Lego's Friends line has been met with plenty of success, but it came under a lot of fire when it launched for conforming to female stereotypes. Artist Jon Lazar decided to change that with his Lego Super Friends project, taking these shopping-loving, cute-animal-crazy dolls and turning them into comic book heroes.
For the month of July, Jon set himself the challenge of creating a new 'super friend' figure a day, pulling from the pantheons of both Marvel and DC's heroes, famous and obscure, to end with a total of 31 amazing-looking custom minifigures. Here are some of the best:
X-Men's Storm - and not just any Storm, but of course the fabulous (and superior, in my books!) Mohawked version of Ororo Munroe.
Zatanna, complete with magician's hat and wand!
Although she's an Icon character, she's technically a Marvel-owned heroine - it's Hit-Girl, specifically the look adopted by Chloë Grace Moretz in the Kickass movies.
The Teen Titans cartoon had a lot of great things going for it, including this awesome rendition of Raven's costume - it's just as great in minifigure form!
She's had a few normal minifigures of her own thanks to appearances in Lego's Marvel Superheroes line, but this Black Widow looks fantastic in her 'Friends' version.
Then there's of course this gorgeous version of Kate Kane, Batwoman herself, in her striking New 52 costume.
Although Jon's month-long challenge is over, he's not ending his foray into challenging the sterotypes set by the Friends dolls - not only is he selling some of the original 31 figures in his Etsy store, but he's planning to extend the series' remit even wider, using them as the basis for even more superheroines, video game and TV characters, and even male characters.
You can check out the full gallery of superheroes over at Jon's blog.
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