Holy awesome set, Batman

Here's a huge surprise (at least to me - maybe this rumor has been out there already?) - LEGO has another Batman set up their sleeves, and it's coming out in just a few days: 6857 - Dynamic Duo Funhouse Escape. For me at least the image is not currently showing up on the lego.com link, but LEGO Toy Story News had sharp eyes and grabbed a copy. At US$40, this seems like an amazing deal, with figs you would have to spend quite a bit to get otherwise. I'd say that this and the Superman set are my two "must get" sets from the initial run. I take back my previous complaint about LEGO simply repeating old Batman set designs.



Here's the official description:

Help Batman™ save Robin from the villainous trio!
Rescue Robin from 3 notorious villains in a funhouse with trap-doors and moving floors in this suspenseful scene with 5 new minifigures!
Price $39.99
Help Batman™ save Robin from the villainous trio!
"The Riddler™, The Joker and his sidekick Harley Quinn are holding Robin hostage at their evil funhouse! As our hero Batman™ jumps off his cool Batcycle, can he avoid the trap door, big hammer and moving floor and rescue his crime-fighting partner? Includes 5 minifigures: Batman™, Robin, The Joker ™, The Riddler ™ and Harley Quinn.
* Includes 5 minifigures: Batman, Robin, The Joker, The Riddler and Harley Quinn
* Features Batcycle and funhouse
* Funhouse features wagon rails, crane, hammer, opening trap door and moving floor
* Lift the crane!
* Move the floor!
* Includes comic book!
* Funhouse measures over 8” (21 cm) tall and 11” (29cm) wide
* Batcycle measures over 4” (10 cm) long

More pictures

I'm sorry for my three week hiatus from blogging. I hope that in the meantime people have been reading Brick Heroes, as Will has been very consistently adding to his blog. One thing that Will found was that high resolution images of the upcoming sets have been posted on the French version of Amazon, though they do not seem to be currently on the US version. Click the images to see full-size versions:

DC Superheroes sets revealed!

Okay, to tell the truth, leaked images have been on the web for a bit now, but I held off on posting those here since they were clearly marked as confidential. Some of the 2012 City sets are already available, and Warren Elsmore picked up set 4440 at an official LEGO store by Washington DC (I don't know if he meant the Tysons Corner store or the Potomac Mills store). That set is exciting enough, as it has some really interesting new elements, but the relevance to this blog is that the instructions include images advertising the January release of the DC minifig sets. So, with no further delay, let's take a look. 6858 Batman vs. Catwoman and 6863 Batman vs. the Joker at $12 and $30 (US, according to the previously released information on Barnes and Noble). The first is pretty much a rehash of set 7779 from the original Batman theme. It's a cheap way to get the Batman and Catwoman figs, but other than that there's nothing special here. 6863, again, pretty much reprises the older set 7782. There's a better Joker fig, to be sure, but otherwise I'm disappointed that they didn't really improve on the Batwing design.



6862 Superman vs. Lex Luthor at $20. Now THIS is by far the most exciting thing in the line (assuming you already have some of the Batman sets from the previous line). You get three key new figs, including Wonder Woman (I was wondering where she was going to fit in) at a pretty cheap price. Lex Luthor's mecha seems pretty okay, though I'm sure any AFOL worth the bricks could easily improve on the design. I know that this is supposed to be Lex's warsuit, but my kids have been watching Megamind lately, so I just keep thinking of that big mech.



6864 Batman vs. Two Face at $50. Again, pretty much a rehash of 7781, just $20 more expensive. I'll want to see a better picture, but it looks as if the Batmobile is even a pretty similar design, which is fairly lazy of LEGO given how many different versions of the world's coolest car we've seen from different Batman comics, movies and TV shows.



6860 the Batcave at $70. I've previously looked at this. While we had a Batcave, at least this new one is not a complete copy in the way that the Catwoman, Joker and Two-Face sets are. This is more compact (and cheaper), with a couple of different play elements, and different villains (though this raises the question of the absence of the Penguin in this initial run of sets).



So, that's the first run of minifig sets. I have to say I'm underwhelmed. I know, most kids don't already have the full run of sets from 2006, but couldn't LEGO have reimagined them at least a little bit? Yes, I recognize that if you're going to commit to having a Batman-heavy line, you then pretty much have to have many of the same villains and you're pretty much required to have a Batmobile, Batwing and Batcave. That said, though, we've seen so many different iterations of these in different Batman media outlets that they could have come up with very different looking sets, or even mixed up the villains. E.g. why not have Batman chasing the Joker in the car set and Two Face in the plane set, or whatever? As noted above, the most exciting set for me (again, going on the assumption that you already have at least a couple of the Batman sets from before) is the Superman/Luthor/Wonder Woman set, as this has three completely new characters, and the mecha is at least a fun idea. BTW, no Green Lantern? I assume that he's not just a ComicCon giveaway and we'll see him in the next run of sets. I also assume that the next run of sets will again be Batman-centric, as in one of the early articles mentioned that LEGO would release sets in conjunction with the next Batman movie, so at least we'll probably get a different version of the Batmobile. Oh, here's a close-up shot of the mecha in the overall view of the page from the 4440 instructions. So, what do you guys think of the new line?

More from New York

Rick from FBTB was at ComicCon NY and has extensive pictures of the Batcave set and of Superman. I'll let you follow the link to see more, but the new insights here are seeing Superman's back (and double sided head), the back side of the Bane fig, and also the Bruce Wayne fig that will be in the Batcave set. You could already see most of the Batcave from the high res picture posted previously - the back of the set is pretty flat and undetailed.

Batcave - high resolution picture

Ace over on FBTB has posted the high-resolution image of set 6860, the Batcave. I haven't seen photos yet from ComicCon, but will post when I do. Some of the things that most interest me include the Robin fig, so I guess this is the Tim Drake interation of Robin:



There are quite a few printed elements (at least they don't seem to be stickers). That will be good for Batman MOCs, and some of these (e.g. the computer controls) are just going to be generally useful for all builders.



For some reason I just really like the little Batphone. Hmm, all of the decorated 2-wide cheese slopes on Bricklink are stickered. maybe that bodes ill for my point about printed bricks above.



We don't see a Bruce Wayne fig, which was mentioned in the Variety article. Presumably he's behind that printed batman panel in the upper right, which I assume is the working elevator that Variety notes, where Bruce turns into Batman. I'm liking the dark blay / trans blue color scheme they've chosen here. Bane's drill vehicle is kind of fun, though I'm concerned for him that his head will be knocked off if he's actually trying to drill through the earth. OTOH, the Batcycle is a little meh for me.

Batcave revealed!

LEGO is displaying set 6860, the Batcave, this weekend at Comic Con New York. I haven't seen actual pictures from the con yet, but it seems that LEGO has released an official photo to the press today as well. You can find it in Variety, of all places. They note that the set will include Bruce Wayne, Batman, Robin (note the red uniform version), Poison Ivy and Bane as figs, and will have two vehicles and a working elevator. From other reports we've seen that this will cost US$70 and Australian$130.

Get your Superman fig now

Brick Heroes has this image from the New York ComicCon Superman fig giveaway.

Coming to a Metropolis near you, also, Marvel set names revealed

Ace from FBTB got the information packet from LEGO about the New York ComicCon this weekend. Most important to our subject, there are high resolution pics of Superman. Note the blank red cape (that was one of my questions from SDCC). LEGO will be giving these away at ComicCon, and also confirmed that they will be displaying the Batcave set.



Also, via Brick Heroes, the Australian toy seller Hobbyco lists LEGO products for sale, including upcoming sets that you can pre-order: We should note that these are in Australian dollars.

LEG6858 Super Heroes - Catwoman Catcycle City PRE-ORDER $24.95
LEG6860 Super Heroes -The Batcave PRE-ORDER $129.95
LEG6862 Super Heroes - Superman Vs Pow.Armor Lex PRE-ORDER $39.95
LEG6863 Super Heroes - Batwing Batt/Gotham City PRE-ORDER $59.95
LEG6864 Super Heroes - Batwing & Two Face Chase PRE-ORDER $99.95
LEG6865 Super Heroes - Cpm America Avenging Cyc. PRE-ORDER $24.95
LEG6866 Super Heroes - Wolverine Chopper S/down PRE-ORDER $49.95
LEG6867 Super Heroes - Loki's Cosmic Cube Escape PRE-ORDER $49.95
LEG6868 Super Heroes - Hulk's Helicarrier B/out PRE-ORDER $99.95
LEG6869 Super Heroes - Quinjet Aerial Battle PRE-ORDER $129.95

Are you getting excited now?

Okay, I'm not going to trust this until I see something more concrete, but thecrazyearthling has what appears to be a list of sets. Take this with a big boulder of salt until we see more proof, but here it is:
6858 Batman vs. Catwoman
6862 Superman vs. Lex Luthor
6863 Batman vs. the Joker
6864 Batman vs. Two Face
6860 The Batcave
6865 Captain America
6866 X-Men
6867 Iron Man
6868 Hulk and Thor
6869 Avengers
4526 Batman
4527 The Joker
4528 Green Lantern
4529 Iron Man
4597 Captain America
4530 The Hulk
This is actually fairly in keeping with what we've already seen as the price points for the January release and my previous rampant speculation. Those 45xx sets would be the Hero Factory figures. The most expensive set ($70) is the Batcave. Most of the rest of the sets are Batman based. I was hoping the $10 set would be the Superman set, but instead Supes vs Lex is the $20 set, which is still pretty good. No clue where Wonder Woman is going to show up in this series, and she's supposed to be in the January release. She'll probably be in the most expensive set, given past examples where LEGO only had a key female character (e.g. Princess Leia) in the most expensive set. I also don't see a place for a Green Lantern minifig in these sets either.

August winners!

The first winners have been posted in the official LEGO Super Heroes monthly contest . I'll note them all in the next few days, but the two first place winners are Thomas Hubbel's LEGO Batman: A Dark Knight and Tony Norton's A new take on the Batman's Beginnings, LEGO Style (his rendition of Detective Comics #27). Congratulations to these and all of the winners! BTW, no word yet on whether they will receive the new sets immediately, or later in January when they are available to the public. As soon as I know, you'll know.

Rampant speculation

Okay, this is based on nothing at all but my own musings, but here are my thoughts on the partial set list I noted yesterday.

* LEGO 4526 Batman $14.99
* LEGO 4527 Joker $14.99
* LEGO 4528 Green Lantern $14.99
These are surely the large constructed figs we saw in the ComicCon display:

The price points of the Hero Factory line (very comparable to these) are 7.99, 12.99 and 29.99. Those large comic characters are somewhat comparable to the 12.99 Hero Factory sets, and if you throw in a couple of dollar mark-up due to licensing, it comes out about right.

* LEGO 6858 DC 1 $11.99
* LEGO 6860 DC 2 $69.99
* LEGO 6862 DC 3 $19.99
* LEGO 6863 DC 4 $29.99
* LEGO 6864 DC 5 $49.99
These are surely the minifig sets. I do note that there is no set under $10, probably due to the licensing markup. Of course, it's not such a huge loss since these sets aren't army builders - who needs a squadron of Supermans? Maybe one extra to make custom Bizarro, but one of each fig is enough for me. We know from the press release earlier this summer that the January release will include "13 characters, including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and villains the Joker, Bane, Harley Quinn and Lex Luthor." There are 6 unnamed characters there, but we've already seen from ComicCon versions of the Green Lantern, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy. 13 characters spread over five sets is pretty impressive. I'm guessing that the big $69.99 set will be centered around the Justice League, and include Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and the Green Lantern battling some supervillain. We do know that one set is the Batcave (as it is one of the announced prizes in the official contest), so perhaps that is the $49.99 set. I'm guessing that at least two of the other sets will be Batman themed. My reasoning is that LEGO really likes to focus on vehicles. For instance, if you look at the Star Wars theme, there are many great settings in the movies, but the bulk of the sets are ships. If you look at the official Batman line from a few years ago there are ten fig-scale vehicle sets, two settings (the Batcave and Arkham), and one large UCS vehicle. The other major heroes mentioned in the DC universe just don't have as much potential for set variety. Besides, as Jack Nicholson's Joker said of Batman: "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" So we can also guess that the missing three figs from the promised thirteen characters are probably Batman-centric - Robin, the Riddler, maybe Two-Face. If this is true, it's a slight disappointment for me, since we've already seen a whole line of Batman, and there's a promised next wave of Batman coming out next summer connected with the Dark Knight Rises release. I would rather they spread the love a little, but, again looking back at the Star Wars license, how many iterations of the X-Wing have we had over the years? Complete speculation here, but I'd love to see the cheap set be Superman vs Lex Luthor. Supes is THE iconic superhero, and every kid needs a version of him, even if they can't get the high-end set that will surely have him.

One other thought - you'd think that with a blog like this, I probably read lots of comics. But I really don't any more. My comic love is more driven by the years I spent flipping pages as a kid, rushing home from school to catch the reruns of Adam West that came on at 3:30 (school got out at 3:00), getting up on Saturday morning to watch the Superfriends. I had a couple of friends in college who were comic book readers and regularly bought new copies, and so I would sit in their dorm rooms and read through them, but other than that I just flip through them at Borders (er, scratch that, Barnes and Noble now) on occasion. I tend to catch the big summer movie blockbusters, or at least when they get to HBO and Netflix. That's all the preliminary to say that I'm fairly ignorant of what's going on now in print. So, for instance, when I see MOCs based on the expansion of the Green Lantern series to all these different colors, I end up running around the internet reading up on it. That said, I was just reading how DC is rebooting everything, and starting all of their titles over at issue 1. I have no idea what that's going to mean for these heroes, but it seem that if LEGO is working with DC on this, the sets may well reference the new details of the DC universe rather than those we grew up with. It will be interesting to see if and how that manifests itself in these sets.

January 2012

Toys N Bricks and other LEGO sites have pointed out that Barnes and Noble have already listed their January 2012 LEGO offerings. None of these have pictures or details yet, but let the rampant speculation begin:
Superheroes theme:
* LEGO 4526 Batman $14.99
* LEGO 4527 Joker $14.99
* LEGO 4528 Green Lantern $14.99
* LEGO 6858 DC 1 $11.99
* LEGO 6860 DC 2 $69.99
* LEGO 6862 DC 3 $19.99
* LEGO 6863 DC 4 $29.99
* LEGO 6864 DC 5 $49.99
Of course, one interpretation of the LEGO Super Heroes Challenge rules is that the winners of this monthly contest will get a complete line of the DC sets in advance of January. I corresponded with a LEGO rep involved in that challenge and she said that "shortly" the winners for August would be posted on their site. That was two weeks ago and I've been checking back daily. Given that most of the best MOCs I've seen in the galleries are by AFOLs connected to the community, I'm sure that as soon as whoever wins knows more, the rest of us will know soon thereafter.

Timing of the new licenses

There's been some question about the timing of the new releases. Polywen was at the San Diego ComicCon (and got one of the Green Lantern figs, lucky dude) and he got some indication from the people in the LEGO booth. He doesn't remember exactly who said it, but he said it comes down to existing licenses. DC has a current license with Fisher Price (as part of their TRIO Building System), and Marvel currently has a license for building block toys with Mega Bloks. The word is that the LEGO licenses will kick in when these existing licenses expire in January and May 2012, respectively.

Backs of the figs

It looks like Mariann Asanuma helped take down the LEGO booth at ComicCon, and she got a chance to photograph the back sides of the figs. As you can see, they're all printed on both sides (well, we can't see Batman and Thor's backs due to capes, but someone noted on Flickr that the exclusive ComicCon Batman fig is printed on both sides). BTW, I have no idea what happened to the Superman fig, and whether or not his cape is printed with an S. Also BTW, I didn't note it before, but Wonder Woman's legs are red with flesh-colored printing on them, and the printing wraps around to the sides (has that ever been done before?).

The two faces of Hal

It's been noted that the Green Lantern fig given away at ComicCon has a double sided head. You can actually see both faces at the official site.

Upcoming set hint from contest rules

One other piece of news I missed. Classic-Castle forum member Azaghal pointed out that one of the prizes mentioned in the contest at legosuperheroes.com is the "LEGO Super Heroes: DC Universe Batcave set". So we know at least one of the sets. Let the speculation begin on what other sets will be released.

BTW, the contest rules note that "entries will be judged every month through December 2011" and prizes including "the complete 2012 LEGO Super Heroes: DC Universe collection" will be "awarded each month", leading up to the grand prize (which includes a trip to Legoland and Warner Brothers) in December 2011. The press release said that the initial sets will "launch in January 2012", and the Variety article says they "will launch a new set of playthings around next summer's "The Dark Knight Rises" through the Lego Batman collection" (next summer). But I interpret the contest rules as saying that at least a few people will have sets in their hands within the next couple of months (and surely there will be photos posted online). Or perhaps the contest winners will be given IOU's from LEGO promising that they'll get a big package of LEGO on January 1? Time will tell, but if anyone who reads this blog does win one of the contests, please please please send me any information and photos.



BTW, they are already starting to post fan submissions at legosuperheroes.com, including my up, up and away vignette.

Another news site

Thanks to 'Minifigure' in a comment on an earlier post for a link to The Brick Life, which is also gathering news on the new theme. So far they seem to have the same news I've found, but I'll watch that space for anything new.



One thing that is unclear to me - The Brick Life site says that the Marvel line is "restricted" to Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Avengers, which implies that they cannot do anything else. But the official press release says that the line will "spotlight three Marvel franchises", which implies to me that they will start with those, but could focus on other characters as well. Of course, I'm not sure how much of a restriction it would be, since pretty much every character in the Marvel universe has shown up in one of those comic lines over the years. Heck, it seems like almost every Marvel hero has been a member of the Avengers at one point or another. I do hope they eventually include fan favorites like the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom (okay, Doomie has fought everyone over time, but he's usually associated with the FF in my head), also the Silver Surfer is an obvious fig (esp since about every other run of Collectible Minifigures seems to have some sort of surfer).

More pics from ComicCon

Hinckley from Eurobricks is also at ComicCon and has a series of high quality photos. There is also a discussion thread on Eurobricks.

Preview of the official DC and Marvel lines

Wow! The last 24 hours have been really exciting for LEGO comics fans. Mariann from Model Building Secrets and Ace from FBTB are both at ComicCon and have posted many photos of the LEGO displays there.

The photo that says it all - LEGO, Marvel, and DC, all together:

Let's start with DC. Even though we've seen four of these characters previously in the Batman line, these are all new prints. Catwoman and Batman are pretty similar to the previous versions (Catwoman just has some printing to make her look curvier, and the logo on Batman's chest is the variation with the yellow oval around the bat, where as before it was just a slightly larger bat). Joker has a more detailed vest and a different hairpiece (the Count Dooku hair mold rather than the vampire hair mold). We've actually seen a green version of that hairpiece before and it's been used in Joker customs. To me the best of this bunch is Poison Ivy, as the newer fig is a great improvement over the older one and not just a minor variant. Turning to the all-new characters, both Wonder Woman and Superman look amazing. I particularly like Diana's hairpiece and golden lasso. My only minor nitpick is that they should have printed WW on a fleshy torso rather than a red torso, but maybe LEGO thought a nude-backless fig would be too risque?


Now turning to Marvel, these are obviously preliminary figs, as none of them are in finished form (e.g. they're all stickers rather than printed figs, Thor's hair, no face on the Hulk etc). Captain America is the star of this show, IMO, as that fig looks perfect. Thor's hammer looks great, and I'm going to need a couple of extra ones for my castle-theme dwarf blacksmiths. I have to say I particularly dislike the Iron Man mask. A Flickr commenter referred to him as Bobblehead Iron Man and I agree. They should have gone with a printed head or a much smaller molded head (e.g. like the C3PO fig) rather than this huge mask to fit over a normal fig head. I'm not going to let that spoil the fun, though, as I'm sure I'll get this fig as well when they come out. The hairpiece on Wolverine is an obvious pick, and we've seen very similar customs in the past. It looks like his claws have a little post that he then holds in his hands - kind of similar to the claw weapon we saw in the small Prince of Persia set. Hulk looks a bit like the old Rock Monster to me, but I really like the molding around the neck and that hair (I wonder if it comes off). Not sure why they didn't get the face painted by the time of this display.



The exclusive Green Lantern and Batman figs are limited number (1500 each) free raffles. I'm sure these things will cost an arm and a leg, and maybe another arm, on the Bricklink/eBay secondary market.

Here we see what they meant by 'buildable fig' in the press releases. These seem to tie to the Hero Factory line (the successor to Bionicle):


Here's the teaser video from the LEGO Super Heroes site (also on YouTube and around the web).

A bit of an afterthought, but the Marvel partnership press release is now posted on Lego.com. I'm not sure why this was delayed a day after the DC press release, and this seems a little bit of a screw-up. Key information in this is the list of upcoming figs:

The LEGO SUPER HEROES Marvel collection will spotlight three Marvel franchises – Marvel’s The Avengers movie, and X-Men and Spider-Man classic characters. The LEGO Marvel’s The Avengers movie line brings such ever popular Marvel characters as Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, Loki and Black Widow to LEGO minifigure form. The LEGO X-Men collection includes minifigure comic versions of Wolverine, Magneto, Nick Fury and Deadpool, while the LEGO Spider-Man sets offer minifigure comic versions of Spider-Man, and Doctor Octopus. The first buildable characters in the LEGO SUPER HEROES collection are highlighted by Captain America, The Hulk and Iron Man.

LEGO Marvel confirmed - and preliminary pics!

Forget my previous skepticism, it's been confirmed! A couple of hours ago I exchanged voicemails with a Kristin Greene, from a PR firm representing LEGO. They are indeed licensing both Marvel and DC comic characters. What's more, some preliminary pictures from ComicCon have shown up online. I'm sure we'll have additional news over the next few days. Can you tell I'm excited?