I'm A Grown Man And I Bought This: Just-Us League Of Stupid Heroes

From DC Direct comes the Just-Us League Of Stupid Heroes line of action figures. Each figure features Alfred E. Neuman, Mad Magazine's long-time cover boy, as a different DC Universe super hero. How could I pass up a concept that weird?

DC Direct actually came out with many of these figures way back in 2002. I wanted to get them back then but was always stymied by the price tag. $18 was just too rich for my blood. Little did I know that in 2013 all action figures would routinely go for $15 - $20 a pop!

I tried to find the original figures on eBay but they were always even more wildly expensive there, so I gave up and figured I'd just never own them. Fortunately this year DC Direct decided to resurrect the line and I was finally able to pick them up. They recently rerelased all the figures from the 2002 line plus several brand new ones.

Each figure is about six inches high but somehow seem bigger. All are very well-sculpted and feature an amazing amount of detail work and excellent paint jobs. I don't have a single complaint in that area!

First up is Alfred as Superman. The sculpt here looks to be the same as the original figure. The only difference is the paint job. He now has black hair as Superman does and his shoes have been changed to solid red to more closely match Supe's boots.

It's ironic that this parody figure's costume looks more traditional and on-model than the one in the upcoming Man Of Steel movie. I don't care what anyone says, Superman needs his red undies and he looks just plain wrong without them!

Whoops! He's missing the yellow "S" shield on his cape.

I'm generally not a fan of cloth capes on action figures of this size. They usually end up looking exactly like what they are-- a tiny square of material. The cloth's just too small to hang like a real cape would. I much prefer plastic sculpted capes.

The figures all have fairly standard articulation, including neck, shoulder, mid-bicep, wrist, hip and knee joints. For some reason none of them are articulated at the waist.

Unfortunately Superman's hands really only work in the "What, Me Worry?" pose and look kind of silly any other way.

Here's Alfred as Green Arrow. The original figure came with a bow, but this new version doesn't. At least the one I got didn't. Maybe I got a defective package? One would think a character who's whole schtick is being an archer oughta come with a bow, but what do I know?

The paint job here is particularly well done. If you look closely you'll see that the skin inside the eye holes of his mask has been painted black, just like Michael Keaton's eyes in the Batman movies. Now that's attention to detail! 

On a totally unrelated note.... I guess in those movies we're to believe that Bruce Wayne spend a few minutes carefully painting the skin around his eyes black before he put on his bat-cowl? Eh, no reason to hurry, Batman. I'm sure taking the time to paint your face won't give the Joker a head start or result in any innocent civilians' deaths.

This isn't just a straight reissue of the old figure, as there are quite a few differences, mainly in the contents of the quiver and his gloves. Both appear to have been resculpted. No idea why they'd do that, as it's generally an expensive thing to do, but I'm not complaining. Maybe they lost parts of the original molds?

Once again the level of detail here is impressive. His quiver is actually a golf bag and it contains several arrows, a golf club, a wrench, what could possibly be the handle of a whip and or course a fish. You never know when you might have to fire a herring at one of your enemies.

Perhaps the most disturbing of the figures is Alfred E. Neuman as Wonder Woman. This is a brand new figure that wasn't included in the 2002 wave and was sculpted just for this new line.

This isn't a sister or some weird female cousin of Alfred's, this is most definitely him dressed in drag. If you need proof just look closely and you'll see he's got a black wig perched crookedly on his head and some of his reddish brown hair is showing underneath.

Yes folks, this is an action figure of a young boy in drag. Believe it or not, this isn't a first; I can think of one other time this has happened, when TriStar made a Klinger figure for its M*A*S*H toy line in the early 1980s. 

That oughta get the One Million Moms' panties in a bunch! Like they need more to complain about.

Here's a shot of the back of Wonder Woman, showing her red rain boots. I will refrain from commenting on Alfred's gams or his firm, taut buttocks.

Here's a closeup showing the incredible details of the costume. They really went all out with this one. Wonder Woman's bullet-deflecting bracelets are actually cans of Alfred-OOs brand pasta, complete with tiny nutrition info table on the back of the cans! It looks like the nutrition info actually says something, but alas it's too minute for my eyes to read, even with a magnifying glass. Still, to go to that much trouble at all is amazing to me.

Wonder Woman's magic lasso is a yellow extension cord and the gold trim on her, er I mean his uniform is police crime tape. If you look closely at his chest, and shame on you for doing so, you'll see he's stuffed his costume full of kleenex. Just like your prom date! And one side is larger than the other! Again, Just like your prom date!

Here's Alfred as Green Lantern, one of my favorite superheroes. Once again this figure appears to be identical to the original one except for the paint job. This time his hair is the proper dark brown color of Hal Jordan (instead of reddish brown) and they've used a metallic green paint on his jumper.

Like the Green Arrow figure they painted the area around the eye holes of his mask black, which again is a nice bit of detail. His power ring is actually sculpted into the Green Lantern symbol too. I've seen many Green Lantern figures that just had a blob of paint on their hand where the ring should be. He also comes with what appears to be a Coleman-type camping lantern to use to recharge his power ring.

He even has Green Lantern symbols on the his Chuck Taylors!

It's a nice looking figure with one big exception-- that giant scrawny turkey neck. I don't know what went wrong here, but his neck is about a quarter inch longer than it oughta be. He shouldn't have any neck showing at all; I think it would look a lot better if his head just rested on the turtleneck collar.

Turkey neck or not, he's still got tons of little details, including the string that holds his mask on which is mashing down his hair! Cool!

Next up is Alfred as the Flash. As near as I can tell this figure is unchanged from the original.

Again there's tons of detail on display here. The texture of his head is different from the rest of his outfit, as he's wearing a wool ski mask! He's also sporting oven mitts on his hands and wearing yellow rain goulashes. The goulashes are even painted with a glossy paint (rather than the matte paint used on the rest of the figure) to simulate rubber!

The bulk of his suit is a pair of red long johns, complete with butt flap in the back.

Last up is Alfred as Aquaman. This is another brand new figure that wasn't available the first time around.

He's got a load of detail as well, including a nose clamp to keep him from sputtering and drowning underwater, inflatable water wings on each arm, a seafood restaurant bib complete with lobster printed on it, and an inflatable duckie inner tube.

He also carries a pitchfork to use as his majestic Atlantean trident. So Aquaman gets a trident but Green Arrow doesn't get a bow? Odd.

That little box by his feet is a can of sardines, which is sure to get lost in the carpet five minutes from now.

He's also got a large crab attached to his leg that's pinching the hell out of his ass.

All in all a fun wave of toys based on a cool concept. I highly recommend them if you're a fan of Mad Magazine or DC Comics, or if you're one of those types who likes to have ironic crap sitting around your apartment.

There's also a Batman, Robin and a Joker figure available, but I didn't yet have them at the time of my little photoshoot. I'll be covering them soon.

Dear Hollywood: Please Stop Doing This

Last weekend at the San Diego Comic Con, DC Comics released this teaser poster for Zack Snyder's upcoming Man Of Steel Superman movie.

Oy gevalt.

That is one ugly costume. Just look at that thing. What's with all the weird textures everywhere?  It almost looks like something my Nana crocheted. If Nana was still alive that is, and had the ability to crochet industrial strength polymers.

These days Hollywood just loooooves to festoon superhero costumes with as much superfluous detail as possible. The more the better, and then some. You know, this super-detailed trend started just about the time that hi-def televisions and blu ray players became popular. I wonder if there's a connection? Are filmmakers adding all this unnecessary detail to their superhero costumes so it'll show up all crisp and defined on viewers' hi-def 1080p sets? I think I smell a conspiracy.

And why are the colors of the suit so dark and muted? Superman's costume is supposed to be bright and colorful. What is this, his special mourning costume, that he only wears to funerals of world dignitaries and Phantom Zone ambassadors?

But maybe I'm being too harsh. After all, this is an extreme closeup taken under special mood lighting. Let's back up and take a good look at the whole costume, under more optimal light. I'm sure it'll look better then.

Oh my.

I'll say it again, that is one butt-ugly costume. I thought the ridiculous texture would only be visible in closeup, but it's very apparent here as well. And it's not just the texture of the fabric that's overdone, it's everything. The decorative piping, the silly cuffs, the art deco wings around his waist, his distracting and frankly off-putting package that makes one want to avert one's eyes... and why does the suit look dingy, like he's just finished first in a hog-catching contest? We don't yet know much about the movie's plot, did he just finish first in a hog-catching contest?

I still don't see what was wrong with this suit. It doesn't have any bizarre and unnecessary textures, it's bright and colorful, and best of all it's a perfect live action translation of the comic book version of Superman. I don't remember audiences pointing and laughing at this suit when the movie came out. In fact I think people were probably pretty darned impressed with how good it looked. It's absolutely perfect and there was no reason whatsoever to go muddying it up with a bunch of ugly textures.

It's not just Superman's costume that DC ruined. They did the same thing last year with their Green Lantern movie. They took one of the sleekest and most well-designed costumes in all of comicdom and once again went overboard with the detail and textures. Just look at that closeup of the chest area of the costume. It looks for all the world like they strapped down Ryan Reynolds, stripped off his skin and then spray painted the musculature underneath with green paint.

Incredibly, this costume was so danged complicated that they couldn't even construct it in reality. Reynolds reportedly wore some kind of motion capture suit throughout filming and they added the hyper-detailed costume over him later, through the magic of CGI.

This isn't something that just started happening; it's been going on for quite a while now. In 2006's Superman Returns they overdid it as well. Here's a closeup of the Superman costume fabric from that unfortunate piece of cinematic history.

Again, a simple costume muddied up by the addition of too much detail. And again, it looks like something my Nana would use to make a quilt or a shawl.

They didn't stop with the fabric either. Take a good close look at Superman's S-shield chest emblem there. First of all it's sculpted in three dimensions instead of being a simple patch as in years past. Then they actually etched the thing with hundreds of tiny S-shield shapes. Go ahead and enlarge the photo, I'll wait. See? They decorated the S-shield with S-shields. 

Again I have to ask why they keep doing this. Do they think it adds to my enjoyment of the movie? I can assure them it does not. I would much rather they spend their time honing and perfecting the storyline than seeing how many S-shields they can cram into Superman's chest emblem.

They did the same damn thing with the uniforms from the 2009 Star Trek film. When recreating and updating  the simple velour tunics from the original TV series, the designers felt the need to garnish the fabric with thousands of tiny Starfleet arrowheads-- the same exact shape as the little silver badge on the left side of the chest.

Again I have to ask why? Is it indeed so hi-def TVs will have something intricate to display, to show off their capabilities? Or do the filmmakers feel that the uniforms would look cheap without them? Does infinite detail = high production value?

Hilariously, Playmates Toys tried to recreate this texture in their line of 3.75" action figures based on the movie. Unfortunately it just wasn't possible at that scale, which made the Kirk and Spock figures look like they were wearing bulky cable knit sweaters. Maybe it gets chilly on the Enterprise.

These uniforms are like those computer fractal drawings, the ones that reveal infinite detail the more you zoom in. Say, just for fun, let's try it shall we? Here's a sample of Spock's uniform at 10x magnification. Yep, here we can see the thousands of tiny Starfleet arrowheads adorning the fabric.

Now here we are at 100x magnification. Look at that! I was right! Each one of the thousands of little arrowheads is filled with yet another little arrowhead! It's like that "infinite mirror" illusion at the barber shop. Wow, if nothing else, these filmmakers are certainly thorough.

Now let's zoom in even further, to 10,000x magnification. Ha! I knew it! The fabric itself is made of Starfleet arrowhead atoms! Now that's attention to detail!

Now if we could just get Hollywood to put as much work into their scripts as they do their flippin' costumes...

Gay Lantern

Last week DC Comics was crowing loudly about the fact that during one of their semi-annual company wide reboots of their entire comic universe, they were going to reveal that a MAJOR character was gay.

Fans began speculating wildly. Who would it be? Batman? Robin? Wonder Woman? She lives on an island full of women after all. What about Batman? The Flash maybe? How about Batman? Maybe Batman?

Or possibly The Gay Ghost? Nah, that would statistically improbable. Could it perhaps be Batman?

Once the DC brass determined they'd squeezed all the free publicity out of the situation that they could, they announced that the winner of the 2012 Forced Orientation Adjustment was none other than... Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern.

chirp... chirp... chirp... chirp... chirp...

Yep, good ol' Alan Scott, the most important Green Lantern there is, right after Hal Jordan, Kyle Rainer, John Stewart, Guy Gardner and the one who looks like a chicken with a fin on his head. You know, Alan Scott, the incredibly MAJOR character who's not really part of the main DC Universe, but is tucked away on a parallel world called Earth 2, where all the other Golden Age superheroes live. THAT Green Lantern!

Way to be provocative, DC Comics! What bold, courageous, social-conscious thinking!

I guarantee that the general public has absolutely no idea that there's more than one Green Lantern, or that there's one living on a parallel world. When they hear, "Green Lantern's gay!" they're going to do a spit take and exclaim, "Holy crap! Did you say Ryan Reynolds is gay?"

For the record, I'm not a fan of this development. Now now, put down your torches and pitchforks, and take the tar off the stove. It's not that I object to the idea of a gay superhero per se. I don't. My problem with the whole business is that I don't want to know about the sex lives of ANY of the superheroes I read about, gay or straight.

Superman and Lois Lane had an "understanding." That's all I needed to know about their relationship. Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman are husband and wife. Enough said. The Alan Scott Green Lantern is now a "confirmed bachelor." I don't need to know any more than that.

Comic books are escapist fantasy. They should be epic and larger than life. I want to read about a guy dressed as a clown hanging a guy dressed as a bat over a vat of boiling acid. I want to read about whole teams of superheroes repelling alien invasions. I want to read about superheroes defeating a giant purple guy who wants to eat the Earth, or shrinking themselves and having adventures on a planet inside an atom. You know, the way comics used to be. I know, I know, get off my lawn.

I want stupid, goofy FUN comic stories. The more ridiculous and outlandish, the better. I think that can be accomplished without knowing which team the fifth most important Green Lantern is on.