Will Blackest Night save DC Direct’s Bacon?

Following the complete debacle that is the DC Direct 13” Wonder Woman comes the first series of the Blackest Night tie-in figures. Knowing Georg Brewer’s love for things that shine emerald green, the fact that the overall quality of this set is excellent doesn’t come as a total surprise. It’s hard to know, however, if this should be seen as a credit to DCD or just another example of the attention deficit disorder approach the company takes to its product.

I’m not reviewing the Black Lantern Earth Two Superman here because I won’t be buying the “zombie” characters, even Aquaman (gasp!). From what I have been reading this may be a pattern others are following, so I wonder if we’ll be seeing the Black Lanterns hang around for awhile, or if more Modern-Age focused collectors will snap them up.

Saint Walker and Atrocitus are great examples of the intriguing new characters that this saga has brought to the fore that will make great additions to the Green Lantern shelf – as long as they’re not just flash-in-the-pan plot devices that fade into the history books when Blackest Night is older. These figures are very well done – Saint Walker in particular looks like he’s stepped right off the page. His long, thin limbs make him a little hard to stand, but after a bit of peg-forcing he stands fine on his base. I pictured Atrocitus as a bit bigger than this figure, but it’s still an excellent effort. I’m not sure the headsculpt is quite right, but it’s effective. I particularly like the different design for the red lantern, which makes it a real gem to have.

Boodikka is a character that may not be old enough to be called “classic”, but having been around for 17-ish years as a non-Alpha Lantern it would have been nice for DCD to throw us a bone with an “original” Boodikka variant (with removable hand of course). This version is well executed, with the flowing hair and removable face panel very nice touches. She’s also easy to pose.

The kicker here is the scale – all of these figures tower over the Van Scriver Hal Jordan I have in the centrepiece of my collection. Not a huge issue for these three, although I don’t think Boodikka should be that tall, but if Series 3 Arisia ends up on the tall side of Hal, that’s going to be messy. Either we need a Series 5 with Hal or we need DCD to start paying attention to scale between it’s series.

Clearly a Series 5 Hal is our only hope.

You can see more pics at Facebook, discuss this at the AFB Forum, and comment on this post to enter the November AFB Comment of the Month Contest.

Until next time!