SUPERBOY

MAFEX (MEDICOM)

I’ve touched on Medicom’s MAFEX line a few times here on the site.  While my most recent review kind of broke the mold a bit, my reviews have otherwise been DC-based, all of them hailing from the running sub-line of figures based on Batman: Hush.  Hush is a pretty solid way of doing a large swath of Batman-related characters in one cohesive style, but it does limit you mostly to just Batman.  For a focus on DC’s original super hero, Medicom also started up a based around the “Death” and “Return of Superman” storylines from the ‘90s.  Their primary focus has been the Superman replacements from “Reign of the Superman,” who each took over one of Supes’ four books running at the time. Taking over Adventures of Superman was “the Metropolis Kid,” Superboy!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Superboy is figure 232 in the MAFEX line-up.  He’s the fifth figure in the Return of Superman set-up, and the last of the four replacement Supermen to join the line.  The figure stands a hair over 6 inches tall and he has 42 points of articulation.  In terms of scaling, Superboy feels a touch too large for the other MAFEX figures I’ve picked up.  Not crazy levels of out of scale, but he definitely feels like he should maybe be a little shorter.  His articulation scheme is pretty much the same as the others I’ve looked at, which is to say it’s quite good, and allows for a lot of solid posing.  Nothing’s too overly loose or anything, and he can hold a pose quite well.  The figure’s sculpt is based on Tom Grummett’s initial design for the character, which is by far his best, and really his most enduring design.  It’s also the one that matches all the other figures, so it’s got that going for it too.  It translates quite nicely into figure form, and the little raised and recessed elements of the costume design all make it stand out quite well.  There are three included heads, all based on Grummett’s depictions of Kon-El.  There’s a neutral expression, an angry expression, and one with sunglasses affixed.  Of the three, I think I lean towards the sunglasses head the most, but I really like all three, and it’s great how consistent his look is between all of them.  Rather than being a sculpted element, like Hush’s trench coat was, Superboy’s distinctive leather jacket is a softgoods piece.  It’s good.  It’s well-tailored, not too limiting on the posability, and there’s a wire running through the belt for extra dynamic posing options.  I do worry about how well it will hold up in the long run, but I guess I’ll just enjoy it for what it is now.  The color work here is really bright and colorful, and feels very true to his early appearances.  The paint is all really clean, and there’s some especially strong work on the heads.  Superboy is packed with five different pairs of hands (fists, flat, thumbs up, open gesture, and relaxed), and a display stand.  It’s a little light, but he’s also got the three heads and the jacket, so it makes up for it, I feel.  The hands swap easily, but I’d be careful with them, because the glove cuffs have a real tendency to go flying during the swaps.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I got in relatively close to the ground floor with this incarnation of Superboy, getting the Man of Steel figure when it was new, and following his comic from an early point until it was cancelled.  I’ve always liked the character, and I’ve never been much of a fan of the jeans and t-shirt direction they took him under the Johns era.  It feels like something of how he was supposed to work kind of got lost there.  Thus far, I’ve just stuck to the Hush figures, and I even missed the standard Superman from that line, so I avoided the Return figures.  Superboy made that a lot harder to stick to, especially in light of my seriously renewed investment in Superman as a whole, post movie release.  This guy wound up being a birthday gift from my parents this year, and he’s super, super cool, and a great reminder that, no matter how far I progress from the decade that birthed me, I’ll never really be able to kick the need to own characters wearing leather jackets over their spandex.