Wave 2 - Superman Blue & Red

The last survivor of a dead world, Superman was jettisoned into space by his parents before his planet, Krypton, exploded. Finding his way to Earth, the young boy was taken in by a Kansas couple and given the name Clark Kent. As Clark grew up, he began to manifest extraordinary powers. In his search to discover his origins, Clark realized he was the Last Son of Krypton and that the Earth's yellow sun granted him immense power.

Deciding to use these powers for the benefit of the planet he now called home, Clark took on the name of Superman and became Earth's mightiest and most recognized hero. But for all his strength and abilities, Clark was not without equal. He lost his life to the super-powerful alien monster Doomsday, and the whole world mourned his passing.

As is often the case with heroes of Superman's caliber, his death was short-lived. But after Clark returned to the realm of the living something strange began to happen. His Kryptonian body started to evolve, as did his tremendous powers. Eventually, he became a being of pure energy and was forced to wear an 'electric' blue containment suit to help him maintain solid form.

To confound things, in a battle with Cyborg, Superman Blue was drained of his energy and scattered. He then... um... 'coalesced' back into his Superman Blue form, but the unexpected presence of a spectrum of red light caused him to split in two. So now there was an 'electric' Superman Blue and an 'electric' Superman Red. Each Superman believed he was the one true Superman and the two battled for superiority. In a tidy storyline conclusion, both Red and Blue Supermen collided and re-converged, somehow magically reforming the original Superman in flesh and blood with his original powers. How convenient!

In his 'electric' form, Superman displayed a whole different host of energy-related super powers such as the ability to travel at high speeds, teleport, phase through solid objects, discharge energy, emit light, etc. Of course, he still also had flight, super-strength, and invulnerability. One nice benefit of the electric phase was that when Superman turned back into Clark Kent, he was fully human.

Red

Blue

I can’t say I was terribly excited to get another (weird and random) version of Superman so soon in this line, but here he is. Both of him! The Superman Blue / Red electric versions were a blight from the 90s that I had hoped to someday forget ever happened. But here comes DCUC2 to immortalize this “iconic” era in Supes’ history in plastic form. Hurray!

Setting aside my aversion to this look for the ole Man of Steel Electricity, I gotta say that these are great figures. The paint on his little jagged costume details is incredibly tight and crisp, and the white covers the base color really well, with no bleed through at all.

But the neatest thing about these figs are the little electricity accessories. They are somewhat soft and pliable, and have a nice translucence to them. They just look really cool. The ones for the arms are removable, and the big shoulder blitz pieces fit in through a peg in the pack, so they could be removed too - if you wanted to tug hard enough. I also like that we got two different headsculpts here. Mattel easily could have just done a straight repaint, but they opted to differentiate the two figs a bit by giving Red a menacing, teeth-grinding look. Pretty cool.