DC Universe Classics Legion of Doom

I’ll admit that when I was a kid watching reruns of the Hanna Barbera Super Friends cartoon, I never really gave any thought to the Legion of Doom. For me, it was all about the Super Friends. The bad guys just existed to give the good guys a reason to display their heroics – and in hindsight that may have been the basis for the show to begin with.

Growing up with these characters in comics, cartoons, and movies, it slowly started to change. The bad guys became more interesting. I started understanding their motivations, and even started rooting for them. DC Universe Classics, with an assist from its predecessor DC Super Heroes, has let me reassemble the Legion of Doom in plastic form. Stack them up against the DC Universe Classics Super Friends, and tell me you don’t want the bad guys to win!

I really have to hand it to Mattel and the Four Horsemen – for the teams from which they’ve drawn inspiration for the line, they’ve done a fantastic job building them out – just consider the Super Powers toy line, the modern JSA, and Cosmic Odyssey (ok, New Gods) as examples. The Super Friends and the Legion of Doom are teams that they’ve fully completed.

It took three Collect and Connect figures (Grodd, Giganta, and Solomon Grundy), a couple of 2-packs (Brainiac and the purple Black Manta), a Wal-Mart exclusive 5-pack (Lex Luthor in his jumpsuit), two assists from DCSH (Scarecrow and Bizarro), and a bunch more single carded figures to get this team together. I can’t think of another bad guy team in my collection that’s gotten as much love – can you?

It did take a while to get there, though, and in my impatience I filled the glaring gaps with customs, mostly from talented customizers (in other words, not me).

• My measly contribution was a height-corrected Sinestro. Although I got lazy on the armbands, I actually prefer the skin tone on the custom, compared to the one that Mattel eventually made. But even here I can’t take full credit, as Robokillah painted his eyes.
• Buzzy Fret made a stand-in Riddler for me, when Mattel only had the suited Riddler as an alternative. He eventually got replaced when Mattel made the jump suit version – I love the head on the new one, and side by side you can see that the DCD head on the stand in (my choice, not Buzzy’s) is too big.
• Ibentmyman-thing made Toyman, including a scratch sculpted head. It’s uncanny how many visual cues it has in common with the Four Horsemen sculpt that eventually came out.
• Benty also scratch-sculpted the head for the classic Bizarro. It’s perfection, but marred by the crappy decoupage job on the reversed Superman logo I did on a spare Supes. I am surprised Mattel has not made an attempt at this variant yet – I dig this look so much more than the monster Bizarro they put out in DCSH and reissued in more recent DCUC 2-packs.

I also doctored up a height-corrected Captain Cold – you can read much more about him and the rest of these customs in the write-up I did for our DC Universe Classics Giants of Doom CustomCon entry.

I really love how this team looks in my display cubes. This shot is lit solely by that halogen tap light. Bad guys rule!