DC Comics it’s one of the worlds most popular comic book publishers. With a stable of characters and comic properties as legendary as theirs, it should come as no surprise that DC Comics has their own in house  division that is devoted to producing awesome new collectibles like action figures, statues, and prop replicas based on fan favorite DC Comics brands called DC Collectibles! DC Collectibles is responsible for many of your favorite DC Comics specialty items like action figures based on ‘Batman: The Animated Series’, ‘Arrow’, and ‘Justice League’, as well as statue series like the ‘DC Bombshells’ and ‘Batman: Black & White’!

Recently we were able to sit down with DC Collectibles Vice President of Creative Services Kevin Kiniry to talk about some of the cool new products that DC Collectibles has lined up for the rest of 2015! Many of these items premiered a few weeks back at Toy Fair 2015, but with all of the great new stuff coming our way this year from DC Collectibles, you won’t want to miss a single beat! Check out the full interview with Kevin Kiniry below!


Science Fiction (SF): So Toy Fair was a huge event for you and your team at DC Collectibles this year, as I’m sure it is most years! We saw the reveal of quite a few new products and product lines that seem to be taking DC Collectibles to a big new direction across the board. I know we’re saying farewell to the DC ‘New 52’ toyline, but welcoming the new ‘DC Icons’ line, plus we’re getting new waves of the ‘Designer Series’ and ‘Batman: The Animated Series’, along with some cool new prop replicas and a ton fo other neat stuff! So with the ‘New 52’ line coming to a close and the ‘Icons’ line shifting into its place on the market, will we be seeing a big mix of characters and designs in the ‘Icons’ line?

Kevin Kiniry (KK): Definitely! It’s one of the benefits of moving from the ‘New 52’ line to the ‘Icons’ line. We learned a lot from our foray into the ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ line. We took some of the learnings from that, and we took some of the learnings from the ‘New 52’ line, and we kind of mixed them together and what we came up with was the really cool idea for the ‘Icons’ line! And that took things like the scale of the ‘Batman: Animated’ line, the sense of poseability, the articulation, the accessories, and then we took things like the authenticity to the comics from the ‘New 52’ line, and the kind of breadth of character. Because even though we were doing more of the current looks in the ‘New 52’ line, but we had done over 60 characters, and this was a way to sort of revisit some of them again, but also broaden it! So while we can get a lot from the ‘New 52’, what happens when that’s not the only era on the table? We can go through the entire history of DC! That was just so cool to us, so we wanted to show that even at the beginning of Toy Fair, we brought three full waves of figures- even though they won’t be out until the end of 2015 and early 2016, so that we could show people “hey look, you’re going to have people who are really current from the ‘New 52’ line but you’re also going to have people back from the ‘80’s, from the ‘40’s, and from the ‘60’s! All of these different eras, different storylines… we’re going to have accessories that are specific to certain storylines! Just kind of our way of saying “if you remember this character and this time period, you’re going to get an idea from this toy of how cool that all would be”.

SF: I actually found that to be a really interesting aspect of it, because I know the first few waves looks like it’s mostly ‘classic’ looks, but then there are also a handful of ‘modern’ looks sprinkled in like Lex Luthor, Black Adam, and even Jaime Reyes as Blue Beetle! We’re even getting Atomica, which is a really cool piece because I don’t think we’ve ever actually gotten a proper Atomica figure before!

KK: The closest we came to Atomica was in the ‘New 52’ line, with the ‘Forever Evil’ villains wave. We had Johnny Quick with an accessory of a very, very, small Atomica, and that would be the first time she was done. So when we were trying to come up with The Atom, and we said “well we have a do an Atom, definitely, but which one do we do?” I mean we have three to choose from! We couldn’t decide, so what we decided was that since Atomica had never had a full sized figure, so she would be the full sized figure and then Ryan Choi and Ray Palmer as the accessories!

SF: Which works really beautifully from the looks of things!

KK: It did! And what’s great, is that we sculpted them digitally, so if we wanted to we could go back and we could do Ray as the full size figure and switch around the sizes of the others! Eventually you’ll hopefully be able to get all of them in all of the sizes!

SF: So we know there won’t be any more new ‘New 52’ figures coming out way aside from the handful that have been previously announced but haven’t released yet like Poison Ivy, but will the previously released ‘New 52’ figures still remain on the market for a while yet? Or will they go away pretty quickly when the ‘Icons’ line hits?

KK: Well you’re definitely going to see some crossover by way of what we call our ‘essentials’ line, which is a thing that, especially for places like comic shops, is there to have basic figures of the Justice League like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, etcetera. These are figures that someone who is brand new to collecting is going to walk into a store, find a character they’re familiar with, and have a really great just standard figure. Right now, the ‘New 52’ toys that we’ve been doing fill that need, and we have a lot of those as a part of our ‘essentials’ line. As the ‘Icons’ line starts rocking and rolling, you’re going to see some of the same characters, but you aren’t going to have all of the same characters that we had in the ‘New 52’ line, so there is definitely going to be a time period where you’ve got the ‘Icons’ figures out there for all the new collectors fans as well, but you’re still going to see some of the general ‘essentials’ lineup for some of the new fans. At some point, once we have the ‘Icons’ line out there for a long time and have a lot of products to choose from, we will probably start making some of that ‘essential’ as well, and then we’ll see! If there’s still a market for the ‘essential’ figures from the ‘New 52’ line then we’ll keep them going! If people are really getting into the ‘Icons’ line and are spending most of their energy there, then we will probably phase out the ‘New 52’. So it all really depends on what the customers are going to want.

SF: And the ‘Icons’ series is also going to feature ‘Deluxe’ figures like the already announced Hal Jordan Green Lantern, can we expect these ’Deluxe’ figures to keep popping up regularly as the series goes on, or is this Hal Jordan more of a ‘one off’ type of thing to test the waters?

KK: It’s always a good thing to test the waters and see what the line can handle, meaning “what will consumers decide they’ll be willing to pay for“. But in the case of Green Lantern, that came out of a lot of our frustrations of doing all of these Green Lantern figures for years and never really getting everything that we ourselves would want as a toy collector. He’s a great character, and the whole idea of the Green Lantern Corps is creating things with energy and constructs with their rings, but then you always get them coming with like… a lantern. Maybe if you’re lucky, a little green fist. And to us, that’s not enough! There is so much more to do! So we got a little crazy on this design on Hal Jordan, and the next thing we know we had turned around like ‘well what can we do? Can we do a full armor set? What will that cost? Maybe we could do pieces and parts?” When we got back the costs of how expensive he would be, we thought “well, if we just commit to this, and to the line, and say that he is a ‘Deluxe’ figure because of all of this accessory stuff, it opens up the line to people in a new way. Because ‘Deluxe’ now doesn’t just mean it’s a really tall big figure, it could mean that the experience is a deluxe experience! I think Hal Jordan represents that. And I think what that means is that it allows our minds to go even further with how we’re going to develop this line. There are so many more characters that are on the table now that are going to be ‘Deluxe’ options. It kind of frees us up a bit to not be so restricted to a standard way of extending this line.

SF: I’ve also really noticed that DC Collectibles has stepped up their game in the articulation department a lot in the last few years, and the ‘Icons’ line looks to be taking that to a whole nother level! It might even be the single most articulated line from DC Collectibles yet! What went into that decision?

KK: We had talked for a long time while we were doing the ‘New 52’ line about articulation. Every once in a while, if you look back at those figures, you’ll see the articulation kind of start to go all over the place. Like the villains from the Crime Syndicate have different articulation than some of the early Justice league figures, or certain characters will have different articulation points and articulation methods. We had been experimenting on this for a little while to figure out what worked best and what had the best experience. We traditionally, and especially in our ‘Designer’ series, have really gone into the artistic style over the articulation and playable-ness of the figures. So it was interesting for us to sort of play in that realm of “what happens if these things are extremely poseable?”. And they kind of bring the character to life! We had a cool poll on our Facebook page a while back when we had hit one of our milestones, I think it was something like 200,000 ‘Likes’ or something, and we asked fans “what do you want?” and posted a sort of silhouette of a figure that said “a little bit of articulation”, a “medium amount” or “a lot”, and by far the most chosen was ‘a lot’! That helped add to our mix and we started to play with it with some of the ‘Batman: Animated’ figures like that, but we really wanted to say that this ‘Icons’ line has to be the comic based 6” action figure line that we feel is as authentic and real to the comics as we could while still being figures. These are not mini-statues, they are action figures! And that requires really great articulation and thinking behind it. We really thought about what kind of stuff works for us. I know there’s been some stuff online and on our Facebook page where people wanted more of a thigh-cut, which we don’t have in it right now! We have some other ways that the legs move that we feel still services all of that, and we’ll be really excited to see when people get these in their hands if they still feel they can still do what they need to. We’re really open to the feedback from the fans on this stuff! We based this off of some of their feedback and some of our wishes, and it’ll just be great to experience it when they get these in their hands and see just how people are using them!

SF: And so far they look great from everything we’ve been seeing! I know you just mentioned the ‘Designer’ series, and at Toy Fair DC Collectibles just premiered the new Terry Dodson line of those based on his ‘Teen Titans: Earth One’! A lot of people seem to be commenting that this wave seemed like a bit of an odd choice for the line considering it was sort of a one-off book. What goes into the selection process for a series like the ‘Designer’ line where you’re picking just one artist to theme and entire series off of?

KK: It’s a lot of different things that go into that thinking. From a particular artists style, like is it a style that is distinctive in the sense that when you put it in 3D you still get it? That’s actually a really interesting thing! Some people have a really amazing artist, but once you make it into 3D and you lose some of the inking or the line-work, it doesn’t look as specific to their style as it can be. Our goal with the ‘Designer’ series line is to make it feel like the artwork has jumped off the page! So we want to be able to capture that as best we can, hopefully in 3D sculpting. In the case of our Jae Lee series, we actually did add in some heavy blacks and line-work to kind of call into effect the line-work of Jae Lee’s art when it’s in 2D. With Terry, it’s that we’ve always been big fans of Terry, he’s done some design and bust-work for us years ago and he does a lot of great work in the comics field as well! When we heard about the ‘Teen Titans: Earth One’ graphic novel, it was exciting enough that they were doing that book and had that great team on it! When we saw his designs for the characters, and they were different and interesting and really fresh, so that was another reason we chose these. It was a different point of view. So it’s not only an artistic style that we know when we capture it that it has the ‘look‘ of Terry Dodson, but it’s also a costume variation or a very specific version of a character that hasn’t been seen yet. So instead of just rehashing and doing a very basic comic version, like those you might see in the ‘Icons’ line based on Ivan Reis‘s look, why not do something for Terry that really separates them by doing a distinct costume difference. That’s some of the reasoning that goes into why we pick who we pick, and in some cases we’re really just trying to gauge what fans are looking for. We put out a couple different ‘Designer’ lines with a couple of different looks, to get a sense of ‘does somebody like a Jae Lee look? Do they like the Dodson look? Do they like the Capullo look?” so it’s really important for fans to give feedback to see what they like to have in their collection! It allows us to say “hey maybe we should find more books from this particular artist” if their art style is really appealing to people.

SF: Are there any artists currently that you guys have sort of a ‘wish list’ for to get a ‘Designer’ series out for?

KK: Oh we have a looong wish list! We actually plan very far in advance, usually as much as two years in advance, so we’re already talking about 2017 in many cases! I know that sounds so far out in the future, but that’s how far out we think of these things! So we’re already talking internally with a lot of these different players as to “what different art styles might be fun to get out there at that point” and “how many different ‘Designer’ series lines should we have in a year?” Like what’s too much? What’s enough that people get a sampling? And what’s enough for us to tell what is and what isn’t working? So we go through a list. Right now think our current list is… well it had twenty-five names on it. We boiled it down to a solid eleven, and from there we’re probably going to have to get it down to the couple of lines that actually get released in 2017.

SF: Jumping into DC’s television properties, could you tell us a little about the upcoming waves of figures based on ‘Arrow’ and ‘The Flash’?

KK: Well, the exciting thing is, these shows are amazing! And they keep giving us tons and tons of fun ideas. So every week, on both of the shows, there is amazing stuff happening with great characters, great costumes, guest stars, guest heroes, guest villains… it’s just filled with tons of action figure possibilities. So for us, it’s really just figuring out “how much of it do people want?” and “how much of it do we think we can fit into a year?”. When we made Diggle and Felicity, we wanted to show people that everything is on the table here! Anybody who is important to the story is somebody that we’re interested in exploring. Now that doesn’t mean that everybody is going to get an action figure, but it does mean we’re considering everything. We definitely have lists of a lot of characters, many of which have already appeared on the show and some of which may be coming, so we’re very excited about these lines! We took a risk with ‘Arrow’, before the show had even gotten a full season out, we had already committed to a couple of action figures. And that’s something that a lot of other groups won’t do, they always want to wait and see what the ratings are going to be and what’s going to happen. Obviously with this being a DC show, we had a vested interest in it succeeding and we kind of knew it was going to be good because we knew the people working on it. So we decided to take a list, although I say list here lightly because it was really a no brainer to do stuff for ‘Arrow‘, and then just when Barry Allen was appearing as a guest star on ‘Arrow’ we already knew we wanted to commit to ‘The Flash’ as well. We were really excited to jump on board of these series really quickly, and we expect you’ll see a lot more ‘Flash’ and ‘Arrow’ merchandise from other licensees as these shows become even bigger and bigger hits!

SF: Some collectors had commented that ‘The Flash’ line seems to be a little more ‘on the back burner’ so to speak, as the only confirmed characters so far are The Flash and Captain Cold. Are there any plans to expand that line beyond jus these two?

KK: Well, the only real consolation I can give you on that one is that we’re actually moving much faster on ‘The Flash’ than we did on ‘Arrow, which is fitting I think for the characters involved. If you think, the first season of ‘The Flash’ isn’t even done yet, and we already have two figures announced! With ‘Arrow’, I think we were already beginning to air Season 2 when the first figure two-pack came out, so we’re actually on a more aggressive schedule! I know it might not sound like it with only two figures, but with a second season coming it will be hard for us to turn down the option to do more.

SF: That certainly sounds exciting! I know one area that ‘The Flash’ certainly isn’t lagging in is the recently announced ‘Reverse Flash Ring Replica’! What can you tell us about this interesting little item?

KK: We got excited when we were talking to the production about some stuff and they said “oh well we have some props on the show too…” and we said “oh you do? That’s cool, we’re always looking for interesting new things to do that aren’t just action figures and statues”. So we were talking to them about whatever they had coming up and they mention that they have this ring, and we were like “ring? Wait what ring is going on?!”. And I swear it was the week right before the episode aired where they reveal who the Reverse Flash is and it’s like “oh my god they just had it on the show and they used it in a really cool way! How cool would it be if we had a Reverse Flash ring?” We talked to the production almost immediately and they got us the file on the ring, so it’s actually based off of the actual digital files they used to create the ring for the show! So it’s only in one size, so it’s the same ring size as the character, which is why we consider it a ‘prop’ as opposed to a ring. It’s not jewelry. But the pay off from that is it is just like the one on the show, and it was a cool way to do something different. It’s an exact replica, although it won’t necessarily open secret passageways.

SF: We also have the Doctor Fate ‘Helm of Nabu’ coming as seen on NBC’s ‘Constantine’. The question here is, that item only made a fairly brief appearance in the show, so what lead to the decision to produce an item like that over some other potential prop replicas?

KK: Because it’s cool.

SF: That’s fair!

KK: Actually, what happened with that is, we were trying to develop a Doctor Fate helmet years ago back when we were still called DC Direct. And I’m talking maybe ten years ago! We had worked with Alex Ross, who had done a design, right around the time he was doing ‘Justice’, and we were working on him with a few different things and he says “well how about this Doctor Fate helmet?” and it was pretty great! So he did a drawing, and we found a sculptor to make a prototype of it, and then we had a prototype sitting around! But then we couldn’t find a factory that could mass produce it- and by ‘mass produce’, I mean even just like ten to twenty of them,- where the look and the bends in the metal would be the same. It was just all over the place, so it got shelved as not being viable. So then the ‘Constantine’ show is gearing up, and they say “well we need some magical props, do you guys have any suggestions?” So we said “well you know we actually have this prototype just sitting in the office, do you want us to put it out on the table?” and they’re all ‘yeah yeah, sure sure, we’ll take some stuff”. So then all of the sudden, we see the pilot and the character goes and picks it up! We’re just sitting there like “oh, well there it is!”. We kind of knew… I mean a lot of collectors sites knew this thing existed. I think we showed it at a Toy Fair once or at a comic con. Or if someone did a tour of the office, they’d see it sitting on Jim Fletcher’s desk or something. But people knew it existed, so it’s always been this kind of mythical item that never got pushed ahead. So finally we’re just like “well it’s on TV, we’ve got to figure out a way to make this work”. We did a little bit of exploration, and of course as you know technology always improves, so we realized we could do a cool resin version where we can get the sculpt set up and add some electric plating to it, and do all this other stuff to make it actually work! And it was kind of perfect! You know, perfect timing with it being on ‘Constantine’, perfect timing for us to find the right kind of factory, and it was just a really nice way for us to be able to show off a really great high end item. It’s a really cool display piece and a great way to kind of show off to your friends. Whether or not your friends will know what it is, it’ll look shiny and cool and awesome.

SF: Oh I know that feeling, people are constantly asking about my 1:1 Scale Orange Lantern Power Battery! So one thing that I wanted to make sure we discussed was the ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ line! I know that Series 2 is just hitting the market with Robin, Joker and Manbat, and we’ve got a ton of great stuff to look forward to in Series 3 and 4, but at Toy Fair you guys premiered the all new Series 5 which includes fan favorites like Nightwing, Bane, Scarecrow, and the Mad Hatter! So with a line devoted to such an iconic animated series full of such an array of legendary characters, what goes into the character selection process for each wave?

KK: It’s an embarrassment of riches, I’ll tell you that! We’ve got both of the full ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ and ‘Batman: The New Adventures’, plus everything that spun out of that! So what happens, and it’s almost overwhelming, but you come into a room and you only have so many slots of figures you can do in a year, and we have all of this other great stuff we’re trying to do too! So you find yourself with a limited number of spaces, and a nearly infinite number of characters. It becomes almost a mathematical equation to figure out what characters, what kind of offerings, which ones are big enough names, which ones are special characters that someone will really appreciate, which ones do we have personal love for that we want to try and work in there, and how does it all balance out. Then it comes down to “is it affordable? Are these characters that are doable, do they have any special needs?” and that all has to mix into it until we can say “this is a good mix”. We decided with the first wave to make sure we acknowledge that there are these two different styles of the characters, because some characters appear in both shows. So we a did a mix with three of one and one of the other, kind of going back and forth. We feel that this is a really full line where you want everything! Some people may not want to get everything and just stick with one style, but we really wanted to reinforce that if you are collecting these, that in each wave there will definitely be something that you want!

SF: And how is it decided which version of each character to go with? How do you determine whether to go with the classic ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ look versus the ‘Batman: The New Adventures’ design? I’ve noticed that the ‘New Adventures’ style seems to be the more prominent of the two so far.

KK: In some cases, we look into whether there has ever been a toy version of that character before, because the original toyline didn’t hit certain versions of a few characters. They either ran out of time or just couldn’t do it. Or we look at some of the older figures and determine that we can do that one a lot better than it was before and think people would be really interested in seeing that. Or, personally we might think that one version might sell a little better than the other in that particular mixed wave. And finally, sometimes it comes down to “well we’re doing three from this design set already in this mix”, so that kind of makes some of the decisions for us.

SF: We know there were also some quality control issues with a few of the early releases of figures in this line, which has since lead to the shuffling around of the release schedule for most of the other figures in this series. What measures are being taken to prevent these issues from continuing?

KK: Well, the good news is that with the second series hitting right now, we’re already seeing through replies in email and on Facebook that fans are handling these new figures and already immediately noticing a change in plastic! They’re getting the sense of them being stronger, the joints are getting better. All of these things that they had concerns with in the first wave, are now seeing noticeably improved differences. The really good news is, that these come from the same factory that did the first wave, which means they’re capable of doing something notably different. So as we go back to the first wave, and want to either update those or produce more because we’re out of inventory, there’s going to be these new improvements put into these figures as well. You’ll be able to see it too! Like those pin-holes in their thighs? You don’t see them in wave 2. So as we go back to say, make more Batman or Catwoman, since those two are planned to be always in production, we’ll cover up those peg-holes and it’ll be noticeably different.

SF: I know that with the main toyline doing so well, we’re getting two unique items in the series this year in the form of the ‘Mask of the Phantasm’ 2 pack as well as the full size 6” scale Batmobile! What can fans expect from these two releases?

KK: What I love about the Batmobile for me, is that it hopefully shows people that anything goes. We have not traditionally been known for a vehicle type of company. We’ve done action figures, and every once in a while we’ll get a little crazy like we have with the ‘Arkham’ line where we have some of the big figures like the Solomon Grundy and Clayface, but we haven’t really been going into playsets or vehicles or anything of that sort. So I find that our Batmobile reveal at Toy Fair, and what that hopefully says to people, is that this isn’t the end of the line. Sometimes with a big item like that, it would be like the finale’. I guess you could say this is more of the ‘opening parade’! So besides all of the figure waves and the fact that we’re doing these two different series, we wanted to show the Batmobile- which is so iconic! It’s so important to the opening credits of that show alone. You saw it all the time. We wanted to do it right, for the fans. Because really we’re fans too, so it was very important for us to get it right. To say “wouldn’t it be great if this rolled around and had some lights and did this and that?”. It was important for us to do that, to do it right, and to show that we’re committed to it. So I guess the question is, what does that show or tell? I think what it shows for us is that we understand what I think the fans are willing to pay for, and the get involved, and to commit to this line, and we’re right there with them! And we’re going to make sure that whatever that means to all of us, is done right and authentically. You’re going to start seeing even more cool stuff!

SF: That’s great! I know a few people actually requested I ask this, but with the upcoming ‘Mask of the Phantasm’ figure two-pack, how is the Batman figure in that set going to differ from the ‘classic’ styled Batman in the upcoming Series 3 of the single release figure?

KK: The Batman head for the two-pack will be different, although we’re not changing the rest of the body. So basically the rest of the body will be the same Batman. We didn’t want to get into too much of a mass toy company plan of changing colors and giving all of these different color variations of Batman, we wanted him to still be a valid Batman! So we gave him a new head sculpt, I think with a little more of a grimace, like a little more intensity than the standard release. And the reason for doing that is that we’ll be able to do the two-pack at not as expensive a cost, because we’re re-using some of the Batman there, so it’ll be a little more affordable. But this way it still gives you a nice reason that if you’re buying this set for The Phantasm, you’ll at least have another different version of Batman.

SF: What about The Phantasm? Will that character have a removable cowl?

KK: The Phantasm character, not to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t seen a twenty year old movie, but we actually did sculpt the unmasked head for the character that is supposed to be under the mask! We wanted to have the mask reveal. But once you put that head, on that body… well, they were able through the magic of movie-making and animation to kind of alter it so that when the reveal happens, you all of the sudden see a body that makes more sense for that person, as opposed to what happens when you already have this large bulky body done. So it looked a little ridiculous for us, so we’ve decided not to go ahead and release the head with that. So unfortunately, or maybe fortunately if you guys had seen it you would understand, it’s just the new head for Batman and the standard Phantasm figure. Who knows, maybe some point in the future we’ll do a ‘deluxe-deluxe’ set and maybe the head will be in it, but maybe we’ll also have a different body in there too.

SF: Okay just one more question, and this one is a bit more personal for you, but of all of the amazing new stuff that you guys announced at Toy Fair, what one item would you say is the most exciting for you personally? Like if you could take home one item today, what would it be?

KK: This is going to be a weird one, and there is a bunch that I really love, I actually love a lot of what we showed at Toy fair because that’s all part of the excitement! We had something for everyone, and it all felt different, and Jim Fletcher (the Creative Director for DC Collectibles) and I, we were really excited to show all of this off to people! There were toys, there were props, there were statues of some of our favorites and some brand new kinds of statues! We had our very first male ’bombshell’ statue with the Joker in a deluxe statue with Harley! We had some really great props with the ‘Constantine’ helmet and other TV stuff! So many cool things, but the one thing that I could not stop smiling over and loved to show off when people came by, was the ‘Justice League’ tarot set. It’s just so different from we’ve had recently! And we’ve done a tarot set in the past, we did one for Vertigo, but what was fun about this is we worked with Sarah Richard, a really amazing artist-

 

SF- Oh I actually know Sarah! Her work is phenomenal!

KK: Oh yes then you know that she’s awesome! We met her at comic con a few years back and had been huge fans of her art, and so we really wanted to get her on a project but hadn’t quite figured out what it was we wanted to work with her on yet. Then we had the idea of a Madame Xanadu kind of prop replica tarot deck! Because she is always doing these tarot readings, and there’s always the Justice League involved somehow like magically her cards show the characters. So we’re like “lets really do this right and no one has ever drawn it all the way, and what would it be? Let’s really make it a real usable tarot deck!” So we approached Sarah and she said “oh my god, that’s it! That’s the project!” So she dedicated a lot of time and a lot of energy and submitted this really beautiful stuff, and we used to sit and just discuss which characters make sense for which cards. And there’s seventy-eight cards! There are a whole bunch of story points to how it works, and my favorite thing to do when people would come around at Toy Fair was to do a quick tarot reading for them! It was really a fun to be able to use one of our products in an unconventional way. I really enjoyed having a different experience, it wasn’t just an action figure or a statue that we’re known for, to hopefully surprise people so they know that we have a lot of different things going on!


Be sure to stay tuned to ScienceFiction’s weekly toy column, Toy News Tuesday, for all the latest DC Collectibles news!