At DC FanDome, legendary comic book creator and McFarlane Toys founder Todd McFarlane announced that DC Direct would continue with new collectibles under his leadership.
He also revealed some of the first statues, including Joker based on the art of Greg Capullo and the resumption of the Batman: Black & White line with a piece based on Mike Mignola’s artwork in Batman: Gotham by Gaslight.
The return of DC Direct brings with it the return of many of the company’s signature statues lines. In addition to Batman: Black & White, McFarlane Toys will be continuing the DC Designer series, Harley Quinn: Black, White & Red and Joker: Purple Craze. McFarlane Toys will also be producing unique statues from various DC media projects. While highlighting an upcoming statue of Robert Pattinson in The Batman, he explained that “it’s based on the concepts and the costume and the reference that was given to us directly from the producers and the director so that we’re gonna make it as authentic as possible.” McFarlane then teased future releases from DC Direct, including Dwayne Johnson in Black Adam.
The original DC Direct was a line of action figures and collectibles produced in-house by DC Comics. Created in 1998, the company was successful with collectors for the figures’ high quality and the consistency of their statue lines. Over time, sales began to drop despite attempts to refresh the company by re-branding to DC Collectibles (and later, back to DC Direct). In 2020, budget cuts to DC Comics signaled the end of DC Direct, although DC would continue to produce new figures through its partnership with McFarlane Toys. Now, their partnership offers fans the best of both DC Direct and McFarlane toys, with McFarlane saying, “basically I’m going to take all things that we’re good at and continue to do all the things that DC Direct has been doing.”