Hey, thought you guys would like these upcoming figures.

Wow, Linda's got her own action figure!! Where's her Bat-Book?? You'd think a librarian super heroine would have one...

Damn! Those are really nice!!!!

And these bad boys...forget about it! I'm going Batman and Flash!

Love the New Frontier ones, except Batmans red lips. Could be the lighting I guess.

Not my cup of tea at all. I am more of a Marvel Legends kind of guy. You can actually pose those figures, unlike these.

I like those too, John. Thing with the Legends figures, they have so many articulation points, they sometimes sort of look freakish. Especially the women.
I still want the Galactus series, if only so I can have Galactus for the kids to play with. OK, and me. It's Galactus!

The Galactus didn't turn out too bad, I even bought the Sentinel series:

So... Robert is Living with Galactus?

Cyclops is clearly about to get his ass kicked in that photo.

What series are those from the top post from? I like the girthy Curt Swan Superman body shape. I think Swan must have developed a beer gut himself, and started subsconsciously expanding Superman's waistline.

I don't like the hotpants trousers of the New Frontiers ones. Okay for the series, I guess, because it had such a stylistic look.

It's weird, that smile on J'onn J'onnz's face.

Right?

It's weird, but I like it. It's fun.

I especially like that Batgirl figure.

I'd say the opposite direction for Swans Superman Jay. When he started out, he was emulating Wayne Borings style, which was huge barrel chested Superman. Later, his own vision came through, and it was much more what we imagine now when picturing "Swan Superman".

It looks great except for the face. Has she been hypnotized or something? It's like she's traded expressions with the NF Martian Manhunter figure!!

I have no clue. For me, Superman is Swan, then Byrne. They didn't have collections of back issues when I was a kid, and I haven't looked since.

I guess the look of the figure put in the mind of throwback, old school, and I thought "Swan." Superman seemed like an older, father figure when I was young. Like he was about 45.

How old are you? My experience with reprint stories came largely from DC Blue Ribbon Digests, which came out in the 70s and early 80s. Cornfield for you.

I'm 38. But I'm a Marvel kid. Wouldn't even have noticed the Blue Ribbons unless a relative bought one for me. I got some old-school DC's from Pizza Hut, though. Remember those? The timeframe would have been somewhere around 1976-1978.

Ah, I was a DC kid. Didn't know SHIELD from HYDRA from AIM. My only Marvel experience was FF 1-5 and a Marvel Holiday Special. Yeah, I remember those Pizza Hut things vaguely, pretty sure I had at least one.
I truly regret turning 14 and deciding I was "too old for comics" and getting rid of them all. I've spent years rebuilding my collection. Will never be able to replace those old Harvey and Archie comics though. Mostly because I'd be interested in reading them again, but not paying for them again at todays back-issue prices!

That's definitely a Swan Superman.

Jay's recollection of seeing Superman as a father-figure reminded me that fixing that was one of the tasks Byrne set for himself with the Superman revamp in the 80s. He also felt that Superman seemed too old and serious and wanted to make Superman seem younger; more vital and fun.

Because there weren't enough young, vital, fun characters?

We had enough X-Men.

Not exactly. He wanted to make Superman the number-one best-selling comic again, and he believed that when Superman became a father-figure, then he'd gotten too old for many readers to relate to. To an extent, I agreed with him, and was generally pleased with the changes he made at the time. To me, Byrne's Superman seemed like he was in his late 20s, a nice balanced age between "father" and "contemporary." (I was about 20 at the time.) He was like a really cool big brother. Also, the way Byrne drew him, especially when he was flying, made it seem like he was having fun with his powers, truly enjoying them as well as getting a kick out of whomping on the bad guys.

Like I said, it worked for me at the time. YMMV.