AFB is Alive and Kicking, and so is DC Direct's 13" Alan Scott!

First off, apologies for the long gaps between updates this month. I've just survived a huge interstate move, which means that from now on Action Figure Blues will be coming to you from Melbourne, Australia, instead of our national capital, Canberra, where I've lived for the last seven years. It's a welcome move and an exciting one, but there is obvously much to be done, not the least of which is the rather horrifying task of packing up the AFB Collection. I was "instructed" that I could only work on this task after the rest of the house was unpacked and settled (I love you Mrs AFB!) and this has been a great motivator to get things done. Tomorrow I begin the task of unboxing and reorganising, which I am approaching with equal parts excitement and dread. I'll get some photos up once it's done.

Thankfully, I do have a stockpile of items photographed and ready for review, and now that we have the internet connected to the new house (an ordeal of its own!) I'll be doing my best to try and get through them and to get back to bloggingl! First up is what, at present anyway, seems to be the last figure I'll be buying from DC Direct's 1:6 Scale / 13" line: Alan Scott Green Lantern.

Even at first glance, it was clear to me this was easily going to be one my favourite figures in the line. I was very pleased when this was solicited, partly for the love of the character, but also to see that the "Golden Age" Flash, Jay Garrick, wasn't going to be without a friend in this line. The choice to style them in the younger years was a great one as well - we have enough toys of the older Jay and Alan and it was great to see that they'd been captured in their prime at this scale.

There are elements of the DCD 13" male body that can stand out as weaknesses depending on the individual character's costume, the most significant of which are the thigh cuts which can be quite noticeable under some uniforms. There's alot happening with this figure, and the thigh cuts thankfully aren't a distraction here. As well as a busy colour scheme, there are a number of fabulously done costume elements, not to mention the truly fabulous headsculpt, that catch the eye instead.

Alan Scott's costume is a dream for this format, and it's been very well executed here. His puffy sleeves (for lack of a more technical term) are very well done, as are his boots with gold braid, but the real eye-catcher is the cape. This is by no means the first figure in the 13" line to have a cape, but this one has been given the deluxe treatment thanks to it's two colour design. The use of the two layers of fabric here gives it a nice thickness, and the great look is added to by the use of different types of fabric for the two sides, with the inner green side being done with a nice shiny textile

A fantastic touch is the light-up feature on Alan's lantern. I have green and other colour lanterns up the wazoo thanks to DCD's prolific production of them in many scales, so it's nice to have one with a difference. As you can see, it's quite bright for a toy and photographs well. There has also been an improvement in the design of the removable mask, which sits very snugly on GL's face and won't pop off like some of the earlier figures in the line (I'm looking at you, Robin). The only niggle I have is the same as the issue I had with the GA Flash figure, and that;s the belt. It's not fixed to any part of the uniform, and so it can ride up fairly easily to expose the seam between fabrics underneath. A small issue that in no way overshadows what truly is a brilliant feature.

The real shame here is that this seems, at the moment at least, to be the last dying gasp of this line, at least in terms of new characters, as all that seems to be coming are different Superman and Batman versions. If the line does stop here, and DCD certainly has the track record for it, it's missing some key characters like Hawkman, Red Tornado and Firestorm that I for one certainly imagined we'd see eventually. With some of the more recent efforts in the line having been less than stellar, I'd lost sight of that, but this fantastic piece is certainly one of, if not the, best we've seen. Here's hoping it's not going to live as a sad reminder of what could have been....

You can see more photos at Facebook, discuss this at the AFB Forum, and comment on this post to enter the December AFB Comment of the Month Contest!

Until next time!