Seventh Heaven

After an extended wait for my DCUC Wave 7 figures due to Cornerstore Comics’ delays due to their credit card hack dramas (which I thankfully avoided) and other supply dramas, (Poor things, I really feel for them as they have always done the right thing by me, especially in terms of international shipping costs etc.) I finally got shipping notice that my case was on the way, and was very pleased to find a parcel card in my box today. I really couldn’t wait to get home to rip the box open and get these pictures underway!

First off, Atom Smasher is amazing. This is the first time I can recall opening up boxes and putting the BAF together before taking out and examining the individual figures. I had just had to get Al assembled and then stood in belief that I actually had an Atom Smasher BAF standing in front of me. He’s well articulated and there’s lots of room for fun posing when I get the chance. From the sounds if it Giganta is going to be  even taller, so all I can say is she’s going to be amazing if she’s going to be taller than this marvel!

In the same way that I think DCUC has produced the best Aquaman and arguably the best Batman 6” figure, I think the Flash from this wave could well be in the same category. None of DCD’s Flash efforts have been close to perfection – this one is almost it. He works well in standing and running pose, and comes with a stand to assist.

As much as I personally would have liked Big Barda to have a bit more of the “Big” in her, there’s no doubt that in many ways she’s the figure of the wave. Her costume is beautifully detailed. I may come back and do some comparisons of size etc later on, but for now the figure deserves to be allowed to stand as a very, very nice piece.

Booster Gold is great fun – looks very good in a flight stand! The structure with Skeets zooming out from behind him is a nice touch. Excellent paint job, and nice job on his goggles. After some earlier confusion about whether or not the Booster and Barda variants were going to be produced for these lines, I ended up getting both. Their futures are uncertain – being slightly underwhelmed by Barda’s size had me set on selling her, but if these do go on eBay it will be minus the BAF pieces, because I’d love another Atom Smasher to go with my MA JSA as well as my DCUC collection! Nice touch: the poses of the variants are different from the originals (you can see this is in the expanded photo set on Facebook (link below).

Captain Cold is very well done. Very nice detailing on his outfit, and groovy juxtaposition to Flash and Kid Flash in this wave. He has a holster for his ice ray gun which looks like it should close, but I can’t make it so. As for Kid Flash, while his size isn’t as big an issue as I’d anticipated, he’s still the pumped-up runt of the litter of this wave. While he’s overly muscled, he makes a fine SA Kid Flash, but I’m still not happy with this teen body type.

I’m not sure why we were so lucky as to get another Aquaman within 7 waves, and the infamous “camo” uniform at that, but it’s amazing to see him here and to a degree shows the lengths that Mattel is prepared to go with this line. Whatever you think of getting this figure (I am of course overjoyed), I’ll take Camo Aquaman over “Ultra Mega Armor Superman” any day.

The only QC quibbles I have here centre around the otherwise wonderful Blue Beetle figure. He has a small paint smudge on his chest, but more disappointingly some package rubbing has scratched his left goggle. Still, he stands tall amongst an excellent wave. One other small thing – Aquaman has a stiff neck – must be from trying to keep track of all those stripes.

With Wave 8 already hitting eBay, I’m hoping for less of a DCUC drought than I’ve been through while waiting for this wave, and with 8 being “the wave” for me in many ways, I really can’t wait!!

You can see an expanded photo set at Facebook, and check out the DCUC 7 talkback thread at the AFB Forum , which starts off with my initial ideas of how I might photograph this wave, Be warned, it wasn’t a pretty (to some) idea. Personally I think it could have worked…….