SUPERMAN — OUR WORLDS AT WAR

DC MULTIVERSE (McFARLANE TOYS)

Man, the McFarlane DC toy reviews are becoming an almost monthly occurrence here on the site.  Am I okay?  I honestly don’t know, guys.  Look, I like DC, and my collecting options are limited there, and Todd’s made enough figures that even with a low percentage of hits, there’s still a fair amount of okay stuff.  That being said, one figure that seems to evade Todd is a solid, basic Superman.  There jus always seems to be something off.  At best, there are some very dialed-in and specific looks, which is kind of what we’re dealing with today.  Yes, today’s entry comes of the early ’00s crossover “Our Worlds At War,” a storyline that was a big deal at the time of its release, but has generally had minimal impact moving forward.  I mean, I guess in introduced Imperiex?  You know, that guy that everybody loves?  He was in the second season of the Legion of Super Heroes cartoon?  Another thing that people consistently talk about?  Right?  Well, if nothing else, they made a tweak to Superman’s logo for a bit, and the toy companies do like reminding us of that.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Superman is part of the second assortment of “Digital” figures from McFarlane’s DC Multiverse line, released under the DC Direct banner, alongside Atom and “Longbow Hunters” Green Arrow.  As noted in the intro, he’s patterned on “Our Worlds At War,” or more specifically Superman’s altered look from the year following the event’s conclusion.  The figure stands 7 1/4 inches tall and he has 35 points of articulation.  As with a lot of the McFarlane figures, the articulation count may be high, but actual range is rather restricted.  The elbows don’t get a full 90 degrees, and the neck and mid-torso are also very stiff, so he’s mostly gonna be doing standing around poses.  Superman is largely making use of the DKR Superman mold, which is one that they keep returning to for some reason.  It’s based on Miller’s very bulked-up Superman, so it’s a very specific sort of mold, that’s not as all-purpose as they seem to think it is.  All that said, the two primary artists for Superman’s post-OWAW look, Ed McGuinness and Mike Wieringo, both depicted him as rather bulked up, so it’s not terribly far off.  Chalk it up to all that extra energy he picked up when he flew through the sun.  He gets a new head sculpt, which appears to be sort of an averaging of McGuinness and Wieringo’s styles.  They’re not completely incompatible, so it’s alright.  It’s definitely got McGuinness hair (or at least the front of it) and a Wieringo chin, that’s for sure.  He also gets a modified insignia piece, making it a little more classic and all-purpose than the more Miller-inspired piece from the original mold.   In terms of color work, he’s got a lot of molded colors, but what paint’s there isn’t bad.  The logo gets the black background, so it’s proper to the source material, and they’ve also given him a more artistic take on the shorts, being black with a red highlight rather than just red.  It honestly looks pretty decent.  Superman is packed with two sets of hands, a display stand, and an eagle.  The eagle is a re-use of the one included with Beast Boy, and notably has no way of interacting with the included figure, so you just sort of have to set him somewhere and hope he doesn’t fall over, which is kinda weird.  The figure also includes the weird NFT thing, but I ain’t messin’ with that.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve been rather displeased with the McFarlane Superman figures up to this point, and have been looking for a good one.  This one didn’t look *awful* and was even better than I’d expected when I finally saw him in person.  Unfortunately, I hesitated on snagging him, and he sold, so I missed him.  At least, until I found him at Cosmic Comix while picking up my comics a month or so back.  My daughter Aubrey, still in the midst of her obsession with “Man” helped me open him, and she had a wonderful time flying him back and forth, which has certainly helped to cement him as one of my favorite Superman figures, even if he may not be strictly “standard.”