Our man in the field Cmdr Y brings us these updates from today's Mattel panel at the Wizard World Chicago convention.

DCSH:

Nightwing is being released in the 4th Batman wave later this Fall.

DC Classics:

- 25 figures in five waves with variants and BAF's in 2008 - "Plus some surprises along the way"

Wave 1
- Red Tornado with classic variant
- Penguin with variant that has a penguin (the animal) packed in
- classic batman
- Orion
- Demon
- BAF - Metamorpho
(Click here to see wave 1 images from WWC)


Wave 2
- Firestorm (modern) with a classic variant
- Aquaman (long hair/modern) with a classic variant
- Black Manta
- Harley Quinn
- Superman Red/Blue in 50/50 pack
- Gorilla Grodd BAF
(Click here to see wave 2 images from WWC)

Wave 3
- "watch for a female character." I know that's rather vague, but it seemed like he was talking about Wonder Woman.

- When asked if we'd see Hal Jordan or John Stewart as the Green Lantern for the DC U line, Steve responded with "why not both? There are a lot of Green Lantern Corps characters."

- When asked if there would be box sets for various teams, like the Teen Titans, he responded with "No box sets, but you will see some Teen Titans"

- Vehicles and playsets are in consideration - he asked the audience how we felt about that idea - applause.

- They are looking into an online toy shop presence like Hasbro has, but it would be more in line with the Hot Wheels' "Red Line" club - not sure what that is though.

JLU:

- They are looking at playsets and vehicles - no new product in that line to debute this summer because once they received the master license for DC, the company threw the brakes on EVERYTHING in order to properly gear up to fully exploit the DCU. There may be some hints as to what upcoming JLU figures we could expext to see in the slideshow images shown below.

- There are some JLU 3-packs that sold out in San Diego available at the Mattel booth.

- Mattel is very, very, VERY much into the JLU line, they are committed to releasing new figures with a very strong emphasis on the collector market. The only reason they don't have new figures to show is because of the new directive brought down from landing the DC master lic. as mentioned earlier. "2008 will be a very special year for the Justice League Unlimited line."

Superfriends line:

- Batman, Superman, Flash, Aquaman, John Stewart Green Lantern, and Lex Luthor. Aqua, GL, and Lex will be in far fewer numbers than Bats, Supes, and Flash. "Basically if you see them - BUY them." There will be some vehicles - superman with a ground vehicle, Aquaman with a sub, Batman with "my first batmobile" which seats two figures, and a batwing that shoots discs.

- wave 2 will be Hawkman, Cyborg, and 2 decos of Batman - one blue, one red.

Batman, Dark Knight:

5" and 6" lines - the six inch figures will be sculpted by the four horsemen