Mini? Yes. Mates? Time will tell.

And so it came to pass that the first wave of DC Minimates finally rolled on to the shelves last week. I had initially pre-ordered these, but as you may recall the first solicitation was cancelled and as that was at a time when DC was particularly in the doggy doo with me (can't remember over what - they've blended together) and so I decided to save myself the money and not collect these little fellows. I didn't factor in how ever thoughtful Dee and Cathryn from Dee's Books and Comics are though - sure enough these were in my bag on Friday and though I know they wouldn't have minded if I put them back I decided to check them out.

There's nothing groundbreaking about these minimates. We know from all the Marvel waves that Art Asylum does these well - the lines are crisp and clean and everything is well defined. Pretty predictable character selection - Wave 1 is Superman / Luthor, Batman / OMAC, Joker / Harley Quinn and Green Lantern / Star Sapphire. There are some nice little touches - OMAC is made of clear blue plastic like the 6'(ish) figure, Joker comes with a fun little mallet prop, etc.

The package is much bigger than the Marvel Minimates and as if I go on collecting this line I'll be keeping them MIB that's a bit of an annoyance to me - more space taken up by the display. Obviously they wanted to do something different to set the DC versions apart but it's a bit of a pain for this collector.

These are fun, there's no doubt. For me the deciding factor in whether or not this becomes a regular thing for me is character selection. In Waves 2 and 3 we get Battle-Damaged Superman and Batman respectively, but in coming waves we also get characters like Ocean Master and Ma Hunkel who've yet to appear in larger scale plastic.

I'd say that like with most things DCD these days, I'll be buying very few whole waves and more picking and choosing the gems from the battle-damaged dross. I'm pragmatic tho - give me an interesting range of characters in each wave and I'll find a space for that fifteenth underwater lightning ray Superman. Really.