While I was never as into the JLA as I was the Avengers they're still a solid bunch of guys and thanks to Lego's popularity they've been able to put out a decent amount of DC's finest in Minifigure form, even though the sets have taken a back seat to the Marvel licences in recent years as DC's cinematic fortunes have waned. Still, I've managed to amass a collection of some twenty members.
SUPERMAN
Needing no introduction, Metroplis' most whitebread hero has been available officially in both classic and Man of Steel form; I decided to go for the standard version here, in no small part due to his appearance looking like this in The Lego Movie. The simple, straight-forward costume is well rendered with the standard use of the torso waist serving nicely as the famous red underpants while some character is added by a kiss-curl in the middle of his hair and him really looking like he super-hates everyone.
BATMAN
Another needing no introduction, Batman was already heavily represented in Minifigure form with numerous official variants even before things exploded with the advent of the Lego Batman Movie in 2017. For some reason I fixated on getting a grey-suited version with the yellow chest logo and there's not been one; in the end I've merged parts from a knock-off of the Mighty Micros version with a Dawn of Justice version (which provided the face and normal-length booted legs) for my JLA Batman.
WONDER WOMAN
Not quite as widespread as the other two thirds of the JLA's Big Three, Wonder Woman has had a figure in the classic costume alongside a silver-trimmed version, a Mighty Micro and one of those Friends versions. This one does the job nicely for me, with the costume spot-on down to a special headpiece featuring Diana's headband rather than relying on a paint application on the head and also includes a neat version of her lasso.
THE FLASH
The Barry Allen version of the Flash has gleaned a couple of Minifigures, a full-size version issued as part of the DC Superheroes sets and a short-legged Mighty Micros version. I'm not sure what exactly the story of this version, which ditches the official streamlined one-piece helmet for a big bucket-like thing with removable wings, is but I actually like the clunkiness of it over the real thing. It's worth noting that the same bootleggers love a repaint opportunity and the likes of Reverse Flash and the various different colour versions are widespread.
GREEN LANTERN
My interest in the Green Lantern was mainly to have him around to annoy Superman a la The Lego Movie but naturally the whole Minifigure thing's escalated at this point. The official Minifigures have been modelled seemingly more on Kyle Rayner than Hal Jordan, though this might just be a quirk of the more modern hairstyles used but considering the use of Rayner in the film is probably intentional.. It's fine by me either way; annoyingly only the 2011 Comic Con version of the figure rather than the more refined 2015 Superheroes figure has been bootlegged, which might force me into actually buying an official Minifigure, shock horror. One fun thing is that the wide range of transparent green parts available make for some fun possibilities for constructs.
AQUAMAN
Poor Aquaman, there making Namor look popular and useful. Arthur's status as the butt of decades' worth of jokes is best illustrated by this one being a genuine Lego Minifigure because it's actually about the same price as any knock-off, the 2013 release having found its' way into two DC Superheroes sets. There is also a bootleg of the Dawn of Justice version out there but the standard figure has your main Silver Age Aquaman all tucked up with his scaled chest, floppy blond hair and trident.
MARTIAN MANHUNTER
I've always liked J'on J'onzz and very much of the opinion that the character's never quite got the fame he deserves over the years. He's landed two official Lego Minifigures anyway; neither however has been bootlegged directly. The Chinese version instead is based on a third variant with painted pants, red upper body webbing and a different head - it's actually a much nicer look all around, topped off by the cloak and staff.
GREEN ARROW
Both of Oliver's Minifigures have been heavily influenced by the modern look given in the Arrow TV series; not necessarily a problem but it would be nice to have a more retro one to fit in with JLA line-ups - there's a mouthwatering glimpse at a Silver Age version in the Lego Batman Movie but alas no sign of a release. As it is both Green Arrow figures that have been out had been bootlegged; the difference comes down to whether he has his hood up or not.
ATOM
The Atom was at the Vanguard of the Silver Age of superheroes but - like Marvel equivalent Ant-Man - hasn't quite secured the place in popular culture he probably deserves. The only official figure for Ray Palmer was an exclusive at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con; thankfully this has been bootlegged. The copy retains the very cool part-visored helmet and the high level of paint detail; weirdly this features considerable engraving on the torso which feels very odd. It doesn't really hurt the figure but it is an unusual thing to do. There are other changes, like the use of a blue head rather than red but overall it's very faithful. There's a second knock-off out that eschews the helmet in favour of a painted head, which is naturally a step backwards.
HAWKMAN
The naffness of Hawkman's concept has only been matched by how convoluted his history has been, with the character's timeline getting so disturbed that at one point DC atomised him just to put an end to it. Throughout it all he's looked like the same fantasy reject through and the one official Lego Minifigure he received is pretty much spot on with its' elaborate helmet, chest armour (including logo) and green shorts. Oddly he has fabric wings, which do help him stand out a bit from many of the other winged figures. While this version has been bootlegged whoever does these things has also put out a version with moulded golden wings similar to those seen on the Series 15 Flying Warrior Minifigure; while these are more stable and less of a cheat they are a bit boring by comparison.
BLACK CANARY
Through her association with the Green Arrow and Birds of Prey Dinah's managed to stay on the cooler side of the DC universe for most of her history, despite the original costume long having given way to lots of tartier outfits which surprisingly was improved on for her appearances (represented by three different characters) in WB's Arrow TV series. The only figure she seems to have received is an unlicensed bootleg, largely based on Katie Cassidey's TV portrayal. This is a leather outfit that's all straps and cleavage (not much different to those used for some versions of the Black Widow or Catwoman) but is a lot more dignified than most of her comic get-ups from the eighties onwards. Oddly the figure doesn't have a face mask, which is more in line with the comics.
RED TORNADO
Something of an odd one, Red Tornado was never really front-line JLA material to the extend where the android currently doesn't exist in the DC universe. Presumably someone somewhere is a fan of the character, depicted here in one of its' android bodies with a high level of accuracy. It's possible it's actually a copy of a fan-made custom similar to the way some of Penzora's work has been copied; either way it's a great render of a relatively unknown character but it is also one of the less common bootleg Minifigures out there.
CAPTAIN MARVEL
Good ol' Billy Batson and his copyright issues. Obviously Captain Marvel had long been in existence before he finally joined the Justice League but that didn't stop Marvel comics from somehow usurping DC's copyright (gained during a brutal legal action with creator Fawcett which also lead to the eventual creation of Marvelman/Miracleman) with Mar-Vell. This and his general Golden Age whitebread thing when DC already have Superman covering Golden Age whitebread he's never really been a major player in the modern DC universe even if he's kept around and a Minifigure is a nice surprise, Lego sneaking one out as a 2012 SDCC exclusive. Again there are bootleggers to thank for copying the no-brainer traditional costume, meaning you can pick one up for less than £220 (no, seriously, that's how much the original goes for).
DOCTOR FATE
Long-running and frequently killed off, Doctor Fate still has a neat set of powers and a great design despite only being an occasional member of the JLA and struggling to find much of an audience. He's another that seems to have escaped having a regular figure, though again a very good bootleg - most likely of a custom - is available. As well as good paint apps (including boots, so often neglected on figures both official and unofficial) the helmet is nicely done by a reuse of the Star Wars Clone Trooper piece. One oddity though is a flesh face with blank eyes that line up with those on the helmet but look jolly weird with the thing off.
POWER GIRL
If ever there was a sign of how noble intentions can go awry in comics it's poor old Kara. Conceived as a more mature, independent and less derivative version of Supergirl when she debuted Power Girl has never quite been able to shake the unfortunate "boob window" of her original costume or a series of escalating jokes about the size of her breasts. Various attempts to revise her costume have been met with lukewarm reception and DC have largely just accepted that the character needs to have a hole in her costume to show off her big tits. Obviously this isn't exactly Lego friendly and no official figures have come out. Penzora's filled the gap with a fairly respectful custom; the infamous window is present but with comparable delicacy to most of the official female figures while there's the usual high level of detail and a nice choice for the character's bob hairstyle.
PLASTIC MAN
Despite being created in the forties Plastic Man was a latecomer to the JLA but became a firm favourite after getting picked for Grant Morrison's run, with his gift for physical comedy retained while his nous were greatly expanded. This greatly improved the amount of DC media the formerly cult character appeared in and an appearance in one of the Lego video games saw a figure issued in a promotional polybag. This has since been copied relatively well despite the boots being missed off the copy; his trademark white-framed shades and a nice smirk remain however and the Superman kiss curl sets him off nicely. Interestingly there's also been a stretched bootleg using the same Toy Story extended limbs as the Reed Richards figure; this does actually retain the boots just to set off the OCD nicely.
Rounding up the rest of my Avengers Minifigures (bar a few peripheral members who belong more with other groups) this is really just an overview of the handful of characters to join between the late seventies and the title's drastic reformatting under Brian Michael Bendis to have really made much of an impression; I've always liked most of the roster but really it's not hard to see why no-one's come up with a Minifigure of Firebird or Jack of Hearts.
MS MARVEL
Carol Danvers has been around since the sixties and has had almost as many superhero personas and character annihilations as Hank Pym. Ms Marvel is probably still her most famous, a role initially ended to give Rogue a big launch, though she's since come back. This figure captures her most famous costume, the second Ms Marvel one which came back in the nineties when Kurt Busiek returned her to the spotlight as Warbird and stuck around until she became Captain Marvel. It gets the look down to a tee, with the lightning flash on the chest and the (thankfully painted considering some of the missteps with fabric) sash tie while the extant Lego hair piece fits her like a glove. Available either officially or as a Chinese bootleg, this is one of the most impressive figures out there.
THE FALCON
Sam was always more Captain America's sidekick but for a while that basically guaranteed your slot anyway. Since then he didn't really do much in the title for years - Geoff Johns' attempts to make the book entirely about the Falcon and how great he is went down so well Marvel drafted in Chuck Austen to stop him - until Marvel decided he could become Captain America himself and lead the team. This figure - officially available in the Hulk Lab Smash set but also bootlegged by the Chinese - has a fair stab at one of the many red-and-white costumes he wore but errs in a couple of ways. Firstly the wings are not only inexplicably transparent but are also permanently spread, which is fine for play but a pain for a display. The other is limited to the bootleg, where whoever makes these things seems to have taken the gold gloves as skin tone and greatly lightened the face accordingly, leading to a Hispanic look.
WONDER MAN
Wonder Man first turned up as a bad guy in the Avengers in 1964, seemingly getting killed straight away; after various cameos he finally made the team some 13 years later - Stan Lee has claimed this was partly due to a gentleman's agreement with DC, who cried foul on the name's similarity to Wonder Woman then later brought out Power Girl in apparent violation despite Marvel already having Power Man, leading them to discard the deal. The character has since been a respectable tier 2 Avenger but has always seemed just that bit too naff for the real mainstream, with his mullet, long stint in the perennially unfashionable West Coast Avengers and dodgy nineties solo series. As such there have been no official or unofficial Minifigures of him; thankfully even an idiot like me can knock one up overlaying a red 'W' on a black muscled chest, finding some red eyes (easily found from Superman, though live action Hawkeye's red shades provide a 'powered down' alternative) and then just picking a relatively unhumiliating hairstyle.
TIGRA
One of the functions of the Avengers as a book was to pick up characters during lean times and that was the story of Tigra, invented in the mid-seventies as an updated Patsy Walker for the girls and rapidly cancelled. She was resurrected in the eighties as an Avenger, only briefly appearing in the main book before being sent off to the West Coast for about half of the team's run and making occasional guest appearances afterwards. As a sexy cat lady she's sort-of tarred by the whole furry thing now and has received little attention. Thankfully Penzora has once again delivered an excellent Minifigure capturing her in her stripy, bikini-wearing eighties glory; she could perhaps do with a tail but the only tiger-patterned one out there is from the much lighter 2015 Monsters Tiger Woman Minifigure.
SHE-HULK
Like Tigra, She-Hulk was another failed launch folded into the Avengers line-up after her own solo title stalled; she would then go on to do a stint in the Fantastic Four before her second, better-remembered feature book in the late eighties, a mad run of self-awareness and weird jokes. Bruce's cousin Jen has since become something of a favourite at the company, who continue to push series despite underwhelming sales. She's finally got an official Minifigure at the start of 2017 as part of a showdown between herself and the Hulk and their red counterparts; a bootleg based on her video game appearance has been doing the rounds for some time however and isn't bad, with the purple/white leotard worn for most of the solo series. Unlike the official version it sadly doesn't feature the green-tinged hair, also featuring an angry face and a different set of physical details.
MOCKINGBIRD
Bobbi Morse started off as a side character in various Ka-Zar strips which saw her become a SHIELD Agent and then a costumed vigilante named Huntress. To avoid yet another clash with DC she was renamed Mockingbird and then romantically linked to Hawkeye, marrying him and becoming a founding member of the West Coast Avengers (having appeared in the main book as a supporting non-team character). She left the team in a messy Johnny Byrne plot but eventually returned in time to die in a late issue at the hands of Mephisto. Although wait, Marvel's ongoing creative bankruptcy meant that after some 17 years of her being dead it was reveals a Skrull duplicate had bought the farm instead. Sadly this recent interest hasn't been enough to get her in a film or into Minifig form but Penzora again has me covered; the costume of their custom is spot-on though the character has the more modified recent mask; personally I'd have prefered the amazing flying-v shaped one she wore in the eighties but that remains unfortunately beyond the reach of Lego.
IRON MAN
Iron Man of course had been in and out of the Avengers since founding them but the eighties saw his natty red/silver (well, white) armour come to the fore, just in time for him to join up with the West Coast Avengers. There's not been a figure of the armour exactly but it did get used in Iron Man 3 as one of Tony's specialist armours and was brought out in one of the Lego Age of Ultron sets, which has been bootlegged (bootleggers love Iron Man variant armours). Not only are the details retouched accordingly but there's an additional shoulder pad arrangement including decorated tiles on the chest and back that really make the result look quite different - if not quite like the eighties comic version - while also de-emphasising how bulbous the opening helmet is.
U.S. AGENT
One of the more unpleasant heroes of the era, John Walker first stood in for Captain America and made an arse of that before taking up the guise of U.S. Agent, where he was more or less on the side of right but tended to be a bit of a narc and never really got on with anyone. He was shoe-horned onto the West Coast Avengers roster by the government and spent most of his stint as an unwelcome presence. At the time the character was garbed in the uniform Steve Rogers had worn as the Captain and it's an easy one to replicate thanks to the Captain Hydra figures out there; a dab of black paint on the shield and the substitution of a plain black torso with a simple sticker makes for a convincing version of his eighties/nineties look as it's highly unlikely a character who was never that popular in or out of the fictional universe will get an official figure.
QUASAR
While Quasar has one way or another been in existence since 1979 (originally as Marvel Boy, using the Timely character's cosmic bracelets) his stint on the Avengers came ten years later; unlike Mockingbird or She-Hulk his presence wasn't to give him a new home but as part of a double-pronged attempt to push the character, Wendell being given his own concurrent solo series at the same time as his membership. Despite a lot of effort he never really took off however and has since been reduced to guest spots; should Marvel go for cosmic Avengers in the films he's likely to be behind the various Captain Marvels if nothing else. However, Penzora have again obliged with a lushly coloured custom based largely on his nineties look that does the job well in the face of official apathy; my only criticism is the trendy hair he's got. Really I need to find him a nice blond mullet.
WAR MACHINE
James Rhodes had already served on both the main and West Coast Avengers teams during his first fill-in stint as Iron Man before later taking on the guise of War Machine and getting a slot on the latter in the end days before the team reunited. That was at about the point the character's brief fame was declining but the interest in anything Iron Man following the films' success and the easy repaint potential has given him a couple of official figures - which have again been bootlegged. The main changes are the presence of Rhodey's face under the helmet and the addition of a neat clear backpack bracket for mounting weaponry; this is ripe for a bit of customising fun. Naturally the painted detail is closer to the live action suits but it does the job for a nineties version of the character too if that's what you're after.
Considering the low profile of the characters to the wider public it was perhaps a surprise that Guardians of the Galaxy was such a hit. Or maybe considering it followed Marvel/Disney's template of promotional bombardment followed by some two hours high in CGI and funny banter while low in surprises and innovation perhaps it's not. We're rapidly reaching the stage where they could put out two hours of Robert Downey Jr gurning into a mirror for 134 minutes and IMDB fanboys would still give it 9/10. The main point of Disney's infantilisation of Marvel is to make merchandise to sell to seven year-olds and with its' apparent belief that saying "asshole" is inherently amusing Guardians is a prime asset in that regard. Upside is we got a full set of Lego Minifigs. Nearly. And they got bootlegged. Nice.
STAR-LORD
There have been two official Star-Lord figures and two unofficial; they overlap on the one I've got, which has the character in prison uniform. There's a cool official one with the jacket open that hasn't been copied and goes for too much for such a minor variation and a bootleg that goes for a jacket-less appearance and inexplicably replaces the helmet piece with a painted face. Whereas this guy has a very cool removable helmet, complete with moulded hair - though the bootleg has varying quality in terms of how well this is painted. It's not too bulbous unlike the similar piece for Iron Man and can be slid off to reveal a smiling stubbly face - switch in some brown hair and you've got how the character appeared for much of the film so we'd remember he was played by Chris Pratt. The rest of the outfit is nice and crisp right down to the brown 'leather' gloves and he comes with a neat pair of pistols; it's a very good take overall.
GAMORA
Team totty Gamora had only a single Minifig; thankfully it's a decent one, again wearing the prison suit for his continuity. She's about 83% better dressed than the screen version with cleavage kept to a dignified minimum. Good detail paint apps help considerably, notably gold tattoos on the face in addition to a nice snarling face (the official one is reversible, the other side having a smiling face) and purple highlights in the hair. Add in the doughty Lego samurai sword and you've got someone perfect for will-they-won't they-oh-they-are winkery with Star-Lord or clunking rivalry with Drax.
ROCKET RACCOON
The Funny Animal of the team is the long-established Rocket Raccoon, finally dumbed down to a level where he's popular thanks to being all aggressive despite being short, which is frankly amazing characterisation. He was a big enough hit wif da kids to get a brace of Minifigures, one in the orange uniform he wore for the entire film and one for the prison uniform he didn't wear. Thankfully those great humanitarians ripping off Lego figures in China resisted the temptation of doing a matching set and did the orange version. Most of the work is done by the all-in-one unique moulded head and shoulder pads, though this means the head can't turn while this is a good a place as any to ponder why Lego still haven't made short legs that have actual movement. Decent paint apps, though.
DRAX
Another long-serving character chewed and spat out was Drax. I always liked the guy, especially when turning up in Peter David's Captain Marvel, but the film didn't have space to do him much justice as he was relegated to the role of a muscle guy who gets kicked around so we can see the bad guys are serious business. And Lego dicked him over too; the character's sole minifigure boasts a complex set of printed tattoos and prison uniform trousers only to inexplicably make his skin grey rather than green, a mistake carried over for the bootleg. Couple of knives aren't going to help it swim back from that one.
GROOT
Emotional Manipulation Tree Man didn't get a proper Minifig, Lego instead building the guy up out of bricks and adding a head, which is a neat choice to simulate the wood but wasn't really what I was after. Bootleggers provided a Big Fig that seemed to be a totally new mould and really was more like an action figure than a Lego toy, with only the shoulder connections and stud spaces on the legs to even link it to the building bricks. It was also far too tall. A respectable compromise is the knock-off Minifigure, which works the Woody mould already roped in for Mr Fantastic to make a taller Minifig very reliant on painted detail to get the texture across. It's not a great success but it is probably the most successful of the approaches yet tried.
