POP! Heroes – New 52 Aquaman (PX Previews Exclusive)

Company: Funko

Series: Heroes DC Universe

Year: 2013 (?)

When I started collecting POPs back in 2013, I was pretty darn sure I didn’t want an Aquaman POP. He was pretty readily available, but he was easily the least desirable of the Justice League members available at the time. So I passed him up, thinking if I ever changed my mind I’d just pick him up then – after all, he was a core member of the Justice League, they’d keep him in production indefinitely, wouldn’t they?

Well, as anyone who’s since tried to track him down since can attest, the answer is “NO!!!”, accompanied by a swift blow to the testicles. Regular Aquaman came and went in a relative blink of an eye. The New 52 versions of him, GL, Flash, Supes, Batman and Wonder Woman showed up in Sydney stores back in about mid-2013 and sold through just as rapidly. Most of them started popping up again in the last few months – and Aquaman wasn’t among the restocks, either. I resigned myself to using a BvS Aquaman for my Justice League, as reviewed here. This was fine and all, but wasn’t ideal.

Yet it seemed that the chase wasn’t over; While visiting New York, I found myself in the Midtown Comics store near Times Square, and this guy was lurking on the shelves there. Huzzah!

Now, when most of the New 52 versions of some previously-released POPs came out, they reused the same sculpts and slightly altered the paint. Aquaman was different, though – gone was the Shazam head, replaced instead with a new hair sculpt. The body remains the same, though it’s been upgraded to a slightly different paint job – gold on the scales instead of orange.

And on the topic of paint, this one is pretty cleanly executed. Last year I bought the metallic version of Deathstroke, and I was disappointed to discover that his back hadn’t been painted properly, so I was afraid the same thing would happen with Aquaman’s scales here. But fortunately it’s been done properly here, as you can see in the back picture below.  

Aquaman didn’t exactly blow me away, but it is quite satisfying to have found him. The Jason Momoa figure is a great take on him (and really, quite a bit better in terms of sculpting and design) but there’s something appealing about having all of the classics too.