Superhero Times: a service of Action Online
There's no doubt DC Direct plays a major role in the action figure and collectibles' industry today. The brand is behind many fan-favorite figures and collectibles - including Batman: Black and White statues, DC's 13" Collector figures and a variety of 6" figure lines. DC Direct continues to create and manufacture
amazing comic book and pop culture-inspired products, including the recently announced World of WarCraft and Afro Samurai figures under the company's new DC Unlimited brand.
It's because of creators like Georg Brewer, Vice President of Design and DC Direct Creative, that such lines and figures are made and that fans are able to own and display these beautiful pieces.
Recently, Figures.com had the pleasure of asking Mr. Brewer the tough questions fans and collectors wanted to know about anything and everything DC Direct and DC Unlimited. Check out his answers below...
Figures.com: Congratulations on the new DC Unlimited brand…
Geog Brewer (GB): Thank you. We’re very proud of it. It’s off to a fast start…
Figures.com: One of the biggest things we’ve noticed is you’re focusing on a different market or fan base than the ‘super hero’ collector. You’ve already announced Afro Samurai and World of WarCraft. What are your future plans for DC Unlimited now?
GB: Well, we’re looking at a bunch of different possibilities. We have one really solid prospect we’re going after, but I can’t talk about it. In the same way that World of WarCraft and Afro Samurai are very different from DC Direct, this (third license) is equally as different. Cross your fingers, but it’ll be equally as big…
Figures.com: It seems Afro Samurai is an odd choice when compared to World of WarCraft. WarCraft is played by millions of fans all over the world and has a substantial following. Afro Samurai was a very brief anime series – only five episodes long. Though it had a lot of press and exposure – especially with Samuel L. Jackson’s attachment to the project – it still seems an odd initial choice for a DC Unlimited line. Can you tell us a bit about how or why it was chosen?
GB: It was a variety of reasons really. Some of it was, when you’re in the licensing game, you’re casting a wide net to see what’s out there and responding to what’s available. That was one of those things… And it hit for us several things. For one, it’s a different type of collector. It tapped into a lot of sensibilities that are popular right now in the popular culture and collectibles’ market. There are cool things coming in from Asia right now and we saw it as a logical fit.
In some ways, it’s closer to what we do at DC Direct; it’s set in a specific universe, a consistent book (or story). And we plan to go beyond the initial five episodes at least…
Figures.com: What type of distribution do you expect to have with DC Unlimited? I know the original goal was mass market. Have specific retailers or retail chains been decided upon?
GB: We’re pursuing that now. One of the reasons why we rebranded this DC Unlimited was to suggest that, with something like World of WarCraft, we would be distributing to specialty stores and direct market, but also above and beyond that.
Something like Afro Samurai is a niche property and would fit better in smaller collector pop culture stores. Our goal is to get the product to the most collectors possible.
Figures.com: Many fans and collectors as well as industry professionals have said the DC Unlimited World of WarCraft figures will be setting the sculpting standard for the 6” scale upon its release…
GB: Glad to hear it, I actually feel that way myself…
Figures.com: How do you feel when you hear comments like that and what do you plan to do to ensure it’s true?
GB: It’s very flattering. The line, in working in cooperation with Blizzard, has been really good for us. We’re certainly playing in a different sandbox than we normally play in, which is guys in tights. We enjoy doing (guys in tights) but this gives us a chance to flex our creative bubble in a different way that’s very exciting. Blizzard has been a great partner. They definately have strong ideas about what’d they’d like to see and it’s something we’re watching very closely. We’re working closely with the manufacturing vendors in the far east so the quality (of the prototypes) carries through to product.
Figures.com: Can you give us any hints as to the future of World of WarCraft at DC Unlimited?
GB: We’ve modified our initial line – they’ll be four initial figures and one deluxe (Editor’s Note: See HERE for details.) As far as the plan, they’ll be four figures per wave and the deluxe figures will rotate in and out as we develop them.
We also have rights to do other categories which we’ll go more into once we get the line up and running.
Figures Can you expand on those categories?
GB: I don’t know what I can talk publicly about it. We haven’t really finalized the details…
Figures.com: Jean St. Jean Studios was used to sculpt the World of WarCraft figures. What made you decide to use JSJ Studios and will they continue to sculpt the World of WarCraft figures or will other artists have the opportunity to “play in that sand box?”
GB: When we first set out to do this line, we basically pulled in the best of the guys. We’ve got a variety of guys working on it and if the line continues to grow, we’ll have to expand the talent pool, but we’d certainly have Jean in there in some capacity, no matter what.
Figures.com: On the DC Direct side of things, one of the surprising lines seen at Toy Fair this year was the Ame-Comi line – an all female, anime-style statue series. After hearing what you said about Afro Samurai, this seems a logical choice for DC Direct. What are your plans for this series and what lead to this unique product?
GB: It was actually the brain child of former Senior Art Director now Design Director Jim Fletcher. Repeatedly what we do is look at the marketplace and we all have our favorites and background projects that we work on from time to time to keep the line fresh. Right now, we have four very distinct, very different things in pre-development. We work with these things until we get a solid direction and then we introduce them to the public. This was the first one to turn that critical corner for us.
Clearly it’s in response to the marketplace being influence by the Far East. It’s another universe and look for our characters and, in an ideal world, it’ll succeed and thrive and lead to other things like publishing and other ventures…
Figures.com: Do you plan to add male characters to the Ame-Comi line?
GB: We’ve talked about it. We have the first two years of the female characters planned out and we’re really focused on the look and scale. Logically, we’ll do the male figures as well.
Figures.com: How many figures are in the first two years of the line?
GB: Twelve.
Figures.com: Moving on to the ¼ Scale Museum Quality Batman Statue…
GB: My absolute favorite project of the last year…
Figures.com: It has basically blown the mind of many collectors and the market has shown it can support this type of product and it’s an obvious next step to produce more. Besides Superman, who can we plan to see?
GB: I think if you look what we would call “The Big 7,” I think it’s a fair bet we’re going to do one a year. It’s a pretty specialized and large project. We haven’t settled on who we’re going to do for 2008. We have a fairly short list of characters and a natural suspect would be Wonder Woman, Green Lantern or Flash. One of the core JLA characters.
Figures.com: The fan favorite Batman: Black & White series…
GB: Love it…
Figures.com: You’re not the only one out there. I know you’re doing the “Covers” line, but have you considered doing a line similar to Batman: Black and White with another of the core JLA characters in the same style, where the artists give their specific interpretations of that character?
GB: I would certainly love to replicate the success of that line. We originally started the Superman: Cover to Cover in response to the Batman line. It didn’t have the same type of pick up as Batman had. Batman is Batman. This led to JLA: Cover to Cover.
There’s something very special about this iconic look for Batman. (Do we do) Superman in red and blue? Green Lantern in green? If I can come up with the right conceptual look, I’d love to replicate it. Based on the way the series is selling, we’ve got a full line for 2008 and more figures for 2009.
Figures.com: It seems that style and the black and white lend themselves perfectly to the Batman character…
GB: It’s funny. Every once in a while you catch the lightning in a bottle and it does really well for you…
Figures.com: I know you’ve been asked this before and I know you’ve commented on it before, but our readers continue to ask questions concerning the scale issues within the DC Direct action figure series. Do you ever plan to incorporate a specific scale into the 6” size DC Direct action figure universe?
GB: Absolutely. We’ve actually instituted a plan that will take effect in mid-2007. When we started DC Direct, we were the first ones to really start the 6” scale. There were no other 6 – 6 ½” figures when we first started 10 years ago.
As we started growing, scale is one of those growing pains. We don’t have a studio in-house. We work with a variety of different sculptors and factories and shrink rates. There are hundreds of reasons I can give you why certain things happened. We have a very definitive way to resolve it moving forward.
We’ve created a size chart which features a number of master figures which represent a bulk of the figures that are out there right now. We’ve provided (the size chart) to not only all of our sculptors, but all of our manufactures in the Far East to make sure the that the final figures all fall into the appropriate size.
Figures.com: Excellent. I know I personally am a fan of the Superman/Batman Darkseid figure, but there were those that weren't happy with its size when compared to Superman or other characters in the line...
GB: There's always the perception of how big a character is and then there's the reality. And there's no one right answer. There will be certain lines that have their own scale. The Alex Ross "Justice" line has a certain scale based on certain things Alex wanted to do and things we wanted to do technically with the line. That line will continue at its own scale.
Same with the Ed McGuiness line, which kind of exists in its own universe. It's visually different than everything else that we create to work with a scale for the majority of figures - the bread and butter stuff. You have situations, like with Justice, where many fans thought that Wonder Woman was too big. For Alex Ross, the key driver behind the line, that's how big Wonder Woman is.
There will always be creative choices made, but what won't happen is...say...what happened with the "Crisis" Batman figure. It was a mistake. Somebody screwed up. The problems I have are I could screw up today and no one will know I screwed up for a full year. And then when I finally see it, I say "Oh my God! We've had a year! Why didn't we fix it?!?" But you get to a certain point, there's only so much you can do.
Figures.com: It seems fans have a constantly changing opinion on scale - be it based on films, comics or cartoons. It seems there's never really a set scale no matter what source material is used.
GB: What we've done - and I really push my guys about this - it's not that we haven't made an effort to get this under control, because we have; but this year we made it a priority to deal with it. At the very least, if you look past all of the subjective comments that people have, the objective comment is fans would like the scale to be consistent so that they can display the different interpretations together and they still all look like they're from the same universe. Stylistic differences aside, you're always going to have situations where Michael Turner's (figures') head is going to be smaller than someone else's (figures') head. Those things are going to factor in, but the over all look and feel is going to be more uniform across the line. The real challenge we'll get into is 'Do we bring out the figures in the smaller scale to match the older collectors or do we bring them out in the larger scale to match the newer collectors?'
Figures.com: It sounds like you have an excellent plan in store for this year that will bascially solve the problem in the future. Let's talk about the 1/6th scale. It seems your 13" Collectors have crossed the boundary into the 1/6th military zone and there are now collectors saying 'I love my 12" military figures, but I also have - and love - my 13" super heroes.'
GB: That's great...
Figures.com: What led to creating this line and what's the future hold for this scale at DC?
GB: It's funny. This project has been in development for - literally - several years. We played around with the idea of making a 'Mego'-type figure, and we'd gone to conventions and asked people 'Would you want a 12" figure or an 8" Mego figure?' And we honestly drifted back and forth between the two.
It wasn't until a conversation between Ed Bolkus, a former art director who's now at New Line, and Alex Ross that we came up with this idea for a larger figure. We wanted to raise the bar for what's being done in the platform and a direct comparison to the military stuff would be a better format (for the line) than the smaller stuff.
It came out, literally, while walking around in San Diego or Chicago walking a show room floor with Alex Ross where he made a very compelling argument that a super hero figure would be closer to 13" than 12". It's 8 heads per body versus 7 heads per body and if you look at super hero proportions, (the figure) is going to be bigger. That's really what we did. If you put our figures next to a regular 12" figure, they look like really big guys. We have poseable hands, great fabrication. We're really happy with the result and they're a lot of fun. We've introduced the female figures now with Catwoman and we've got Batgirl following that up. We're going to be rotating through the characters.
In 2008, we'll be introducing yet another scale, that'll open up the line to a lot of other characters.
Figures.com: So do you plan to open up the line to characters like Darkseid, a size even larger?
GB: We might eventually, but things get much more challenging when you go up in size. We're actually looking to go down in size. We have a fairly large cast of characters that would fit in that scale.
Figures.com: Sounds great. Ok, this is an opinion question - what makes an action figure great? And what are your favorite collectibles by both DC Direct and other companies right now?
GB: That's a challenging question. What makes something collectible is...honestly...what makes any person respond individually to a product is a very individual question. Everyone has their favorites; whether it's a favorite character, favorite artist or favorite format. We try to provide the widest variety of those things that appeal to the widest variety of collectors.
Me personally? I love our 1/6th scale line because it presents our characters in a very iconic way and it's a very consistent look with the main (DC) universe; (it's) one of the best lines in general. Batman: Black and White is a very, very solid line. This is sort of like asking to choose between your children...
As far as other stuff I'm responding to out in the world, Sideshow has a lot of really cool stuff. I'm friends with the guys over there and I go by and drool at the stuff in the both on a regular basis. Some of the things they've done with their larger scale products are really beautiful. They have an understanding of fabrication that not a lot of people do, it's really excellent. It's something we aspire to...
Figures.com: Thank you very much for answering our questions and we look forward to more great DC Direct figures and collectibles.
Do you have other questions for DC Direct?
Ask them in the The Plastic Potluck's Industry Corner, HERE!
Interview by Jess C. Horsley