Harley Qwednesday :: Suicide Squad Harley Quinn and Joker ReAction figures

I've never been a fan of the blind box or blind bag concept. Primarily because my luck tend to lean towards getting multiples of my least wanted figure. I am also no fan of not knowing what I'm spending my hard earned money on. Blind bags I can deal with, because I can squeeze them and determine what's in them. And sometimes they have codes you can decipher to learn what's inside.

As for blind boxes. I avoid those as a rule. I'll just rely on buying a much-needed figure second-hand if/when they become available.

Then there's the latest in 'taking your money': Blind subscription boxes. These are the absolute worst. You don't know what you might even end up with until you end up with it. Are you insane?

Anyways, like with blind boxes, when I find out there is something awesome in a blind subscription box, I just either try to get it for a good price second-hand, or forget about it because the price is too damn high.

Fortunately when I found out about the recent DC Legion of Collectors subscription box that included a ReAction styled Suicide Squad Harley Quinn and Joker and went looking for them second-hand, I was able to score both (honestly I'd have been happy with just Harley) for less than one would have cost me at retail...shipped!

I've looked over plenty of these ReAction figures at places like Toys R Us, but these are the first I've owned. The detail on Harley and Joker seems above par. They're definitely good looking figures (I've yet to open them so I can't yet attest to their physical quality.) Harley is especially nice and even comes with her bat!

Joker looks good for this iteration of the Joker. Not my favorite, and this may very well end up being the only version of Jared Leto's Joker I ever own. But I've got to have at least one version of this Joker, so I'm glad I have this guy. The packaging design is excellent on these figures, with the bomb shape and bullets circling the figures. Which is why I'm still on the fence on opening them. They're pieces of art unto themselves.

I've read online that a full line of ReAction Suicide Squad figures are set for release, and as a fan of the movie I may be tempted to complete the team in ReAction form. But if I don't get any more I'm glad I have these two (or at least Harley.)  This Harley is definitely a highlight of my Harley Quinn collection. And thankfully I didn't have to sign up for a bind subscription box to get them!

Suicide Squad Movie Novelization

I really enjoyed the Suicide Squad movie. It was a lot of fun and while certainly not perfect, it totally delivered for me. I mean come on, has geekdom gotten so glossy-shiny-Disnified that it has forgotten it was born and raised on imperfect movies, cartoons, etc?

Listen, if you didn't like it, you're right for you. But I not only loved Suicide Squad for what it is, but I also love it for the experience it gave me, and for the almost out-of-body time-travel experience while watching it with my 14 year old daughter. Bear with me, this post does come around to the novelization. I promise.

As a DC geek the idea of a Suicide Squad movie with the likes of Deadshot, Harley Quinn, and Killer Croc among others had me at 'Harley Quinn.' I have been excited for this movie since day one. My daughter is also a geek like her daddy, so she pretty much gets excited about the same things I do and we try to see all the superhero and Star Wars and similar movies together (yes, I sat through Divergent.) But my daughter doesn't live with me full time, so often we don't see a movie together on it's opening night, or one of us may have seen it already when we get the chance to see it together a week or so after it's released, or we rent it. Fortunately our summer schedule worked out so that we were able to see Suicide Squad on it's premiere date, so we got tickets for the first showing on Thursday night.

We were both excited to see it and that was great, but as the release date approached I watched something happen to my daughter that pulled me back to when I was 14 and Burton's Batman hit theatres.

Before Batman was released in '89, I knew about Batman and superheroes and comics and all that stuff, but I wasn't a Batman fanatic yet. Then I saw the movie (an imperfect movie too) and it changed my life. Big words I know but hey, it's 2016 and I'm 41 and I'm writing on a blog that's devoted to toys that are mostly Batman themed and about to tell you about the Suicide Squad novelization so...yeah. you could say it had an impact on me.

Anyways, in '89 as the Batman movie approached I read about it in movie magazines and bought merchandise and comics and the novelization and had high hopes for the movie. I saw it about 9 times in all in the theatre by the end of that summer, and the rest is history.

Back to 2016 - as Suicide Squad approached, my daughter, very familiar with all the characters from years of cartoons and comics exposure but not a fanatic for any of them, began to focus her fandom on Katana. She started asking about Katana toys, she got a Katana Funko POP, she wants to be Katana for Halloween, she re-read a bunch of our comics that star Katana, she drew pictures of Katana. I watched as she went from someone who just thinks this stuff is cool to a real Katana fanatic. And it was like looking in a time-mirror. I saw me at 14, and how incredibly cool it was to see Batman brought to life on the big screen, 'real' and 'serious' and blockbuster sized! Suddenly it's 2016 and here is my daughter getting to see Katana as no one has ever seen her before and she's as excited as any proto-geek finding their idol.

It's a moment that we all had at least once, and maybe we remember and maybe we forgot, but how often does one get to have an almost out of body experience and see it from the perspective of our older self as if we are watching our younger self as it happens, again, for the first time? I suppose being a parent means this type of thing can and maybe will happen and can take many different forms, but here it was happening in correlation to the Suicide Squad and of all things, Katana.

So to cut to the chase, we saw the movie, my daughter loved it, I loved it, Katana was awesome and I'm so happy for the experience we were able to share over a silly superhero(villain) movie.

And now to the point of the post: The Suicide Squad novelization. My daughter and I were talking a few days before the movie about how it was 'in my day.' In my day, we didn't get the DVD/BLU-Ray three weeks after the movie hit theatres, or get to watch clips online, or get to buy merchandise off eBay until we were drowning in it ten minutes after a movie was announced, or even have an internet for that matter. We had to wait until a store stocked something, anything, if it stocked anything at all. We read movie magazines and stared at little black and white behind the scenes photos for hours. We might have had a poster, or a newspaper clipping taped to our wall. If we were lucky there was an action figure line and maybe it made it through one release of five figures and a vehicle. And we had to wait months if not years to rent a VHS to see the movie again (if we're not talking about the pre-VHS days, which was also 'in my day.')

And we had novelizations. THAT'S how we revisited our favorite movies in my day!

Not only did we revisit movies through their novelizations, but due to publishing/editing/release schedules, sometimes we'd get a super cool exclusive scene or two in our book that never made it on to the movie screen. Novelizations were the 'director's cut' or 'extended version' of our childhoods. AND WE LIKED IT!

My daughter got excited about the idea of reading a novelization of Suicide Squad. So naturally, we hopped online (hey, it's 2016, not 1989!) and found out a novelization for Suicide Squad did indeed exist...but wasn't set to release until the Tuesday after the move came out!

Tuesday finally arrived, and my daughter is spending this week with her grandparents (my parents) and thankfully, since they are my parents, they know how important this kind of thing is. So when the book came out my Mom called around and they traversed three cities to find a copy (FYI: In 2016 it isn't as easy to get a movie novelization at a physical store as it was in 1989. Hell, for that matter it isn't as easy to find a damn bookstore in 2016 as it was in 1989!). In the meantime I called my local bookstore and they brought in a copy for me as well. My daughter is now about twenty chapters in and I'm about ten (hey, I have to work!) and it's already delivered on the extra scenes, AND it's written by Marv Wolfman!

The last time I bought a new movie novelization was in 1989. I was 14 and the novelization was for the Batman movie. It's 2016, I'm 41, my daughter is 14, and we're both reading the Suicide Squad novelization. Who says you can never go back?

Random Toy Pic :: Suicide Squad

Just a quick pic of the Squad all together (every Squad member I own in 6" scale that is).

Yeah, I'd totally go see this movie!

Suicide Squad Harley Quinn Multiverse Action Figure by Mattel :: Harley Qwednesday

Suicide Squad opens in a little over two weeks, and I have high hopes. Good, bad or indifferent, Suicide Squad will go down in cinematic history for bringing us the first silver screen live action version of Harley Quinn. That alone is reason enough to get me excited and make me want to own this Suicide Squad Harley Quinn action figure from Mattel's Multiverse line.

There's already a surprising amount of Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn merchandise, from shirts to POPs to action figures to minifigures to high end collectibles. Hopefully Ms. Robbie delivers and vindicates the amount of money many of you have already shelled out for her likeness! Surprisingly I've only picked up this figure and the bootLEGO (so far.) If the movie delivers I'm sure that will change.

Speaking of likeness, this Multiverse figure isn't perfect. She looks a bit wall-eyed, and this was the best one of the five or so on the shelf. Others looked even worse. Had some of the others been my only choice, I would have passed.

Not sure if the wall-eyed look is universal or if I just found a bad batch.

Another problem with my figure is that her bat is squished and malformed. I was so concerned with getting a version with ok eyes I totally overlooked the bat in the store. So again, not sure if that's a problem across the board or if I just got a wonky bat. It's too bad too, because I got this version (instead of waiting to find the Toys R Us exclusive jacketed Harley Quinn) because if I end up only owning one, I wanted the figure with the bat.

Oh well, maybe it's dented because it bopped so many noggins.

Harley's profile view looks really good.

Her holster is a separate piece, but the gun is not removable.

Harley's shirt has a few 'tears' in it. Obviously this figure represents Harley later in the movie, after she's seen some action. And lost or discarded of her jacket.

I avoided the Multiverse line when it came to Batman v Superman, but that's because there was a more budget conscious $10 line which had the movie moment characters I desired. But I doubt the same approach will be taken with Suicide Squad, so I couldn't pass up on this figure when I found her.

Can't say I'll pick up any more of the Suicide Squad Multiverse line-up (except Katana because my oldest daughter is on a Katana kick lately) but if you pick up all the figures in the line you can build a Killer Croc figure. I won't lose any sleep if I don't complete Killer Croc, honestly I'm pretty sick of the BAF/C&C concept.

Those shoes! I can't believe I was able to get her to stand at all!

Suicide Squad Harley Quinn BootLEGO Minifig

Suicide Squad Harley Quinn BootLEGO - this is the type of thing I live for. I love Harley Quinn and I love BootLEGOs when they give us something LEGO can't or won't create, and when the two come together it's a thing of pure beauty!

Another high quality BootLEGO of unknown manufacture, Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn from the upcoming Suicide Squad movie has two faces printed on her head, the second blowing a bubble! This is just one of those fun design aspects the bootleggers threw in of their own volition, proving that even though these things are as illegal as heck from a licensing and copyright perspective, bootleggers are clever artists too and may have a soul afterall!

I forgot to get a pic of it, but the back of her jacket says 'Property of Joker' and as you can see her shirt says 'Daddy's Lil Monster' just like in the movie. Harley Quinn comes with a pistol and a brown stick that is supposed to be her baseball bat. LEGO makes a baseball bat, so I'll have to get an extra to give her, but until then the stick works just fine. her hair is also printed with the highlighted tips and ponytail holders. Tons of detail on this perfect little minfig!

I absolutely can't wait to see Suicide Squad and am thankful the BootLEGOers are also apparently smitten by Harley's first live action appearance on the big screen. There's also a Jared Leto Joker BootLEGO minifig available, but I haven't jumped on that one yet.

Gotham City Cycle Chase LEGO 76053 Review :: Harley Qwednesday

Here's something I never thought I would see; an official Harley Quinn LEGO minifigure with a dual colored hairpiece!

Sadly it's red and blue, not red and black, or blonde with red and black tips. Sigh.

This version of Harley Quinn is commonly referred to as the New52 Harley Quinn. Or Juggalo Harley. Or 'BLECH!' Take your pick, they are interchangeable.

I'm pretty sure this Harley look debuted in the pages of Suicide Squad with the last DC Comics relaunch a few years ago, and has already more or less been left behind in favor of the more respectable designs occurring in the pages of her title comic book.

I was shocked to see this version of Harley Quinn appearing in the respectably priced ($19.99) LEGO 76053 Gotham City Cycle Chase, for the reason I mentioned above as well as the fact that Harley Quinn minifigures usually appear in big expensive sets, and even then they don't mold a whole new hairpiece for her (see the LEGO Roller Derby Harley from their recent Jokerland set, which could also have used a dual colored hairpiece to be more comic accurate!)

I'm not totally 'New52'. I have pants. And the Shakespeare minifigure called; he wanted his frilly neckpiece back.

The Gotham City Cycle Chase set comes with two motorcycles (A Batcycle and a Harleycycle) and three minifigures: Harley Quinn, Batman and Deadshot. This set is clearly designed to coincide with the upcoming Suicide Squad movie, without being specific to the movie itself.

Deadshot is a great little minifigure and he too looks to be based on the New52 Suicide Squad design. I like that his gauntlet guns are printed on the sides of his arms!

LEGO gave Deadshot a bazooka, which shoots a little piece from the front with that little projectile doohickey all the gun-totin' minifigures are being issued nowadays. It's cool that one of the pieces of the bazooka build is that little basic handgun piece, because it's less bulky and still allows for Deadshot to be holding a weapon for display purposes.

Boba who?

LEGO also included a jet-pack for Deadshot. Because reasons.

Are you looking at my bum?

It's a simple little add-on that I am sure kids will love. And adults too. Because who doesn't love jet-packs?

I'm Batfleck

The Batman that comes with the set is the same Batman we are seeing in most standard Gotham-centric sets these days. Clearly inspired by Ben Affleck's Batman, this Batman sports the cowl with the shorter ears and no mask below the chin.

Batman gets a grappling gun this time around, which is pretty neat and saves you the trouble of cobbling one together out of your spare LEGO pieces (which I've done plenty of times.)

Batman and Harley each have dual expressions. Deadshot only has the one. Or maybe he has fifty, but you can't tell because his mask completely covers his face.

The Batcycle is a pretty hefty build, and is clearly inspired by the Christian Bale Batcycle.

Note to self: Have Alfred reinforce my codpiece.

Unless Batfleck drives something like this in the new movies. We shall see.

It too has projectile shootin' shooters at the back.

Harley gets another cool hammer build to attach to her bike or to hold for herself. For the first time ever, Harley's hammer gets the decal treatment, with black diamonds on one side and a comic book 'POW!' on the other.

Since this set is undeniably inspired by the upcoming Suicide Squad movie, it would have been neat to see Harley Quinn get a baseball bat accessory. But one can never have too many giant mallets.

Or Harley Quinn minifigures!

Harley Qwednesday :: Upcoming DC Collectibles Harley Quinn Action Figures!

DC Collectibles just solicited a bunch of incredible Harley Quinn action figures and there isn't a bum in the bunch!

I still remember when there was literally ONE Harley Quinn action figure n the entire world.

One. ONE! Yeah, ok, sure, I can also remember when there was zero, but I don't like to dwell on the hell that was a world without a Harley Quinn action figure.

Now, there are dozens, approaching hundreds; more than I can even possibly own!

It should surprise no one that a Margot Robbie Harley Quinn action figure from the upcoming Suicide Squad movie is coming. Pretty sure this movie is going to be a blast, and pretty sure it will re-define Harley Quinn for a whole new audience, so I think I need this action figure.

DC Collectibles is also releasing a series of Amanda Conner designer series Harley Quinn action figures. I absolutely adore Amanda Conner's artwork, and although I am so rarely a completist, this may be the line that breaks me. First up is classic Harley. I'm a sucker for classic Harley.

Next up is Space Harley. I am not reading the ongoing Harley Quinn monthly, so I have no idea why Harley went to space, but if Usagi Yojimbo and April O'Neil can do it, why the hell can't Harley?

Last up is Super Harley. Again, for reasons. I do like this character design, it's a cute look. Pretty sure I need this in my life. even more figures are promised in this line, and you know each one is going to be as adorable as the last.

Finally, DC Collectibles is offering up the BTAS Harley that has already seen release, but in a 'Girls Night Out' five pack with Poison Ivy, Live Wire, Supergirl, Batgirl and our girl Harley Quinn. This is a $100 dollar set if it's a nickel, so I will just add it to my birthday/Christmas list and be done with it.

So there you have it. 2016, which is apparently The year of the Harley.

Harley Qwednesday :: New Suicide Squad Trailer!

Oh man, this looks absolutely incredible! Two thumbs way up! A tour-de-force! Stupendous! A feast for the eyes! An epic masterpiece of biblical proportions!

Oh, and the Suicide Squad trailer looks good too...

Harley Qwednesday :: Happy Birthday Margot Robbie!

Upcoming live-action 'Harley Quinn' Margot Robbie celebrated her 25th birthday on July 2nd, and she was surprised with a 'Suicide Squad' on-set celebration which included a Harley Quinn themed cake!

No word on whether or not the candles exploded when lit.

Happy Birthday Margot!

via Margot Robbie on Instagram.

STOP THE PRESSES! Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn - First Official Image!

David Ayers just released a full-cast in-character image on Twitter for the upcoming Suicide Squad movie, and yadda yadda I cropped out all those nobodies because who cares about anyone but Harley Quinn played by Margot Robbie.

Okay, so there's pretty much nothing that says 'Harley Quinn' here. Too much blue, no harlequin-esque patterns, no diamonds, no kabuki makeup, no domino mask. And tattoos. Sexy? Sure. Harley? Not much.

I won't get all 'nerd-rage' though. This is one image. There are a LOT more images in the film at 24fps, and there is story, script and actor ability still left to factor in here.

EDIT: On-set photos are hitting all over the net today. here are a couple closer looks at Harley via Jimmy Palmiotti:

I admit, these look a little more on target, with red/blue colors reminiscent of her New 52 iteration. Not a fan of the face/neck tattoos but the neck tattoo appears to say "Puddin'". The 'Property of Joker' on the jacket is a nice touch, as is the baseball bat.

Okay fine, here's everyone else too. Katana looks good, I have to admit. Neat seeing a live-action Killer Croc as well!

Margot Robbie Cast as Harley Quinn for 2016 Suicide Squad Movie

Australian actress Margot Robbie has been cast to play Harley Quinn in her motion picture debut in the 2016 slated release of Suicide Squad (not from the files of 'Police Squad').

I know nothing of Miss Robbie, but judging by the couple pics I found online of her in 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' perhaps I should.

Now the real mystery awaits: Will we perchance see Miss Margot Robbie in the classic Harley Quinn costume, even if it's just a moment of fan-service? I sure hope so!

I also can't wait to hear how much Margot Robbie sounds like Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn is a unique member of the Batman rogues gallery, having first appeared as an animated character - her voice is as much a part of her iconic image as the red/black motif and whiteface.

Well, Harley Quinn fans, what are your thoughts on this casting news?

Harley Qwednesday :: Death of the Family

I'm not reading the new Suicide Squad or the 'Death of the Family' storyline but hey, here's Harley's face all over Suicide Squad #14!

Ok, so it's the much maligned DCnU Harley Quinn, but still..