Even Superheroes Sleep

My wife and I are parents. Both of us believe in the importance of reading so we have compiled a pretty nice library for our little bundle of joy. I believe in the importance of reading comics so I have been compiling the baby's first comic library.

Despite being a Marvel zombie, I have to admit, DC is winning when it comes to baby books. Marvel puts out is Superhero Squad version of MCU characters. These are stylized versions of the regular charters. These big headed heroes may be more kid friendly, but they feel like a gimmicky money grab. They are an added step before the normal heroes are introduced. Versions that will be grown out of and need to be replaced. DC, on the other hand, offers their full size versions right from the start.

This isn't to say that DC's board books don't have issues. They are great, but they make a few missteps. Take, Even Superheroes Sleep, a great nighttime read for your little tyke. Except the first pages of sleepytime super-folk is this,

Now you will go to sleep, or I will put you to sleep.

Now there is no original art in these books that I can tell. DC is just pulling from their catalog of art for these books. This is the best they could come up with for a children's book? You can't even see Bat's face! I mean really! They got a nice Denny O'Neil or Jim Aparo Batman for the cover. Then boom page one is Mike Mignola nightmare fuel!

It gets better as it goes on. DC includes a the trinity, Bats, Supes & Wonder Woman. The scan is pretty poor of WW, but I really like this page. Good robot fighting action.

Also included with their own page are Hawkman & Hawkgirl, Green Lantern, Flash, Supergirl, and Plastic Man. Plas, makes appearances in other books too. Kids no doubt like him, but he is not very prominent in the DCU. Maybe they'll bring back the Plastic-Man Comedy Adventure Show.

Maybe not

One other miscue is the lack of minorities in the book. I know folks love Hal, but John Stewart, no relation, will be the GL in the DCU movies, so why not drop him in there or Steel or Vibe or Black Lightning, or Katana or anyone. Ok Cyborg gets dropped in there on the big montage plash in the back.

What do you mean small?

This is just another missed opportunity though. "Super Heroes big and small.." should definitely featured the Atom and Apache Chief.

Ok I know I pointed out the failings a bit heavily, but I really like this book and the series of DC board books. We have 4 now and I want to get the Villians, Wonder Woman, & Busy Bodies books too. 

New DC Lego Sets

Like lots of people I grew up with Lego. I have many fond memories of my childhood Lego sets and the stories I told with them. My tastes, then as now, tended toward the sci/fi and fantasy realms. The Lego Space and Castle themes were my favs.

Over the years Lego developed some interesting marketing relationships and finally in 2002 they made the connection with super-heroes, releasing the first Spider-Man sets, tied in to the Spider-Man movie.

Twelve years later and Lego has featured a bunch of Marvel and DC comics sets. Their hugely successful Lego: Batman games opened them up to the rest of the DC Universe and really Lego has done a great job creating sets for kids that expose them to a good number of DC heroes as a low price.

This year features two fantastic sets from the DC Heroes line. One is the 76025 Green Lantern Vs Sinestro. Priced at $19.99 it is damn cheap in Lego terms. It comes with a Green Lantern, Sinestro, and Space Batman, who looks pretty robotic & I would probably use as an extra villain. There is a Green Lantern spaceship, which seems superfluous since GL can just fly in space, but maybe he needs it in the theme of the set where Sinestro has stolen his power ring battery. Also you can just have Bats fly the spaceship since I don't think he could withstand all the rigors of interstellar travel in that jet-pack suit. Kidding aside this set is pretty rad. Two heroes, a villian, and a jet for 20 bucks. Worth the price. You are saddled with another Batman fig, but GL and Sinestro more than make up for it.