Rating:  -
I have never written a negative review like this before, but I felt the need to because this book is just plain terrible. When my pre-ordered copy was finally delivered by Amazon last week I was thrilled to open it. What I saw bled all that joy away - terrible layouts of empty space with intermittant pages of jumbled images, no packaging listings, no detail about the line or the creation thereof, and incomplete and/or damaged loose figures shown as examples. Five minutes later I was thoroughly disappointed, and decided put it down and to sleep on it before picking it up again.
The next day's reading was even worse. The layout problems were visually uninteresting, but the research of this book and content thereof are absolutely lacking. The only packaged items in this book are not to be found between the covers, but rather hidden on them - if you remove the slipcover the front and back hardcovers show the only packaged items this book offers. Of the figures that are listed only a third of them offer images of any kind. Of the images offered the vast majority are either Batman or Superman figures, figures made after 1994, or both. With the images that are there, even for a single character like Batman, the images are often not to scale, and therefore do not offer a scale /size comparison that to me seemed like a virtual "gimme" in a book of this kind. The vast majority of the figures shown are shown in images are from one toy line - DC Direct. While this is a fine line that I own many of, there are dozens of lines that are ignored either in large part or entirely while it retains an undue focus on modern toy lines. Additionally, many of the figures shown have either incorrect accessories and body parts or both. This is hardly archival.
There is not a single figure listed before Captain Action (by IDEAL, not Mego! For goodness sake, you have a packaged example of the line on your front cover piece! How can you make this mistake?) and many lines are that come afterward are omitted either by choice or by ignorance. There is only a small block of text for each "listing", which gives only the manufacturer, the toy line, and the date of initial sale. While this information can be found on even the most rudimentary fan website some of the listings that are written here are either apocryphal (or at least wildly inaccurate). Some are listed as being produced for a different line or by a different manufacturer, and some that are overlooked in their entirety. These listing errors occur from the more obscure lines of the 1960's all the way to toys created in 2007 (The errors of the Justice League Unlimited line really frustrated me - all of the correct information can be found with a few clicks on the manufacturer's website).
To sum up: this book is visually uninteresting, poorly researched, heavily weighted towards Batman, Superman, and the DC Direct toy line, the listings are often inaccurate and/or incomplete, and images that are there are not satisfying. This book is in no way archival, unless the author chose to archive his personal collection (which would explain the undo weighting of the selected images offered herein). Save yourself the time and hassle of returning this book (as I have) and simply do not buy it in the first place.
Try instead Mego 8" Super-Heroes: World's Greatest Toys! by Benjamin Holcomb if you would like a great book on Super Hero Action Figures.
Rating: -
I had high hopes for this book, hopes that were dashed when I got to about the fourth page. I actually became angry with this book.
To call this book an archive of any kind is false advertising, there is little to no content here for any toy line that appeared before the mid ninties.
Captain Action has a couple of entries (One where they say the line was created by Mego (!) nice proofing), Mego fares a small bit better, if you like pictures of incomplete, damaged figures with the wrong hands. Comic Action Heroes are misidentified as Pocket Heroes, do your research!
The rest of it is comprised mainly of DC Direct figures currently on clearance at my local comic shop. So if you want a hardback book about DC Direct and Total Justice figures, here you go.
If you want a decent book on other toy lines, check the books on Captain Action and Mego published by Twomorrows. Hopefully somebody will publish a nice SuperPowers book one of these days.
This one isn't worth your time, AVOID!
Rating: -
What an enormous disappointment! This book falls short on every level. First of all (and amazing for Chronicle Books), it's NOT an attractive book. The layout and design are very clunky and there's lots of wasted space. Historical background on the figures is cursory at best, and much of the text reads like it was written for someone who's never cracked a comic book (surely not the target audience for this book). The sculptors are not listed for any of the figures and it seems as if perhaps some artwork from the designers of some of them might have fit nicely. But worst of all, most of the figures listed in this book do NOT have a photo! For instance, while there are 20 Lex Luthor figures listed, there are only pictures of 8 of them. While Jor-El is listed as having four figures, there's not one photo of any of them. On top of that, while I'm not a MOC collector, I find the fact that the packaging is not represented for ONE SINGLE FIGURE to be a bizarre omission. Why not do a side-by-side comparison of say, every Dr. Fate figure, so readers can compare the Super Powers version with the Justice League Unlimited version and the DC Direct versions? And show what the boxes or blister cards looked like for at least SOME of them (ironically, the hidden cover is the book's most attractive part, with a closeup of the Batman Captain Action box on the front and the DC Direct HUSH Batman on the back)? And finally, the book seems incomplete. There are no figures pre-Captain Action in this book, and while "action figures" as we know them may have begun with that classic line, surely some predecessors such as the Ideal wooden Superman figure merit inclusion (not to mention perhaps just a few of the many knock-offs that have been available over the years).
In the end, this book is an enormous missed opportunity, hardly archival, and I'd advise anyone who's interested in it to peruse it in a bookstore before ordering it. I wish I would have.
Rating:  -
The past couple of months have been great for action figure collectors. First, TwoMorrows Publishing released "Mego 8" Super-Heroes: World's Greatest Toys" and now Chronicles Books has delivered "The DC Comics Action Figure Archive." First things first...this is NOT a price guide. You'll not see a value for a single figure in the entire book. Instead, this is an unbelievable compendium of DC Comics action figures that boasts an incredible 600 full color photos. Ah, but it's not just some fluffy book of photos. The author, Scott Beatty, has made the book well worth the $40 cover price. Beatty, the former editor of Toyfare Magazine, has packed the book with a wealth of valuable information for collectors.
Beatty covers DC's action figures from Ideal's Captain Action figures in the 60's right up through Mattel's offerings today, and everything in between, including even the Pocket Super Heroes from DC Direct. The book, and it's big measuring 12 ½" X 9", is laid out almost like an encyclopedia with characters listed in alphabetical order, beginning with Ace the Bat-Hound and ending with Zauriel. In all, the book features over 1400 entries. Each entry includes a wealth of information for collectors: Name, toy line title, manufacturer, release date, scale in inches, number of points of articulation, accessories, special features or mechanisms, and variants.
While there is not a picture of every figure, there is a picture for NEARLY every character, with popular characters having multiple pictures. There is also what I refer to as "pop-up" information. These are blocks of information, usually one or two per page, that give an interesting tidbit of information about the character or figure. These info boxes often note the first comic book appearance of the figure as well.
By far, the longest section in the book is devoted to Batman. A full twenty-six pages of the book (208 pages total) are devoted to the various lines of Batman figures. Over a hundred different Batman figures are picture in all, everything from the Frank Miller Dark Knight Batman, to the classic Batman figure from the DC Direct Deluxe series in 2006, to the truly horrific Anti-Freeze Batman.
As a Justice Society of America fanatic, I quickly made notes of the figures that were lacking in my own collection and thankfully, every major JSA member is pictured. I'd still love to see a full-sized Ma Hunkel figure though.
The hardcover book is printed on high quality, glossy stock paper...a true book for collectors. One gripe I do have is that I wish the book had fewer Batman and Superman pictures (especially the God awful Superman Returns figures) and pictured some of the figures they omitted like Blackfire, Captain Cold, Mr. Terrific, Dove, and a few others. I do have to give credit to Beatty for one thing regarding the figures that are not pictured. He seems to have made a concerted effort to picture as many of the outstanding DC Direct figures as he could, while leaving the omissions to the more recent, and smaller scale Mattel line.
This will definitely be a book that I refer to quite often. Here's hoping that Chronicle will follow up this book with one for Marvel Comics figures as well.
reviewed by Tim Janson
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