Batman: The Legend - Good Tribute, Mediocre Collectibility!

The Good: Interesting concept, Some genuinely nice artwork, Some of the sketches
The Bad: Overproduced, Many dull chase cards, Some ridiculously simplistic sketch cards, Virtual impossible collectibility
The Basics: Cryptozoic’s Batman: The Legend card set is a good idea for fans of the vigilante super hero, but only four of them will actually be able to complete the otherwise overproduced set.


When it comes to trading cards, there is an interesting balance between content and collectibility that makes one consider the product from the perspective of a fan of the source material and a collector of the trading cards. Unfortunately, sometimes a set does decent work to represent the source material, but it is utterly uncollectible. Sadly, the Batman: The Legend trading cards from Cryptozoic are a great example of a wonderful common set with chase cards that are generally unremarkable and virtually impossible collectibility issues.

Basics/ Set Composition

The Batman: The Legend trading cards were originally released in boxes with twenty-four packs, packs containing five cards each. Properly assembled, Batman: The Legend consists of 377 cards (or 563, if one were to collect the truest master set)! Featuring cards that span the full history of the Batman comic book, though it is more biased toward the last twenty years of the book, Batman: The Legend card set takes a long view of the Batman legacy. Properly assembled, the set features sixty-three common cards and 314 (or 500) bonus cards (all but four are available in the boxes of Batman: The Legend cards).

Common Cards

Batman: The Legend is a 63 card set that features both the heroes and villains of Batman comics. The common set cleverly includes both the mundane versions of the most significant characters (i.e. Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle) and the heroic versions of them (Batman, Catwoman). The sixty-two cards are focused on the essential characters of Batman and complete the set with one checklist card.

The common cards are one of the strongest aspects of the Batman: The Legacy set. The artwork is pretty wonderful, with images varying from some of the highest quality comic book art to cards that feature artwork like oil paintings. The images of iconic characters like The Joker, Riddler, Penguin and newer characters like Spoiler and The Court Of Owls are universally well-rendered. The Batman: The Legend set is all oriented in the portrait form for all 63 cards.

The writing for Batman: The Legend set is quite good. Fans of the DC Universe will not learn anything new or extraordinary by reading the backs of the cards, though they are clearly intended for fans of the New 52, with newer stories being included by things like the Court Of Owls. Fortunately, the set is not so myopic and it includes elements of classics like Knightfall with Azrael as Batman and Hush. The card backs are interesting for telling more casual fans about the obscure heroes and the villains they might not be familiar with, but they do not feature any incredible spoilers for recent stories or information that is not particularly revealing.

Chase Cards

Batman: The Legend set features more bonus cards than common cards, which is not at all uncommon for contemporary trading card sets. Batman: The Legend set features 314 chase cards (or 500 if one is a real stickler for such things!) which range from simple foil parallel cards to significantly rare sketch cards (each of which are entirely unique) and printing plate cards that are truly unique. In the packs, collectors can find 310 of the 314 bonus cards. The chase card breakdown is thus: 63 foil parallel cards, 9 Carnival Of Criminals, 9 Batmobile, 9 Batcave cards, 145 sketch, 3 Redemption cards and 62 (or, if one chooses to look at it that way, 248) printing plates. The most basic chase card set found in the packs are the foil parallel cards. The parallel cards replicate the common cards, but with mirrored accents. Some of the cards are extraordinary for how the foil enhances the image of the character the card portrays. However, given how dark some of the cards are, the foil accents are mundane on some of the cards. The backs of the foil parallel cards are identical to the common cards, so when going through the packs, one has to look at the front of each card. It takes about two cases to assemble a complete set of 63 foil parallel cards.

Found two cards per box are the Carnival Of Criminals, Batmobile and Batcave Mural cards, each of which is part of a nine-card bonus card set. The artwork for both sets is unique to that chase set and the Carnival Of Criminals posters are the best of the three chase sets. The Carnival Of Criminal poster cards replicate some of the most popular Batman villains, like The Joker, Poison Ivy, and Man-Bat as if they were advertising those characters as carnival attractions. These are creative cards that perfectly fit the feel of Batman. The Batmobile cards are nine cards that each feature an image of the Batmobile (some with Batman) and they have a very animated look to them. They are also the only landscape-oriented card set in the Batman The Legend set. The Batcave cards form a nine-card mural featuring the Batcave, complete with bats and the Batcomputer. While fairly essential to Batman, the Batcave makes for a pretty unimpressive trading card mural set.

To assemble a true master set, collectors usually want one of each card. While sketch cards are absolutely unique, the concept that most collectors go with is needing one from each artist to complete a set. Unfortunately, with Batman: The Legend set, there are 248 Printing Plate cards. Unlike sets like Rittenhouse Archives's progressive printers proof sets from things like their Women Of Star Trek: Voyager set (reviewed here!) where the card manufacturer used the proof cards that insured the printing process worked and made them available to collectors, Cryptozoic broke up the actual printing plates - Black, Blue, Magenta and Yellow - and inserted them in packs (one per case). No one collector can ever assemble a complete, true master set of Batman: The Legend cards with the printing plate cards, so it might be germane to consider that one printing plate from each card (regardless of its color variant) might be used to make as complete a set as possible. It is hard to love the collectibility of a set where only four people can ever assemble a true master set by those standards!

In addition to the printing plates cards, there are three exceptionally rare redemption cards for three different oversized sketch cards. After three years, only twelves of the existing forty-nine redemption cards remain to be redeemed. Many DC Comics trading card fans, like Star Trek card collectors, consider the redemption card a legitimate part of the set.

Batman: The Legend set is fleshed out with one hundred forty-five sketch cards of characters from Batman comic books. The sketch cards are produced by one hundred forty-five different artists and each one is absolutely unique, so assembling a master set requires one to track down one from each of the artists Cryptozoic hired for the project. The quality of the sketch cards varies greatly between fine-art quality colored sketches and cartoonish, animated versions of the significant DC Comics heroes and villains. While some of the art is incredible, like one might expect from Melike Acar, other sketch cards look cheap and simplistic.

Non-Box/Pack Cards

No matter how many packs or boxes of Batman: The Legend cards one opens, there are four cards collectors will never find there. Non-Sports Update Magazine released a promotional card for Batman: The Legend set. Similarly, the actual oversized sketch cards from the three different artists are only available by redeeming one of the redemption cards. Having only four cards that cannot be found in the cases is actually not bad at all.

Overall

I have long decried the use of redemption cards and the fact that the Batman: The Legend set features three ultra rare ones is absolutely terrible. The set did not hold much value outside the oversized sketch cards, which were predictably magnificent. Sadly, given the common sets can be found inexpensively and many of the pack-inserted sketch cards are pretty lousy, there is very little to get excited about when considering buying boxes of Batman: The Legend set.

For other DC Comics-based trading card sets reviewed by me, please check out:
Justice League
Super-Villains
Epic Battles
The Women Of Legend
The New 52

3/10

For other card reviews, please visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Interesting, But Expensive, Cryptozoic's Justice League Trading Cards Are Still Neat!

The Good: Good concept, Nice artwork, Some wonderful/creative bonus cards, No redemption cards!
The Bad: Some truly craptastic sketch cards, Virtually impossible to collect
The Basics: Despite being more expensive and having some lousy sketch artwork, Cryptozoic’s Justice League card set is worth collecting!


This week is a pretty DC-intensive week for me, whatwith finally catching up on some of my television and movie reviews and the imminent release of Suicide Squad this week. I'm starting the series of DC Comics-based reviews with a look at the brand new DC Comics Justice League trading cards from Cryptozoic. The Justice League cards illustrate well how Cryptozoic is evolving its product lines, by trying to capitalize on previous, successful, aspects of sets, while eliminating at least one element that made the set difficult for collectors to complete. While the Justice League cards are incredibly similar in their composition and collectibility to last year's Super-Villains trading cards, Cryptozoic learned from that prior set that the gold parallel set was a non-starter with collectors and eliminated it from the new set. Unfortunately, Cryptozoic enacted a price hike on their products at the wholesale level, so collectors will pay more for the Justice League trading cards . . . but get less than they did for the less-expensive Super-Villains set. That is pretty lousy.

That said, what is in the Justice League set is pretty decent and makes for a generally worthwhile set.

Basics/ Set Composition

The DC Comics Justice League trading cards were originally released in boxes with twenty-four packs, packs containing five cards each. Completely assembled, Justice League consists of 699 cards, but there are only four possible "master" sets that would contain 411 trading cards. While the set is heavy on incarnations of the Justice League from the New 52 reboot of the DC Comics universe, the Justice League cards include the Justice League Europe (from the 1990s), Justice League Task Force and the classic, Golden Age, Justice Society Of America in the set. Properly assembled, the set features sixty-three common cards and at least 348 bonus cards (which is the most reasonable way to count and include the unique printing plates cards) (all but eight of the cards are available in the boxes of Justice League cards).

Common Cards

Justice League is a 63 card set that features seven different incarnations of the Justice League and other major, mainstream DC Comics heroic teams. The common set is made up of seven nine-card murals, featuring artwork by Xermanico, who made the paintings for the seven murals. Xermanico's work features wonderful renditions of iconic characters like Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Black Canary, The Flash, and various Green Lanterns, as well as decent likenesses of the more obscure characters in the various Leagues, like Crimson Fox, Andrew Bennett and August General In Iron.

The common set looks wonderful, so long as one puts the nine cards in order so they are oriented correctly in a trading card sheet. The seven painting murals look similar to one another in form, with the teams in a general action shot, looking like they are ascending to the sky or descending onto criminals, depending on the team.

The writing for Justice League set is simplistic, but enough to help newbies differentiate between the eras and individuals on the cards. In addition to a small blurb about the character on the front, the backs of each common card lists the names of each character on the front of the card and the team to which they belong.

Chase Cards

The Justice League set features a quite a few more bonus cards than common cards, which is normal for trading card sets these days. Justice League set features, in the most practical way of assessing such things, 348 chase cards (though there are actually 636 bonus cards in the set) which range from simple foil parallel cards to significantly rare sketch cards to the 384 unique printing plates. In the packs, collectors can find 340 (or 628) of the 348 (or 636) bonus cards. The chase card breakdown includes: 6 Retro, 9 Madame Xanadu Tarot, 9 Model Sheet, 9 All-Star Comics Cover, 96 foil parallel cards, 9 Classic Batman TV On Cryptomium, 9 boxtopper cards, 6 Patch cards, 3 Totally Fabricated, 88 sketch cards (of various types) and 384 printing plates (though the most practical way to count them would probably be the 96 - one for each card front, regardless of the plate color). The most basic chase card set found in the packs are the foil parallel cards. The parallel cards replicate the common cards, Retro cards, Tarot cards, Model Sheet cards, and All-Star Comics cover cards but with mirrored accents. Fortunately, unlike the Super-Villains cards, the silver foil versions of the common cards are full-foil cards, so whites become silver and many of the common cards that are heavy in yellow are printed as gold foil cards! The bonus cards have backgrounds that are full foil and some of them - most notably the Retro cards - truly pop as a result of the foil reprint. The backs of the foil parallel cards are identical to the common cards, so when going through the packs, one has to look at the front of each card. It takes a whole case to assemble a complete set of 96 foil parallel cards.

Each box has a full common card set and the boxes also tended to have complete sets of Retro, Madame Xanadu Tarot, Model Sheet, and All-Star Comics cover cards. The Retro cards feature artwork reminiscent of promotional materials from the Super Friends television show for the main six Justice League characters, with beautiful solid-color backfrounds. These are nostalgia-inducing trading cards bound to appeal to those who grew up on Justice League cartoons from the 1980s. The Model Sheet cards are nine cards, each featuring a main character with a front and back reference and color blocks, as if they were sheets for the cartoon series. These, too, are very retro in their appearance and the backs reflect how iconic the characters from that incarnation of the Justice League truly were. The Madame Xanadu Taro cards are an interesting concept, but given how Justice League Dark failed to resonate with readers, the subject concept is a bit obscure. The nine cards have somewhat simplistic renderings of major DC Comics heroes with tarot card text, reminiscent of the major event/character cards in a tarot deck. So, Martian Manhunter (for example) appears in the set as The Alien. This might be the only real chase set dud by concept. The All-Star Comics cover cards feature the actual cover art from nine of the earliest comic books to feature the Justice Society Of America.

One per box was one of nine Batman Classic TV Series Cryptomium Reissue card. Cryptozoic replicated classic Batman TV series cards on their thicker Cryptomium foil cardstock and they remade the campy into cool and collectible cards. The foil and bright color cards make for a surprisingly distinctive chase, even if the text on the back is a bit boring (the backs simply state that it is a replica of a classic trading card, as opposed to replicating whatever text was on those original classic trading cards.

One per box is an oversized blank variant cover boxtopper. Each of the boxtoppers comes sealed in its own toploader and while the concept is cool - variant covers are awesome - Cryptozoic was basically mimicking its content from Super-Villains. As a result, these largely white covers basically feature the name of the primary comic book on it and, let's face it, a white card with "Wonder Woman" or "Aquaman" written on it at the top is hardly a compelling trading card.

The Totally Fabricated cards are a “hit or miss” concept card for fans of the DC Universe heroes. Costume cards are very popular trading cards these days and as the subjects of Justice League set are comic book characters, there would seem to be no costume cards that could be produced for the set. Cryptozoic did not let that stop them. Instead, they produced the “Totally Fabricated” bonus cards and Justice League set has three such cards in the boxes and packs. Found one in every 192 packs, Justice League set features admittedly fake fabric swatches (not really) from the costumes of Zatanna (no fishnets that I've seen!), Hawkman (awesome foil card!) and Firestorm. The Totally Fabricated cards are a neat idea and they are executed incredibly well, especially the foil-material Hawkman's card. Cryptozoic, to its credit, did not overproduce the Totally Fabricated cards, though the concept seems pretty played out at this point.

In addition to the Totally Fabricated cards, there are six patch cards that replicate the symbols of six New 52 Justice League heroes (no Batman, but there is are Aquaman and Cyborg patches!). The six patch cards were found about three per case and are like costume cards. This is a neat idea that is familiar now to fans of many varied genre-themed trading cards and Cryptozoic continues the tradition well in Justice League set.

Justice League set is fleshed out with eighty-eight sketch cards of heroes of the DC Universe. The sketch cards are produced by more than seventy different artists in four different configurations and each one is absolutely unique, so assembling a master set requires one to track down one from each type from each artist. Cryptozoic, very nicely, included a full guide to which artists produced which of the four types of sketch cards. The Justice League set includes traditional sketch cards, Tarot sketch cards, oversized Tarot sketch cards (which appear to be the rarest, found only one in every three or four cases!) and Hall Of Justice die-cut sketch cards. The quality of the sketch cards varies greatly between fine-art quality colored sketches and cartoonish, animated versions of the significant DC Comics heroes. The very first card I pulled was an absolutely terrible rendition of Frankenstein (Agent Of S.H.A.D.E.), but I pulled two Wonder Woman sketches that where absolutely immaculate! The Tarot variations, to their credit, feature entirely recognizable main characters, which is nice as the standard sketch I pulled of Crimson Fox forced me to look the character up to identify! The oversized Tarot sketch cards were produced by some of the best artists and I've not seen as many duds for those ultra-rare sketches. There are also Hall Of Justice sketch cards found one per case. The die-cut cards are in the shape of the Justice League's Headquarters and feature drawings of heroes or (sometimes, entire teams!) as well. The die-cut sketch cards are an intriguing idea, but more than with the prior DC Comics set, it seems like artists found the die-cut cards stifling to work with and turned them on their sides to render the characters, which makes the gimmick seem . . . more like a gimmick than a piece of quality artwork.

To assemble a true master set, collectors usually want one of each card. While sketch cards are absolutely unique, the concept that most collectors go with is needing one from each artist to complete a set. Unfortunately, with Justice League set, there are 384 Printing Plate cards. Unlike sets like Rittenhouse Archives's progressive printers proof sets from things like their Women Of Star Trek: Voyager set (reviewed here!) where the card manufacturer used the proof cards that insured the printing process worked and made them available to collectors, Cryptozoic broke up the actual printing plates - Black, Blue, Magenta and Yellow - and inserted them in packs (one per case). No one collector can ever assemble a complete, true master set of Justice League cards with the printing plate cards, so it might be germane to consider that one printing plate from each card (regardless of its color variant) might be used to make as complete a set as possible. It is hard to love the collectibility of a set where only four people can ever assemble a true master set by those standards!

Non-Box/Pack Cards

No matter how many packs or boxes of Justice League cards one opens, there are eight cards collectors will never find there. Non-Sports Update Magazine released seven different promotional cards for the Justice League set. Unlike prior sets, six of the promotional cards replicate chase cards, which makes them more inherently valuable than most Cryptozoic promotional cards!

The other card that cannot be found in any of the boxes or packs is the Green Arrow Totally Fabricated card. That card is only found in the binders of Justice League cards. Having only eight cards that cannot be found in the cases is actually pretty decent for collectors.

Overall

While, as a collector, I tend to loathe sets that are impossible to make master sets from, Cryptozoic's Justice League set is one of the better sets to include things like printing plates. As a fan of the DC Universe, there is a lot to love in the Justice League set . . . it's unfortunate that Cryptozoic charged so much for the otherwise cool cards!

This is a set of trading cards I sell in my online store! Please check out my current inventory of these cards at Justice League Inventory Page!

For other DC Comics-based trading card sets reviewed by me, please check out:
Super-Villains
Epic Battles
The Women Of Legend
The New 52

6.5/10

For other card reviews, please visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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For The One, For The Twenty-Five, For The Rest Of Us: The DC Comics Super-Villains Trading Cards

The Good: Cool subject, Some awesome artwork, Some wonderful/creative bonus cards, No redemption cards!
The Bad: Virtually impossible to collect
The Basics: Cryptozoic’s The Super-Villains card set is great . . . unless one tries to collect it, when it becomes an impossible, mind-numbing boondoggle!


As my small business has been growing and last week, I hit a very cool milestone for my business. I've been branching out into non-Star Trek trading cards over the past year and last week, Cryptozoic came out with a new DC Comics-themed trading card set and since I started dealing in DC Comics trading cards, this was the first set of such cards that I got in stock the first week they were out. The set is DC Comics Super-Villains trading cards. I was super-excited about the Super-Villains trading cards and my glee for them only rose when I got the cases of cards in and discovered that the stated odds of the various chase cards in this set were less than the actual odds of getting the chase cards. In other words, the cases were loaded with more chase cards than the odds said there should be.

But then, I started to assemble a set and I found it was absolutely impossible. As of now, there is no collector in the world who will have a true, complete, master set of DC Comics Super-Villains trading cards and that is because Cryptozoic created a set that was inherently uncollectable. Creating a set with 360 unique cards found in packs . . . on top of multiple types of sketch cards with undetermined numbers for rarity and artists and Cryptozoic manages to completely suck the joy out of collecting trading cards with the Super-Villains set!

Basics/ Set Composition

The DC Comics The Super-Villains trading cards were originally released in boxes with twenty-four packs, packs containing five cards each. Properly assembled, the Super-Villains consists of 870 cards, but there are only twenty-five possible "master" sets now that would contain about 510 trading cards. Featuring cards that span the recent DC Universe and the New 52 Universe, the Super-Villains card set is written (mostly) as a New-52 Universe set that focuses on the Forever Evil crossover event that gave the adversaries of the DC Universe a main storyline. Properly assembled, the set features sixty-three common cards and at least 447 bonus cards (not counting the 360 printing plate cards) (all but two of the cards are available in the boxes of Super-Villains cards).

Common Cards

The Super-Villains is a 63 card set that features both the most popular villains of the DC Comics Universe and the adversaries that had a significant presence in the Forever Evil storyline. The common set has an introductory card, sixty-one cards with many of the most of the recognizable adversaries of DC Comics universe (characters like Lex Luthor, Harley Quinn, and Captain Cold . . . but with some notable absences like Doctor Psycho and Parralax), most of whom are in their “New 52” renderings and one checklist card.

The common cards are an unfortunate mixed bag. The artwork is of a generally high-quality (though the cartoonish version of Parasite was disturbing compared to his usual nightmarish version), but there are a couple of random cards that are landscape-oriented instead of portrait-oriented. So, in the middle of a page, there are cards like the one for Clayface that are oriented completely off from the rest of the page.

The writing for the Super-Villains set is very simple. The set is very much intended for the fans of the broad DC Comics Universe. Some of the cards, like Professor Pyg, do not reference - even obliquely - which corner of the DC Universe they come from (Professor Pyg's artwork and motivation were disgusting enough for me to infer he was a Batman villain and, as it turns out, he is!). In general, the cards are not terribly enlightening, though most have at least one interesting factoid to them - Doomsday has Kryptonian origins, Hush's mundane name and knowledge of Bruce Wayne's relationship to Batman. The cards do not have a wealth of information - most mention a super power, an adversary OR the villain's origin.

Chase Cards

The Super-Villains set features a great deal more bonus cards than common cards, which is not at all uncommon for contemporary trading card sets. The Super-Villains set features at least 447 chase cards (though there are actually at least 807 bonus cards in the set) which range from simple foil parallel cards to significantly rare sketch cards to the 360 unique printing plates. In the packs, collectors can find 805 of the 807 bonus cards. The chase card breakdown is thus: 3 Sirens, 6 Crime Syndicate, 9 Noir, 9 Forever Evil, 90 foil parallel cards, 90 gold parallel cards, 9 Classic Batman TV On Cryptomium, 9 boxtopper cards, 6 Patch cards, 3 Totally Fabricated, 108 sketch cards, 103 Hall Of Doom Sketch cards and 360 printing plates. The most basic chase card set found in the packs are the foil parallel cards. The parallel cards replicate the common cards, Sirens cards, Crime Syndicate cards, Noir cards, and Forever Evil cards but with mirrored accents. Unfortunately, the silver foil versions of the common cards are essentially the common cards with silver foil for the lettering. The bonus cards have backgrounds that are full foil. The backs of the foil parallel cards are identical to the common cards, so when going through the packs, one has to look at the front of each card. It takes about a case to assemble a complete set of 90 foil parallel cards.

Each box has a full common card set and the boxes also tended to have complete sets of Sirens, Crime Syndicate, Noir, and Forever Evil cards. The Sirens cards are a tryptic that features the three Gotham City Sirens - Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman. The artwork is fine, the writing it all right, but the Sirens cards are entirely unremarkable (accented by how cool the foil parallel versions look!). Similarly, the Crime Syndicate cards are a six-card montage featuring the Earth-3 villains from the Crime Syndicate that came into the normal DC Comics Universe to try to take over during the Forever Evil event. They are generally unremarkable and the character summaries on the backs are fairly similar to those for the common cards . . . though the artwork is impressive. The Noir cards are a neat concept; nine cards that are black and white drawings of popular villains (mostly from Batman) rendered to accent their fear-inspiring qualities. The artwork on these are hit or miss (Bane is virtually unrecognizable, Doomsday looks lethal), but this is a neat concept. The Forever Evil cards feature the Villains Month covers for the most popular (and Deadshot) villains who took over the various comic books. The comic book cover cards are a great idea and the Forever Evil ones fit the Super-Villains set perfectly with bright colored replica covers on the front with details about the relevant issues on the back!

One per box was one of nine Batman Classic TV Series Cryptomium Reissue card. Cryptozoic replicated classic Batman TV series cards on their thicker Cryptomium foil cardstock and they remade the campy into cool and collectible cards. The foil and bright color cards make for a surprisingly distinctive chase, even if the text on the back is a bit boring (the backs simply state that it is a replica of a classic trading card, as opposed to replicating whatever text was on those original classic trading cards.

One per box is an oversized Forever Evil variant cover boxtopper. Each of the boxtoppers comes sealed in its own toploader and while the concept is cool - variant covers are awesome - Cryptozoic picked the least interesting possible iteration of the concept. For Villains Month, DC Comics did various variant covers, including lenticular covers! Cryptozoic replicated the blank cover variant for the boxtoppers. These largely white covers basically feature the name of the primary comic book with the name of the villain "painted" over it. The boxtopper set is very white and bland, but does justice to the source material.

One in every other box is a Gold Parallel Card for any of the ninety common and basic chase cards. The common set is replicated with silver foil for the character name and a gold or coppery color foil for the set name on the front of the card. The gold parallel cards for the chase cards have a coppery foil background that looks awesome. All of the gold cards have a gold foil stamped collector's number on the back of each card. Each card is individually numbered out of 25, so one presumes there are at least 25 master sets (not including the printing plates).

The Totally Fabricated cards are a “hit or miss” concept card for fans of the DC Universe villains. Costume cards are immensely popular trading cards these days and as the subjects of the Super-Villains set are comic book characters, there would seem to be no costume cards that could be produced for the set. Cryptozoic did not let that stop them. Instead, they produced the “Totally Fabricated” bonus cards and the Super-Villains set has three such cards in the boxes and packs. Found one in every 192 packs, the Super-Villains set features admittedly fake fabric swatches (not really) from the costumes of Bane, Deathstroke, and Lex Luthor. The Totally Fabricated cards are a neat idea and they are executed incredibly well, especially the foil-material Lex Luthor card. Cryptozoic, to its credit, did not overproduce the Totally Fabricated cards.

In addition to the Totally Fabricated cards, there are six patch cards that replicate the symbols of the six main villains from the Crime Syndicate. The six patch cards were found about three per case and are like costume cards. This is a neat idea that is familiar now to fans of many varied genre-themed trading cards and Cryptozoic continues the tradition well in the Super-Villains set.

The Super-Villains set is fleshed out with one hundred eight sketch cards of villains of the DC Universe. The sketch cards are produced by one hundred eight different artists and each one is absolutely unique, so assembling a master set requires one to track down one from each of the one hundred eight artists Cryptozoic hired for the project. The quality of the sketch cards varies greatly between fine-art quality colored sketches and cartoonish, animated versions of the significant DC Comics villains.

There are also Hall Of Doom sketch cards found one per case. The die-cut cards are in the shape of the Legion Of Doom's Headquarters and feature drawings of villains as well. According to Cryptozoic, all but about five of the artists produced Hall Of Doom sketch cards before the manufacturer ran out of the special shaped cards.

To assembled a true master set, collectors usually want one of each card. While sketch cards are absolutely unique, the concept that most collectors go with is needing one from each artist to complete a set. Unfortunately, with the Super-Villains set, there are 360 Printing Plate cards. Unlike sets like Rittenhouse Archives's progressive printers proof sets from things like their Women Of Star Trek: Voyager set (reviewed here!) where the card manufacturer used the proof cards that insured the printing process worked and made them available to collectors, Cryptozoic broke up the actual printing plates - Black, Blue, Magenta and Yellow - and inserted them in packs (one or two per case). I, personally, know of two that are in hands to two different collectors . . . which means that no one collector can ever assemble a complete, true master set of the Super-Villains cards any longer. The idea of making a set of 360 truly unique cards is troubling from a collecting point of view. The printing plates are neat and the backs direct fans to a Cryptozoic site that details the concept behind printing plates and that's cool for fans, even if they are entirely uncollectible.

Non-Box/Pack Cards

No matter how many packs or boxes of Super-Villains cards one opens, there are two cards collectors will never find there. Non-Sports Update Magazine released a promotional card for the Super-Villains set. The other card that cannot be found in any of the boxes or packs is the Joker Totally Fabricated card. That card is only found in the binders of the Super-Villains cards. Having only two cards that cannot be found in the cases is actually pretty awesome, especially for a Cryptozoic release.

Overall

I have long decried the use of redemption cards, so the fact that the Super-Villains set does not have any is pretty awesome. Unfortunately, replacing them with 360 unique cards (progressive printers proofs would have been a much kinder way to reward collectors than the 1/1 printing plates that make it impossible to assemble a true master set. Between that and the problems in the common set and boring basic chase, the set is easily robbed of perfection, though it is a fun product to break boxes of.

This is a set of trading cards I sell in my online store! Please check out my current inventory of these cards at The Super-Villains Inventory Page!

For other DC Comics-based trading card sets reviewed by me, please check out:
Epic Battles
The Women Of Legend
The New 52

7/10

For other card reviews, please visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Making Parallels Cool Again: Cryptozoic DC Comics Epic Battles Cards Rock!

The Good: Very cool concept, Some genuinely nice artwork, Some wonderful/creative bonus cards, Good chase cards, Inventive parallel cards
The Bad: Redemption cards, Parallels are still parallels . . .
The Basics: Cryptozoic’s Epic Battles card set is limited, well-executed and awesome; taking conceptual risks that pay off!


When it comes to trading cards, I have pretty much had my fill of parallel cards. For those not "in the know" with modern trading cards, many of the major trading card releases have the common set of trading cards replicated as bonus cards. Those replications range from foil lettering accents to different color foil backgrounds and/or borders to different renditions of the card (like making a regular or foil chase card into a sticker). I was pretty tired of parallel cards before I picked up a case of Cryptozoic's Epic Battles trading cards.

With the one set, which - ironically - is not too different from any number of comic book-themed trading cards that had parallel cards I was bored with, Cryptozoic managed to reinvigorate my love of trading cards and understand the appeal of the parallel cards from a collector's point of view! The Epic Battles set is an impressive set that takes a few creative risks . . . and they pay off for the most part!

Basics/ Set Composition

The DC Comics Epic Battles trading cards were originally released in boxes with twenty packs, packs containing five cards each. Properly assembled, Epic Battles consists of 428 (429 for true completionists) cards! Featuring cards that span the last thirty years of DC Comics, the Epic Battles set introduced Cryptozoic's new foil-style card, which they are calling Cryptomium. Properly assembled, the set features sixty-three common cards and 366 bonus cards (all but three are available in the boxes of Epic Battles cards). Outside the Redemption card (and three non-box cards), one supposes it would be possible to create a master set with eighty-one boxes (if everything broke absolutely perfectly).

Common Cards

Epic Battles is a 63 card set that features seven of the biggest crossover events in the DC Universe. From Crisis On Infinite Earths to Trinity War, the common set is made up of seven nine-card murals that Cryptozoic intended to encapsulate the biggest themes or battles of the crossover event it depicts. The common card set is created on thick, foil cards with a surprisingly smooth glossy coating. These cards are more silver foil than any of the parallel counterparts and they look gorgeous!

The common cards are all oriented in a landscape orientation, so each of the nine-card murals comes out looking fine and oriented the same way. The artwork is surprisingly variable. Each event has consistent artwork (each nine-card panel was done by a single artist), but the artwork for the different events is drastically different. For Blackest Night the artwork looks more distorted and horrific; Panic In The Sky is basically an oil painting broken into nine pieces. The inconsistency is somewhat irksome; Bloodlines looks like a comic strip, while Flashpoint is presented in a marginally more sophisticated way.

The writing for Epic Battles set is good-enough. Fans of the DC Universe will not learn anything new by reading the backs of the cards. The cards still attempt to remain focused on the important characters of the DC Universe, so the backs list the two or three characters that the front contains.

Chase Cards

Epic Battles set features more bonus cards than common cards, which is not at all uncommon for contemporary trading card sets. Epic Battles set features 366 chase cards which range from folding, foil, and collage cards to various foil parallel cards to significantly rare sketch cards (each of which are entirely unique). In the packs, collectors can find 363 of the 366 bonus cards. The chase card breakdown is thus: 8 Bombshell fold-out cards, 9 Bam! cards, 9 Make Believe cards, 162 foil parallel cards, 81 metal parallel cards, 3 Totally Fabricated, 81 sketch and 1 Redemption cards.

The most basic chase card set found in the packs are the Bombshell, BAM! and Make Believe cards. The three most common chase sets are found two cards per box. The Bombshell cards form an eight-card set, while the BAM! and Make Believe cards are nine-card sets each. The artwork for the BAM! and Make Believe sets are unique to the Epic Battles set, while the Bombshell cards look virtually identical to the images DC Comics has been using to promote their new Bombshells statues. The Bombshell set is neat, with each of the eight cards folding out to reveal the full pin-up girl image of various DC Comics women reimagined as pin-ups. This set is odd in that it contains only eight cards . . . and Catwoman is not one of them (of all the DC Universe women outside Black Canary, none seems like they would lend themselves to being reimagined as a classic pin-up as Catwoman, so her absence is noticeable!). The other two chase sets seem like they are designed to appeal to a youthful sensibility (which is odd for a conflict-themed set of cards). The BAM! cards feature artwork that is simplified and cartoonish, like a Chibi or Anime version of the some of the most popular DC Comics heroes (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash . . . but not Green Lantern) and villains (all from Batman - The Joker, Bane, and Harley Quinn). The BAM! cards are reminiscent of the Katie Cook cards from Cryptozoic's Women Of Legend trading card set. The Make Believe set is an odd concept set that has the DC Comics characters reimagined as children playing on a playground. The artwork is fine and the character choices are generally good (albeit hilarious in that even the set's artist couldn't come up with a recognizable villain to play opposite Hawkman!), but it is very much a concept set that one has to really buy into to love the bonus set.

The first parallel set is a reimagining of the BAM! cards. The BAM! cards are replicated as sticker cards, one per box. The foil and perspective-based backgrounds are replaced with bright colors and the characters can be removed from the backing as stickers! This is a perfect example of form fitting style and the sticker cards are pretty cool!

The common cards, BAM!, and Make Believe sets are then replicated as parallel cards for three distinct sets. There are copper foil replications of each of the cards (found one every five packs), gold parallels that are limited to 75 and metal parallels that are found only one per box. The metal parallels are actually printed on metal plates and Cryptozoic smartly put them in soft plastic toploaders inside each of the packs! The copper parallel cards are neat because they have increased contrast over the common cards. The gold cards are individually stamped on the back with unique collector's numbers. The metal cards are just plain cool!

The Totally Fabricated cards are a “hit or miss” concept card for fans of the DC Universe hero. Costume cards are immensely popular trading cards these days and as the subjects of Epic Battles set are comic book characters, there would seem to be no costume cards that could be produced for the set. Cryptozoic did not let that stop them. Instead, they produced the “Totally Fabricated” bonus cards and Epic Battles set has three such cards in the boxes and packs. Found one in every six boxes, Epic Battles set features admittedly fake fabric swatches (not really) from the costumes of The Flash, Green Lantern, and Harley Quinn. I think the Totally Fabricated cards are a neat idea and they are executed incredibly well. Cryptozoic, to its credit, did not overproduce the Totally Fabricated cards and they continued the form and numbering from the same subset from the Women Of Legend set.

In addition to the Totally Fabricated cards, there is an exceptionally rare redemption card for a pieces of original artwork from the comic books that were subjects of the Epic Battles set. With only 12 redemption cards in the entire set, this is a virtually impossible card to find and redeeming them for the artwork is very much geared toward comic book fans as opposed to trading card collectors.

The Epic Battles set is fleshed out with eighty-one sketch cards of significant battles, heroes and villains from the DC Universe. The sketch cards are produced by eighty-one different artists and each one is absolutely unique, so assembling a master set requires one to track down one from each of the eighty-one artists Cryptozoic hired for the project. The quality of the sketch cards is more consistently high than with many of the other Cryptozoic sets. Some, like the two-card panel sketch card sets by Chris Meeks, really raise the bar for sketch cards. Out of a case of twelve, I pulled only one real dud (another that I was not fond of, but it is more the artist's style that I'm not a fan of - he executed that style quite well!), with the other ten being absolutely awesome.

Non-Box/Pack Cards

No matter how many packs or boxes of Epic Battles cards one opens, there are three cards collectors will never find there. Non-Sports Update Magazine released a promotional card for Epic Battles set. At the Philly Non-Sport card show, Cryptozoic presented a replica of the first promo card on their Cryptomium cardstock. The other card that cannot be found in any of the boxes or packs is the foil card from the binder. That card is only found in the binders of Epic Battles cards. Having only three cards that cannot be found in the cases is actually not bad at all.

Overall

It really takes something for me to highly praise a set with so many parallel cards, but Epic Battles makes them look cool and feel different from the common set. The flip side is that it takes quite a bit for one of the key points to turn into a detraction for me. Blackest Night got me into reading graphic novels and the nine-card Blackest Night collage is one of the lesser portions of this set! But for those who love the big crossover events, Epic Battles is a great set. The lack of crossovers like Infinite Crisis, Brightest Day or Injustice virtually promises an Epic Battles 2 set and given the success and collectibility of Epic Battles that would be a pretty amazing set, too!

This is a set of trading cards I sell in my online store! Please check out my current inventory of these cards at Epic Battles Inventory Page!

This set includes source material from:
Crisis On Infinite Earths
Blackest Night
Flashpoint

For other artwork-based trading card sets reviewed by me, please check out:
DC Women Of Legends
The New 52
Rittenhouse Archives Star Trek The Original Series Portfolio Prints

9/10

For other card reviews, please visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Big, Bloated, Broken, Cool: The Tough Call Of Cryptozoic’s The New 52 Trading Card Set!

The Good: Decent subject matter, Some very cool sketch cards
The Bad: Exceptionally expensive to collect, Overproduced, Damaged cards, Some esoteric choices in the bonus set, Some ridiculously simplistic sketch cards.
The Basics: Cryptozoic’s The New 52s card set makes for a big start to Cryptozoic’s possession of the DC Comics license, but their execution of the material is not ideal.


I was not actively collecting or dealing trading cards when Cryptozoic rose to prominence. While I was, essentially, “out of the game,” the trading card company Inkworks completely collapsed and Cryptozoic rushed in to fill the niche they left. Cryptozoic’s meteoric rise in the trading card industry allowed the company to secure some potentially lucrative licenses. The most personally significant to me (given my card collecting habits, past and future) is that Cryptozoic won the license to DC Comics. While I have recently reviewed the Women Of Legend set (reviewed here!), I finally managed to get my hands on a reasonably priced case of their first DC Comics-based release, The New 52.

Unfortunately, Cryptozoic’s first DC Comics-based trading card set is fraught with problems. The common cards had a production error that left an average of one card per pack damaged and the sketch cards were so numerous that it is virtually impossible to assemble a true master set of these cards! That said, some of the cards are actually very neat and the set illustrates a decent potential for Cryptozoic.

Basics/ Set Composition

The DC Comics The New 52 trading cards were originally released in boxes with twenty-four packs, packs containing five cards each. Properly assembled, the New 52 consists of 296 cards! Featuring cards that balance classic, recognizable characters in their New 52 Universe form and new characters and superhero teams unique to The New 52, the New 52 card set is already a good historical cart collection (several of the cards feature titles that have already been cancelled!). Properly assembled, the set features sixty-two common cards and 234 bonus cards (all but ten are available in the boxes of New 52 cards).

Common Cards

The New 52 is a 62 card set that features both characters and teams of characters in the New 52. As a result, cards that feature Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Catwoman are mixed in with cards that detail the characters of Justice League Dark, Stormwatch, Grifter, and Mirror. The sixty-two card set is made up of a title card introducing the New 52, sixty character cards and a checklist card.

The common cards are generally good, though not all of it is unique to the set. The Flash, for example, is just a copy of the cover of Move Along (reviewed here!). The artwork ranges from cards that look like comic book art (like the cards for Wonder Woman and Batman) and almost photo-realistic fine art cards, like the cards for Harley Quinn and Swamp Thing. The contrast in the cards’ quality borders on the ridiculous (the card for White Rabbit, for example, might have been quasi-pornographic if the artwork was not so cartoonish!).

Unfortunately, the arts quality is not the only issue. Cards in this set seemed to have been packed into their packs damaged. Usually the top card in each pack had a scratch or pressure mark, as if it were pressed and a seam down the front center was created as they went into the packs. That makes the average pack unfortunately overpriced as they have only 4 cards that are in collectible condition.

The writing for the New 52 set is good-enough. Fans of the DC Universe will not learn anything new or extraordinary by reading the backs of the cards, though they are clearly intended for fans of the New 52 (Wonder Woman, for example, is mentioned to be the daughter of Hippolyta and Zeus). The card backs are interesting for telling more casual fans about the obscure heroes like Grifter, Massacre and Starling.

Chase Cards

The New 52 set features an insanely greater number of bonus cards than common cards, though it is not uncommon these days for common sets to have vastly fewer cards than bonus cards. The New 52 set features 234 chase cards which range from simple foil parallel cards to exceedingly rare sketch cards (each of which are entirely unique). In the packs, collectors can find 224 of the 234 bonus cards. The chase card breakdown is thus: 62 foil parallel cards, 9 Lantern Die-Cut cards, 9 Work In Progress lenticular cards, 143 sketch and 1 Redemption cards. The most basic chase card set found in the packs are the foil parallel cards. The parallel cards replicate the common cards, but with mirrored accents. Some of the cards are extraordinary for how the foil enhances the image of the character the card portrays. The backs of the foil parallel cards are identical to the common cards, so when going through the packs, one has to look at the front of each card. It takes about a case to assemble a complete set of 62 foil parallel cards.

Found two cards per box are the Lantern Die-Cut and Work In Progress lenticular cards, each of which is part of a nine-card bonus card set. The artwork for both sets is unique to that chase set and the choices for both sets are somewhat esoteric. The Lantern cards focus on the Green Lantern corner of the DC Universe (an irony because the Green Lantern storyline actually continued unbroken from the original to New 52 universes!). The cards are die cut to be the general shape of a Lantern Battery (so they have curved sides) and they are very cool foil cards. However, the choices for the Lanterns are odd. John Stewart, Hal Jordan and Kilowog each get a card, so the set is weighted toward the Green Lanterns. There are no cards for Guy Gardner or Kyle Rayner. This set’s weirdness is accented by the fact that the other major Corps’ are represented – Sinestro, Larfleeze, Atrocitus, Saint Walker, and Star Sapphire each get a card. There is not a card for Indigo-1, but there is one for Black Hand and the Black Lantern Corps, which is a strange creative decision.

The Work In Progress Lenticular cards feature sketches of some of the most popular DC Comics characters in their uncolored form. Then, when one moves the card, they get shaded in until they are completely recognizable. This is an interesting set, though the cards are not exceptional and they do not appear to be in any meaningful order.

In the entire run of the New 52 cards, there were six Redemption cards for oversized artwork. While there were other redemption cards for sketch cards, the artists whose works were featured in redemption cards seemed to also have done standard-sized sketch cards within the packs.

The New 52 set is fleshed out with one hundred forty-three (!) sketch cards of characters and teams from the New 52 DC Universe. The sketch cards are produced by 143 different artists and each one is absolutely unique, so assembling a master set requires one to track down one from each of the one hundred forty-three artists Cryptozoic hired for the project. The quality of the sketch cards varies greatly between fine-art quality colored sketches and cartoonish, animated versions of the significant DC Comics heroes and villains.

Non-Box/Pack Cards

No matter how many packs or boxes of New 52 cards one opens, there are ten cards collectors will never find there. There was a promotional card for the New 52 set released at the San Diego Comic Con in 2012. The other cards that cannot be found in any of the boxes or packs are the binder exclusive promo cards. Those cards are only found in the binders of the New 52s cards. Given that most of the cards that cannot be found in boxes can be found in a single binder makes The New 52 one of the few sets of cards I’ve found in recent years that are actually easy to assemble with only boxes.

Overall

Outside the damage and the daunting idea of having to open 143 boxes (that’s a dozen cases!) of cards just to complete a true master set makes it hard to genuinely endorse the New 52 set. Cryptozoic proves with the New 52 that they can be ambitious, but unfortunately that ambition makes for a set that is not at all collector-friendly to collect.

This is a set of trading cards I sell in my online store! Please check out my current inventory of these cards at The New 52 Inventory Page!

For other artwork-based trading card sets reviewed by me, please check out:
SkyBox Star Trek Master Series
SkyBox Star Trek 1994 Master Series
Rittenhouse Archives Star Trek The Original Series Portfolio Prints

4/10

For other trading card reviews, please visit my Trading Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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My First Full Cryptozoic Set: DC Comics The Women Of Legends Is Unfortunately Erratic!

The Good: Interesting concept, Some genuinely nice artwork, Some wonderful/creative bonus cards
The Bad: Overproduced, Some dull chase cards, Some ridiculously simplistic sketch cards.
The Basics: Cryptozoic’s The Women Of Legends card set is a decent concept for a trading card set, though it is executed in an underwhelming way for card collectors and (especially) fans of DC Comics.


The last month of my life has been a wonderful turnaround for me. I went from working a terrible job that I absolutely loathed, that underpaid me and undervalued me and worked me to the bone to completely revitalizing my business as a trading card dealer. It has been a wonderful change for my family and I and it has left me in a place to take advantage of a number of great deals that appear before me. One of the deals I was able to enjoy as a result of having more investment capital was the 2013 Cryptozoic release for DC Comics, known as The Women Of Legend trading cards. I was excited about the Women Of Legend trading cards because – for me – it represented the ability to branch out beyond the Star Trek cards I have long collected and sold. While I have had a few random packs of Cryptozoic cards cross my path before now, the Women Of Legend set was the first Cryptozoic product that I have broken down by the case. Sadly, it was a less incredible experience than I hoped it would be as a fan of the DC Comics universe.

Basics/ Set Composition

The DC Comics The Women Of Legend trading cards were originally released in boxes with twenty-four packs, packs containing five cards each. Properly assembled, the Women Of Legend consists of 240 cards! Featuring cards that span the recent DC Universe and the New 52 Universe, the Women Of Legend card set is written (mostly) as a New-52 Universe set that focuses on the Women of the DC Universe. Properly assembled, the set features sixty-three common cards and 177 bonus cards (all but three are available in the boxes of Women Of Legend cards).

Common Cards

The Women Of Legend is a 63 card set that features both the most popular women of the DC Comics Universe and the significant team-ups between those characters. The common set has an introductory card with the most recognizable women of DC (Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Catwoman, etc.) in their “New 52” renderings, 46 cards featuring significant women from the DC Universe, 15 cards that feature significant pairings of those heroines and one checklist card.

The common cards are an unfortunate mixed bag. The artwork varies between incredible renderings, like the title card and the nightmarish painting of Harley Quinn (card 17) and cards that have ridiculous, cartoon versions of the characters (like cards 18 and 19, of Terra and Hawkgirl). While the Women Of Legend set is all oriented in the portrait form for all 63 cards, the quality and subjects vary incredible amounts. There is a cartoonish version of Saturn Girl, an obscure heroine from the Legion Of Super-Heroes (set centuries outside the primary DC Universe), but no card for Silver Swan (a popular villain instantly familiar to fans of Wonder Woman, like me!).

The writing for the Women Of Legend set is good-enough. Fans of the DC Universe will not learn anything new or extraordinary by reading the backs of the cards, though they are clearly intended for fans of the New 52 (Wonder Woman, for example, is mentioned to be the daughter of Hippolyta and Zeus). The card backs are interesting for telling more casual fans about the obscure heroines and the team-ups they might not be familiar with, but they do not feature any incredible spoilers for recent stories or information that is not particularly revealing.

Chase Cards

The Women Of Legend set features more bonus cards than common cards, which is not at all uncommon for contemporary trading card sets. The Women Of Legend set features 177 chase cards which range from simple foil parallel cards to significantly rare sketch cards (each of which are entirely unique). In the packs, collectors can find 174 of the 177 bonus cards. The chase card breakdown is thus: 63 foil parallel cards, 9 Gail’s Picks, 9 Katie Cook Sticker cards, 3 Totally Fabricated, 89 sketch and 1 Redemption cards. The most basic chase card set found in the packs are the foil parallel cards. The parallel cards replicate the common cards, but with mirrored accents. Some of the cards are extraordinary for how the foil enhances the image of the character the card portrays. The backs of the foil parallel cards are identical to the common cards, so when going through the packs, one has to look at the front of each card. It takes about a case to assemble a complete set of 63 foil parallel cards.

Found two cards per box are the Gail’s Pick and Katie Cook sticker cards, each of which is part of a nine-card bonus card set. The artwork for both sets is unique to that chase set and the writing for the Gail’s Picks set is a little more extensive than for the common cards. The Gail’s Picks cards are a foil-enhanced bonus card set that focuses on the women and female teams that writer Gail Simone most likes. The set features characters she wrote for – Wonder Woman, Black Canary, the Huntress – as well as others she just seems to like (Supergirl and Lois Lane, apparently). The writing on those cards does not provide much in the way of insights from Simone, which is unfortunate. Gail Simone could have written that backs of the cards and told people why she loved the different characters, but Cryptozoic did not go that far with the bonus card set. Similarly, the Katie Cook sticker set (which, honestly, I have not been able to peel apart to discover if they actually are stickers) features no insightful writing, though they all have artwork from artist Katie Cook. The artwork is simplified and cartoonish, like Katie Cook did a “Muppet Babies” version of the DC Universe heroines.

The Totally Fabricated cards are a “hit or miss” concept card for fans of the DC Universe heroines. Costume cards are immensely popular trading cards these days and as the subjects of the Women Of Legend set are comic book characters, there would seem to be no costume cards that could be produced for the set. Cryptozoic did not let that stop them. Instead, they produced the “Totally Fabricated” bonus cards and the Women Of Legends set has three such cards in the boxes and packs. Found one in every 175 packs, the Women Of Legends set features admittedly fake fabric swatches (not really) from the costumes of Catwoman, Wonder Woman and Supergirl. I think the Totally Fabricated cards are a neat idea and they are executed incredibly well. Cryptozoic, to its credit, did not overproduce the Totally Fabricated cards and only did them for the very most popular characters in the DC universe.

In addition to the Totally Fabricated cards, there is an exceptionally rare redemption card for a piece of Wonder Woman’s invisible plane. After almost a year, only seven of the existing twenty-five redemption cards have been redeemed, which suggests either many are still out there or DC Comics fans, like Star Trek card collectors, consider the redemption card a legitimate part of the set.

The Women Of Legend set is fleshed out with eighty-nine sketch cards of women of the DC Universe. The sketch cards are produced by eighty-nine different artists and each one is absolutely unique, so assembling a master set requires one to track down one from each of the eighty-nine artists Cryptozoic hired for the project. The quality of the sketch cards, like the common cards, varies greatly between fine-art quality colored sketches and cartoonish, animated versions of the significant DC Comics heroines.

Non-Box/Pack Cards

No matter how many packs or boxes of Women Of Legend cards one opens, there are three cards collectors will never find there. Non-Sports Update Magazine released a promotional card for the Women Of Legend set. Similarly, the actual card for the fragment of Wonder Woman’s Invisible Jet (which might just be an empty costume card, a high-quality image of one has not been made available) is only available by redeeming one of the redemption cards. The other card that cannot be found in any of the boxes or packs is the Batgirl Totally Fabricated card. That card is only found in the binders of the Women Of Legends cards. Having only three cards that cannot be found in the cases is actually not bad at all.

Overall

I have long decried the use of redemption cards, but the fact that the Women Of Legends set features only one is not bad. The set only holds value for the sketch cards, but Cryptozoic did a decent job of making an interesting set with the Women Of Legends cards. While fans like me would hope for more consistency, Cryptozoic’s erratic effort at least does what it promises which is to highlight the incredible women who make up the DC Comics universe.

This is a set of trading cards I sell in my online store! Please check out my current inventory of these cards at The Women Of Legend Inventory Page!

For other artwork-based trading card sets reviewed by me, please check out:
SkyBox Star Trek Master Series
SkyBox Star Trek 1994 Master Series
Rittenhouse Archives Star Trek The Original Series Portfolio Prints

5/10

For other card reviews, please visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Highlight Of The Season Two Costume Cards: The Walking Dead Season 2 M16 Costume Card!

The Good: Good image, Necessary for collectors, Quite rare
The Bad: None, really!
The Basics: The M16 Rick Grimes’s Shirt Wardrobe costume card is arguably THE The Walking Dead Season Two wardrobe trading card to make the effort to track down!


Like many fans during the midseason hiatus of The Walking Dead, I am going through some withdrawal from one of the few shows I bother to watch “religiously” on television these days. As a result, I find myself turning to my collection of collectibles to get my fix. Tonight, I find myself contemplating one of the trading cards I feel very lucky to have pulled from a box of The Walking Dead Season Two trading cards: the M16 Rick Grimes wardrobe card!

In the second season of The Walking Dead (reviewed here!), Rick Grimes came into his own as the leader of the survivors of the zombie apocalypse. As Rick fought to save his son’s life and keep Shane at bay, he became a bona fide leader. Commemorating Rick Grimes with a costume card, especially a fairly limited one, brought fans of the Cryptozoic’s The Walking Dead Season Two trading cards a very popular collectible to hunt down. Cryptozoic seemed to find the right level of rarity for their Wardrobe Costume Cards and the Wardrobe cards for any of the survivor characters, especially Rick Grimes, have skyrocketed in value.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the Wardrobe cards are costume cards and the M16 Rick Grimes card is no exception. What this means is that the physical card is a little more than twice as thick as the standard trading cards. Cryptozoic took a set-worn costume, in this case Rick Grimes's Shirt, chopped it up and embedded it in between the two card halves. This means that Andrew Lincoln's original shirt no longer exists, save in the pieces in cards. This is the closest most people will get to an actual set-worn costume from The Walking Dead and given that Rick Grimes is the most popular lead character of the series, this is a great card.

The M16 Rick Grimes costume card features a nice shot of Andrew Lincoln, gun drawn from the barn shootout scene in the shirt that the card features. On the right side of the card is the cutout window which features the cloth piece from the costume embedded in it! All versions of this card that I have found have had a plain black cloth swatch.

The back of the card assures the recipient of the authenticity of the Wardrobe card. It states that the M16 features a piece of Andrew Lincoln's as Rick Grimes’s Shirt and that is pretty much the standard for a costume card of this style.

The value of the card makes it a great investment for those lucky enough to pull one from a pack of The Walking Dead Season 2 cards. Considering the M16 is one of the most rare The Walking Dead Wardrobe cards, the fact that its value is hovering just under a hundred dollars is astonishing from a collectible perspective, though it does imply that its value is at its peak. This remains one of the most popular cards to hunt. Casual fans may not feel compelled, but die-hard fans will want to hunt down Andrew Lincoln’s costume card and they will be rewarded with a very cool card and collectible when they do!

For other costume cards, please check out my reviews of:
Diamond Direct Worf Costume Card
Diamond Select Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan Costume Card
Twilight PW3 Alice Cullen Costume Card

9/10

For other card reviews, please be sure to visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Generic The Walking Dead Merchandise: The Season Two M31 Card Is Not Worth Tracking Down!

The Good: Good image, Necessary for collectors, Inexpensive
The Bad: Indistinct, No collectible value, Not from a recognizable character and/or costume
The Basics: The M31 Walker Horde’s Wardrobe costume card is cheap filler in The Walking Dead Season Two trading card set!


When it comes to trading card sets, lately, with all the frenzy in collecting being on exceptionally rare, super-expensive cards, there are few people who take the time to recognize some of the other cards in a set. While most sets usually have some decent mid-range cards (though those have not been holding their value in recent years), almost all have some dirt cheap chase cards that, honestly, no one is chasing. Those are filler cards and in the The Walking Dead Season Two set, one of the obvious pieces of filler is the M31 Walker Horde’s Wardrobe Costume Card.

In the second season of The Walking Dead (reviewed here!), the season opened with the survivors’ first encounter with a herd of zombies along the highway. Commemorating the generic Walker Horde with a costume card, Cryptozoic’s The Walking Dead Season Two trading cards had an incredibly common costume card that is virtually worthless on the secondary market and is the pride of no one’s collection. In general, Cryptozoic seemed to find the right level of rarity for their Wardrobe Costume Cards and the Wardrobe cards for any of the survivor characters have skyrocketed in value, while the M31 Walker Horde costume card has plummeted in value (as predicted).

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the Wardrobe cards are costume cards and the M31 Walker Horde card is no exception. What this means is that the physical card is a little more than twice as thick as the standard trading cards. Cryptozoic took a set-worn costume, in this case one of the Walker Horde's shirts or pants, chopped it up and embedded it in between the two card halves. This means that one zombie costume no longer exists, save in the pieces in cards. This is the closest most people will get to an actual set-worn costume from The Walking Dead, but given that the Walker Horde was a generic assemblage of zombies, it’s a pretty bad card.

The M31 Walker Horde Piecework card features a nice shot of three walkers, blood splattered, from the episodes. On the right side of the card is the cutout window which features the cloth piece from the costume embedded in it! All versions of this card that I have found have had a plain gray cloth swatch.

The back of the card assures the recipient of the authenticity of the Wardrobe card. It states that the M31 features a piece of Walker Horde’s costume and that is pretty much the standard for a costume card of this style.

The value of the card makes it a poor investment for those lucky enough to pull one from a pack of The Walking Dead Season 2 cards. Considering the M31 is arguably the most common The Walking Dead Wardrobe cards, the fact that its value has not even held reliably at $15, the ability to pull one of the M31’s makes buying a Season Two box a risk. Because there is such good potential to get this cheap filler costume card in a box, it is not recommended one buy it on its own. Having to buy it cheap is less frustrating than pulling it, especially after having bought it – at any price – on its own.

For other costume cards, please check out my reviews of:
The Walking Dead Season 2 M20 Madison Lintz Sophia Costume Card
Diamond Select Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan Costume Card
Twilight PW3 Alice Cullen Costume Card

2/10

For other card reviews, please be sure to visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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In Memory Of The Lost, The Cryptozoic The Walking Dead Season 2 M20 Sophia Card Is Pretty Cool!

The Good: Good image, Necessary for collectors, Quite rare
The Bad: Expensive! Doesn't so much DO anything!
The Basics: The M20 Sophia’s Cargo Pants Wardrobe costume card is a surprisingly valuable The Walking Dead trading card!


It always impresses me how licensees can leap on a trend and find their market at the right time. Arguably, NECA waited too long to release its Heroes line of action figures and as a result, they almost universally became pegwarmers because by the time they hit the market, the television series had already soured with fans. Right now, The Walking Dead is hot and, truth be told, it is one of the few trendy shows I have ever found myself enjoying while it is currently an “in” phenomenon. Cryptozoic won the license for the trading cards and the trading cards based upon AMC’s The Walking Dead have had a level of quality that it suitably impressive. One of the best chase cards in the Season Two set is the M20 Sophia’s Cargo Pants Wardrobe Costume Card.

In the second season of The Walking Dead (reviewed here!), one of the enduring mysteries was what happened to Sophia (Carol’s daughter) after she was chased off the road and out of the creekbed where Rick left her. Commemorating Sophia with a costume card, especially a fairly limited one, brought fans of the Cryptozoic’s The Walking Dead Season Two trading cards an intriguing collectible to hunt down. Cryptozoic seemed to find the right level of rarity for their Wardrobe Costume Cards and the Wardrobe cards for any of the survivor characters, even Sophia, have skyrocketed in value.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the Wardrobe cards are costume cards and the M20 Sophia card is no exception. What this means is that the physical card is a little more than twice as thick as the standard trading cards. Cryptozoic took a set-worn costume, in this case Sophia's cargo pants, chopped it up and embedded it in between the two card halves. This means that Madison Lintz's original pants no longer exists, save in the pieces in cards. This is the closest most people will get to an actual set-worn costume from The Walking Dead and given that Sophia was a popular supporting character for the second season, it is not a bad card.

The M20 Sophia Piecework card features a nice shot of Madison Lintz, in her unfortunate final state, from The Walking Dead where she emerged from hiding. On the right side of the card is the cutout window which features the cloth piece from the costume embedded in it! All versions of this card that I have found have had a plain gray cloth swatch.

The back of the card assures the recipient of the authenticity of the Wardrobe card. It states that the M20 features a piece of Madison Lintz's as Sophia’s cargo pants and that is pretty much the standard for a costume card of this style.

The value of the card makes it a great investment for those lucky enough to pull one from a pack of The Walking Dead Season 2 cards. Considering the M20 is one of the more common The Walking Dead Wardrobe cards, the fact that its value is hovering just under a hundred dollars is astonishing from a collectible perspective, though it does imply that its value is bound to collapse. While the bubble is there, the M20 remains a pretty hot commodity and one worth hunting down. Casual fans may not feel compelled, but die-hard fans will want to hunt down Madison Lintz’s costume card and they will be rewarded with a very cool card and collectible when they do!

For other costume cards, please check out my reviews of:
Diamond Direct Worf Costume Card
Diamond Select Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan Costume Card
Twilight PW3 Alice Cullen Costume Card

5/10

For other card reviews, please be sure to visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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