Doomsday

The biggest strength of Bruce Timm's animated version of the DC Universe was that while it used characters from the comicbooks, it didn't have to use their comicbook origins. It was the animated series that made Darkseid something other than a useless joke, and earned John Stewart some respect as Green Lantern. They even found a way to do something useful with Doomsday. Cloned from a portion of Superman's genetic material, Doomsday's DNA was altered to make him Superman's superior. He was then trained to hate him; images of Superman and his logo were drilled into Doomsday's brain; he was tied down, shot and repeatedly injured by images of Superman. The real mind behind Doomsday was Amanda Waller and Professor Hamilton. When he became uncontrollable, they tried to dispose of Doomsday by shooting him into space, but he was too strong. His struggles inside the rocket altered its course and brought it back to earth, where he sought out Superman. In the comics, Doomsday was nothing but a walking plot device, invented with nothing more in mind than his role in the death of Superman stunt. As such, he's a pretty crappy character. That's why no one ever wanted to use him on the Superman cartoon. He's a one-note villain, so what's the point? How do you tell an interesting story with him? It's not like cartoon Superman was going to die, any more than cartoon Batman was going to get his back broken. They did find a perfect role for him, though: punk. They brought him in to job for the Justice Lords. They needed to show how much more ruthless the alternate-reality Superman was, and Doomsday was the way to do that. Here's the monster who killed "our" Superman, yet Justice Lord Supes comes in and drops him like a bad habit. Therefore, Justice Lord Superman is a hardass. Doomsday is beyond huge. He's even bigger than this summer's Solomon Grundy exclusive. The tip of his shoulder spikes just reaches the 5½" mark, and he's 4½" across. Even if he's not standing next to one of the regular-size heroes, you can tell he's an absolute beast. Because his limbs are thicker than most 6"-scale figures', he also gets a bit more articulation than the other JLU figures: we start with the Big Five, but add elbows and knees, too. Because of the way he's constructed, you can even move the jaw a little, too. The sculpt looks just like what we saw in his two cartoon appearances. He's big and blocky, with three fingers and a thumb on each hand. He's got bone spikes on his knees, knuckles, shoulders, chest and spine, plus a bit more on his chin and brow. His teeth are crooked and his hair is stringy. He doesn't have any bones over his eyes, like the comics Doomsday does, because it would have been too hard to animate and make it look good. The paint is good, with gray skin, off-white bones and a pink mouth. He's even wearing the green boots and shorts, like in the comics. Doomsday is only available in a six-pack of figures from Target, because there is absolutely no way something this size could fit on a card by himself. The set is $30, which is only $5 per figure, but we've seen all the others before. You get Superman, Batman and the new Wonder Woman sculpt we've been seeing since the Hawk & Dove set, plus a re-release of Bizarro (another Target exclusive) and a transparent version of Amazo, in case you haven't gotten any of the other colored releases of him. Oh well - give him a black wash and call him Shadow Thief, and he can screw with the relationship between GL and Hawkgirl. You can tell Mattel knows Doomy is the must-have from this set: he's the only one held in place by the theft-reducing twist ties. No one ever thought we'd see Doomsday in the DC Animated Universe, and we certainly never thought we'd see him as a DCAU toy. The fact that a figure like this got released just shows that Mattel has finally admitted there's a collector community out here, and is trying to make changes to accommodate us. Buying the set is expensive, especially if you already have the other figures, but Doomsday is almost worth it. Are you going to splurge on Doomsday? Tell us on our message board, The Loafing Lounge.

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