance, expecting fans to start new lines, new scales, new styles that last only for a short while, instead of building one consistent universe – thus the appeal of DCUC.

You can see more pics at Facebook, discuss this at the AFB Forum, and comment on this blog entry to be in the running for the June AFB Comment of the Month Contest.

Until next time!

More Custom JSA Glory

Over the last year a bevy of customisers led by the wonderful Lars have been helping me out with filling out the rosters of both my GA and MA Justice Society of America. I’ve acquired the figures through a combination of eBay auctions and commissions.

Recently I saw a post from Lars about the some figures he was making on spec which included the current Judomaster. While she wasn’t on the top of my list for my next addition to the roster, his version was just too good to pass up, and I quickly contacted him and made a deal for her to be mine. 

On a funny note,  I can now officially say I am a customiser, because she arrived with her lovely ponytail snapped off (thank you Australia Post!) and I had to glue it back on – the first time I have ever repaired a figure! Anyone who knows my fine motor skills will tell you I am best kept away from things like glue and snapped off plastic, but the operation was a success.

And I’m very glad about that, because this is an excellent figure. The base is an All-Star Super Lois.  Lars’ paintwork is always impeccable. Many thanks to him for another great effort!

Also, here’s a glimpse of how the new display is panning out. I’m not ready for the “big reveal”, but here are my JSA shelves as they presently stand.

Enjoy!

Santa visits AFB!

Well, a Secret Santa that is.

The DOOSH (which to some stands for Domain Of Online Social Hooligans) has a very active customiser community, and they have a great tradition of a Secret Santa Project where members post their top 5 custom wish list, and then another customiser is assigned to choose one of the characters from the list and make a Christmas Custom wish come true! The whole project is coordinated by Doosh Mod Jackknight92 who is responsible for all of the Silver Age Legion customs featured in these pages.

I am already on record as confessing to having pretty dodgy fine motor skills, so I know I couldn’t customise anything to save my life! I am, however, a great patron of the custom arts, so I get Jack to make my custom “gift” so that I can take part.

You can look at the 2008 Secret Santa Project thread here, but beware – if you travel outside that thread, not all regions of the DOOSH are work safe, or normal human being safe for that matter. You have been warned. Seriously.

Here’s a sneak peak of my Secret Santa gift, which arrived yesterday and will be up at the DOOSH tomorrow. It’s Amazing Man III from the current JSA. I’ll have to wait til its been posted at the DOOSH to find out the recipe, but it’s very cleverly done. I imagine that cape must have given the customiser a few fits! Once it’s all been revealed at the DOOSH I’ll be sure to give the customiser credit here.

I was especially pleased to see that Amazing Man fits in perfectly with my MA JSA display, which also features customs of Liberty Belle, Stargirl, Maxine Hunkle, Danger and Wildcat by the amazing Lars.

Oh, and speaking of customs, you might like to check this thread out at my other online home, Critical Mess. A dude is making me a BA Wildfire to make up for making fun of my mum. Really. All in (mostly) good humour of course!

Hope your Christmas stocking has similarly yummy things in it this year!

JSA and Legion Custom Glory

It's been awhile since I've had any new customs grace my shelves, but when I saw the amazing job that my friend rodkeith did with customs for Elastic Lad and Johnny Thunder, I knew I had to have my own, and was thrilled that he was nice enough to oblige!

These fantastic looking pieces are actually a simple but clever headswap between the DCD Jimmy Olsen and JLA Elongated Man figures. It's really very effective - puts a Jimmy head on a stretchy dude, and with a bit of shaving the Ralph head makes a very respectful Johnny Thunder.

From the outstanding standard of the paint job on these figures, you'd never guess that they are from someone who has only recently started customising. They look just as smooth and clean in person as they do on screen. The lettering for Elastic Lad's chest emblem is unbelievable!

If you travel over to one of my favourite online hangouts, Critical Mess, you can see how these developed, and you can also check out rodkeiths utterly amazing Black Orchid custom as well!

Until next time!

Starman gives good head!

Sorry, just couldn't resist that one.

There's lots of great SDCC coverage out there at the moment (big props to Action Figure Insider and Toy News International for everything they've put up) so I'm just going to be making some random observations, yays and nays from the couch here in Oz.

After the reveal of the first wave of JSA Figures at Wizard Chicago, I posted asking for unmasked heads for Starman and Sandman. Good to see from the pics here that I got half of what I was asking for. Still nothing for Sand, but we now have a Thom Kallor head which I'm pretty chuffed about. He's going to go really well with all my other great BA Legion figures..... oh, wait.........

Still, you know what they say about beggars, and when it comes to DCD it seems that's all we'll ever be. So, yay for Thom. Good to see a better looking headsculpt for Jay Garrick as well.

Now, if these could just be in scale with anything DCD has made previously.......?

Mini Toygasm

My great customising friend Jackknight92 has some breaking news pics of the Alex Ross JSA Wave One toys over at the Doosh. (Worth a look, however if you've never trod the hallowed and harrowing boards of the Doosh before- be warned, some of it isn't for the faint-hearted!)

I'll let you look at the whole range over there because it's Jack's scoop, but I had to have a Legion-related geek-out about the Starman figure here. I'm generally enthusiastic about the wave - good to see Jay looking his age, but I'll be throwing things around the room if Sand doesn't have a removable helmet or swappable head. I could also start writing all the irate posts people will be making when these coming out about how they don't fit with any other JSA figs - get over it now guys!!

Anyway, back to Thom - I'm going to have to have one of the for the Kingdom Come display and one one for the JSA display, and then I'm going to have to have one that can be customised to a Levitz-era LSH Thom with a beard - can anyone suggest a figure with a good bearded dude headsculpt???

Of course, he's prolly not going to fit in with any other BA Legionnaire I get made, but right now, I really don't care!!