JakaBrick's The Flash Movie Suits x2! (Patreon)

Hey! Hey you!

This movie was garbage! Ezra’s characterization of Flash has always been bad, but the suit’s in these modern DC movies have been killer! This fig was preordered before the movie had been released and that’s all we’re gonna focus on today! The costume! (or in this case, the minifig)

Now! On with the review!

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I’m gonna be honest, at first I didn’t think this needed to be two separate figs. 

When Jaka announced these two my brain was like “wait it’s the same fig twice, only one comes with an exclusive head and flash ring (a ring that is incredible by the way), all while the other fig just comes with an exclusive head and lightning effects?”

Like… why didn’t one fig just include two heads and two accessories, especially at $100 a fig! Is it worth some minimal differences in accessories? idk it felt redundant at first.

But no dear reader! As you may be shocked to discover by now, I’m famously dumb!

Jaka did the cool thing and made a regular version plus a Francis Manapul New 52 lookin “activated” flash fig as well and I think that’s pretty neat :)

They even printed a transparent red chase-variant too that was really cool looking, but it was a chase-variant and as much as I wanted it, I didn’t neeeeeed it. It would have been another $160 for the claim of “limited edition only one of twenty” clout, truly. But here’s some images of it because it’s neat!

(photos sourced from minibigs.com)

I can say that between the three of these figs, Jaka nailed the vibe of this suit! I’ve talked about this before, but I’m not a big fan of the bobsled helmet that DC went for this time around. Even the orange goggles feel a little to much, but that’s just me. But Jaka somehow impressed me!

(let’s be honest, the ZSJL suit was the peak live action Flash suit and can’t be topped - here’s a side-by-side with Abnormal’s fig)

However there is a big blank hole in my opinion of this fig design, and it comes in the form of sans-print…

Do you see it?

It’s truly a shame Jaka didn’t do more with the wraparound print work like their past figs. I mean thinking back in their incredible Wonder Woman and all it’s 360° print work, then seeing this fig without any side torso printing... plus the jarring darker red brought on by the fantastic texture work… idk something just isn’t clicking for me. That lack of side-torso printing feels like a huge loss of potential for this suit in particular.

It’s strange.

Jaka’s done side torso print in the past, and The Flash here would have greatly benefited from it, especially given how little of the belt is actually on the front of the torso and just how jarringly blank it looks with the texture work being so dark and then nothing on the sides at all!

Sidebar because I keep dancing around it: that texture is so super freakin hard to photograph like oh my gosh trying to get a focal points to match up made me want to pull my hair out so here’s some glamor shots with lots of different pretty lighting setups because I wanted to appreciate my own hard work, as well as Jaka’s

Like seriously, take a quick zoom up on these and remind yourself that the stuff in these images you’re looking at are microscopic!

This stuff is so funky and finely printed that it almost looks like the plastic itself is crackly, or it's printed over leather, or like I left fingerprints on it or something... it's real weird and cool though! :P

The texturing is very subtle, to a point where it’s very hard to see it with the naked eye, other than the obvious darker shade of red of course. It’s weird because subconsciously I don’t really think about it until a brighter unprinted area of the fig catches my eye. Then my brain wants to auto-correct the two reds together. Then ya focus in on the texture and I find myself again wondering why Jaka wouldn’t have just printed the torso 360° and cover up those big blank spots!

I just keep going in circles here!

Oh and another thing! 

Another aspect I wish was a bit different would be the yellow linework. While I’m very impressed with the intricate printing done here, I wish those yellow speed lines were thicker all over this fig. It’s very thin. We could have gotten a bit more Lego-like thickness out of that particular aspect of the Speed-Forced version 🤷🏻‍♂️

I do want to pivot from complaints to compliments here though!

The gold across these two figs are absolutely impressive! Again, from a print standpoint, it’s incredibly intricate work (especially around the boots!). But what blows my mind is wherever there’s gold, there’s also sudo cell-shading in dark tan. 

You can really see it best on the belt on the back of the torso, but it’s everywhere on this fig! On the Speedforce fig there’s at least five, if not six layers of ink on the torso alone! Seriously impressive alignment when you think of how tiny this lil guy is!

Now where the print is great and not so great, I hear you saying in your best Jerry Seinfeld impersonation, “But Andrew, what’s the deal with the custom parts?”

The cowl design in a lot of ways makes think of the Christo’s CW Flash

The wings wrap around the headpiece more than they protrude from the element. In a manner of speaking it’s more in line with Lego’s own design aesthetic. Thankfully not loosing too much screen accuracy! At the end of the day, it keeps them much more sturdy and less likely to break, so bonus points to Jaka for thinking of that 👍🏻

And because I was curious… here are some comparisons and a helmet swap with Christo’s CW Flash (just for funsies)!

Jaka also included extra helmets to let you choose to match the fig with either more of it’s bright red, or darker red elements.

It’s the kind of thing I really appreciate about Jaka! They either planned this from the beginning for the figs to have two helmets each, or during production they caught the jarring contrast from their own texture work that didn't match with the helmets and instead of just tossing out the old helmets, they gave us both at no extra charge!

They could have even done one of those DLC expansion pack things that I loathe, but they didn’t! They even communicated it to their followers ahead of time! Woo! Good on ya Jaka! Some solid business practices here!

It is still pretty weird to swap between the helmets though! I like both, as either work well with the inevitable color subtly that’s occurred here… but it's just kinda strange to even have this pleasant option in the first place!

Oh I almost forgot to mention, one of my helmets came with some free blue-tack left inside it! Haha! Whoops! 😆

The ring has got to be my favorite part about both of these figs! It’s one of those parts that can be used for either these figs, or comic based figs! It’s nice and shiny too!

The lightning bolts are also pretty versatile in their use! Not to mention there’s tons of different configurations you can set up! Wanna go for a peaceful jog down Central City’s park district? Just add one wrist mounted bolt and one leg mounted bolt! You wanna go super saiyan and race Reverse Flash around the globe? Attach ALL six!

I have a feeling we will see these elements return with some of Jaka's following Flash figs (still in preorder status as I write this review) :P

Although I will admit, it becomes a pain to get them all attached to the fig. Those little points of plastic want to poke ya or get up your fingernails while you keep adding more and more lightning bolts… I was never worried about anything snapping, but I could tell if I pressed too hard or attached a minifig hand to tightly and drop the fig on accident, that could lead to some higher consequences 👀

Still… they look great all together!

In the end, $100 per fig feels right. If you only bought one of the two, then there’s not nearly as many versatile combinations of parts that you can work with. But am I upset that I have both? Nah!

Just wish Jaka printed the side of the torsos… really knocks this fig down a few pegs 😔