First, a note on scale. I feel that the new DC figures look great
with the existing Famous Cover figures. Although they appear a tiny bit taller,
they look great with the FC female figures (see the picture of GL with a custom FC Supergirl).
The DC heads are bigger than the FC heads, but rather than being a
problem with the DC figures, I think it just points out how tiny the FC heads
are.In my collection I have the DC and FC figures side by side on a shelf, and they look good. If you put the DC figures on their stands, however, they do tend to tower over the FCs that are not on stands.
The packaging of the DC figures was okay. It displays the figures very well, and in
the case of Green Arrow (see pic), show off his articulation. However, they are
not collector friendly. Green Arrow was the worse of the three. It took me quite
a while to get him out, and I had to resort to an exacto knife at one point!Every DC figure comes with a stand that is very nice for posing. It has two small pegs, and the figures have two small holes in their plastic feet. Be careful with the stands, my Green Lantern stand already has one of the pegs broken off :(
Once I got Green Arrow out of the package, I was very impressed with the quality
of these figures. The costumes are very well made, the sculpting is very
detailed, and the articulation is incredible (more later).
Green Arrow comes with some nice pieces: hat with red feather, belt with shoulder
strap, quiver, three arrows, and bow. The hat, belt, and quiver are really nice. They
are made of a rubbery type of plastic. The hat stays on great, and the quiver actually
pinches the arrows so they stay in place. Really nice!
The quiver also de-attaches
from the shoulder strap. The belt is great custom fodder as the shoulder strap could
easily be trimmed off for a simple black belt. The arrows are a bit strange
as mentioned before. The arrow-heads look like lumpy rocks. Strange? Its nice that the
bow can shoot the arrows pretty well, but I would prefer a more impressive looking
bow. (See Green Arrow with Hawkeye's bow to see what I mean!).
With the DC gripping hand, Green Arrow can use Hawkeye's bow.
Green Arrows shirt just slips off, over his head and gloves, no problem. Underneath
the shirt we can see the details of the articulation. The DC figure is very comparable
to a FC figure. The build is probably somewhere between an FC male type 1 and type 2.
One difference is that the only DC joint with a pin is the gripping hand, where
most of the FC joints use pins. The DC figure
has the great ball waist that makes both these and FC figures so poseable. The DC
waist actually has stomach muscles sculpted on the front and back muscles on the back!
It has all the FC articulation plus swiveling biceps and the wonderful gripping hands.
Starting with the Avenger wave of FCs, the FC head post has limited back and forth (nodding)
motion. The DC figure's head can only turn and has no back/forth motion.
The arms and legs of the DC figure are shorter than an FC and end more abruptly.
This is to accommodate the DC boots and gloves. (The FC arms and legs taper off into wrists and ankles.)
The boots and gloves are similar in that they are composed of two pieces the
cuff and the hand/foot. When comparing the DC and FC hands, the size of the hands
are very similar. The biggest difference is with the peg that attaches the hand to
the arm. The DC peg is extended to go through the cuff. The cuff is glued to the arm
of the figure. It comes off with a bit of pulling, but the glue needs to be chipped
off to make it clean. I tried putting a cuff-less DC hand on an FC body, and although
the it held great, there was a gap between the arm
and the hand that looked odd. I'm very happy to report that the DC hand + cuff is
interchangeable with a FC hand. The converse is also true, however a FC hand doesn't
look as good on the DC body since the DC arm doesn't taper down to a wrist.
The boots are a different matter. The DC boot is quite a bit larger than an FC foot. When taking an FC boot into account, (such as Daredevil's), the size is pretty comparable. By having the boot jointed, the DC figures can stand much easier in interesting posed, than their FC counterparts. The problem with swapping DC and FC feet is that the DC cuff is glued to the leg, and then boot attaches to the cuff, not the leg! This means A DC leg cannot hold a foot without a cuff. The exception may be Aquaman. I haven't taken his pants off, but since the fin is part of his leg, his leg may be completely different. It will be interesting to see what Aquaman's ankle and feet look like.
I was unable to put an unmodified DC cuff on a male FC body (it fits great on a female body, but she'd have huge feet!) It would probably be pretty easy to either file the cuff or a FC leg to get them to fit. It would probably have to be glued on to stay put. However, the DC boot (without the cuff) fits very well onto an FC body. The DC arms and legs do have little notches at the end that prevent to gloves/boot cuffs from turning. This is probably to let the glue hold them tight without worrying about twisting motions.
The heads are very different. Besides the scale, the DC heads feel softer (more Mego like).
Like the boot and glove cuffs, the head is glued onto a neck post. I tried boiling the
head for awhile, but the glue held to most of it. I finally got the head off by
cutting away at the neck post. However, it now doesn't stay on very well. I would have
to glue it back on to get it to stay. This means, unlike FC, head swaps on DC figures
will be a bit of a pain. The necks are larger than FC, and are flat at the neck (like Star Trek 9"
figures) instead of the rounded neck top that FC's have. The neck post does not seem
to hold the head without glue. (Note, I may have actually cut off the part of the head
that holds it to the neck post, if someone else has more luck with head swaps, please
let me know.)
The clothes fit great (although Green Arrows clothes are a big loose, which make this easier.) The gloves work with no problems! The boots are used without the cuffs, and the head is not attached, but just placed on the body.
Here is the same conversion, except using FC feet and Cap's boots. I think he looks pretty good. To make this complete, the neck could be shaved down and the head glued to the neck.
The reverse isn't quite as pretty! Since the DC legs can't hold feet without the boot cuff, I left the DC boots on. Also the FC head had no chance getting over the DC neck plug, so I left the DC head on. Hawkeye is a type 1 body, and his costume is snug. I was able to get it on the DC figure, but it is too tight. The hands worked fine.
So far we have three DC gloves: red with "leather" cuff, green with fin cuff, and white with smooth cuff. Looks like Batman will be blue with "bat" cuff. It will be interesting to see if Superman has a different forearm that includes a wrist.
The head sculpts are wonderful. I love Aquaman's half smile. I like that they give stands with the figures. Green Lantern is a work of art. He is an extremely well done figure, and in my opinion, the best of the three.
The costumes between DC and FC seem very compatible. The patterns for FC will probably work for the DC figures as well.
As a customizer, I dislike the amount of glue used to put the figures together. The head, glove cuffs, boot cuff are all glued to the body. Also the costume is glued to the body at the cuffs. Green Arrows pants weren't hemmed at the bottom since they are glued on! I assume the sleeves of Green Lantern and Aquaman are glued to the arms as well. The only glue FC used was for Thor's helmet.
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