Are you a Marvel guy? Or DC? The age old question asked to
many comic book collectors and super hero fanatics. If you asked me this
question now, my answer would be an easy “Make mine Marvel!” For as long as I can remember reading comics,
I was always into marvel comics. Sure I
read an occasional Batman issue here and there, but growing up, my comic stack
was basically composed of Captain America and the Avengers.
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I don't even want to think how many Chickadees
I had to eat to complete a full deck! |
But even if I hardly read any DC comics, the DC heroes still
maintained a constant presence in my childhood through the Superfriends
cartoon, collector cards found in junkfood packs, and later the Superman &
Batman movies. Special mention goes out to Superman 2, probably the first (and
one of the few) movie to make me cry.
They had to bring me out of the theatre cuz I was crying uncontrollably
after seeing Superman (having given up his super powers for Lois) being beat up
by normal people in a bar and…bleeding…traumatic stuff for a little boy.
Anyway, back to the whole point of this blog, toys. I never really
collected super hero toys when I was younger.
Even if they were infinitely better than their Marvel counterparts, I
never cared for the Super Powers line of the 80’s. When I finally caved a few years ago and
started collecting Marvel Universe, I never thought twice about dipping into
the DC universe. First because DC’s main
action figure toyline, DC Universe was composed of 6” figures…something I never
really had any interest in collecting.
Second because their 3.75 line wasn’t very good. And third and most importantly, I still
didn’t read any DC comics.
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| What could have been? |
That all changed around the time the Green Lantern movie
came out in 2011. No, I wasn’t blown
away by it, in fact didn’t really like the movie. It was….ok, but miles away from anything
Marvel was putting out. But it did enough to pique my interest in the hero
more. Although I wasn’t really reading
any DC comics, I would still occasionally pay attention to what was currently
making “waves” in the comic landscape.
And all I would hear from my friends who read DC was how amazing the
Green Lantern titles were and how he was already rivalling Superman &
Batman in popularity in the DC comics universe.
So I was definitely intrigued and decided to check out some issues,
starting with Green Lantern: Rebirth.
And I was immediately hooked.
Rebirth led to the introduction to the other colored lanterns (just wiki
them if you’re curious), to Blackest Night and so on. Of course this got me even more interested in
other DC characters, but not enough to read try out more stuff. The bottom line
being that I was too intimidated by the deep histories of each character, I
didn’t have the time or passion to play catch up.
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| What you get when you open a bag of Nips.... |
Then DC did the unthinkable last year and rebooted their
ENTIRE comic line. They basically
started a new “timeline” from scratch will all their issues going back to issue
#1. Their rational for doing so was to basically shake things up and try
something new, but most importantly, attract new readers who were otherwise
intimidated by having to jump into something so deeply established with so much
history…namely, readers like me. So fast
forward a year later, and I am deeply entrenched in the new DC 52 universe,
following a number of titles, almost as much as my Marvel ones.
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| reboot! reboot! |
So after reacquainting myself with the DC comic universe,
all of a sudden, my toy shelf started looking like it was missing a little
something without some DC representation.
But I had to be SMART since I knew I couldn’t start another full blown
collection. Limited space & funds
dictated that I couldn’t and shouldn’t go crazy with this collection. So I started by laying down a couple ground
rules for myself. I would only go for
the BIG characters, so in this case, Batman, Superman…the Justice League. And I would only buy second hand stuff (cheaper),
since they were quite plentiful in many toy hobby shops everywhere. With those 2 rules in mind I set out to start
my collection with a neat idea of how I would display them.
A few months later I finished my collection (for now ha
ha). Although I did break my 2 rules a
little. I ended up not sticking to just
the iconic Leaguers (Bats, Supes, Flash, Wonder Woman, GL & Aquaman) but
getting some additional but still important & memorable members (Green Arrow,
Black Canary, Hawkman & woman
etc). And I also caved and spent
extra on hard to find characters. But
for the most part I’d like to think I practiced good self-control with this
collection. And as for my display idea….well
I’ll let the picture speak for itself
J
