ARMORED BATMAN

DC COMICS MULTIVERSE (MATTEL)

You know how I’m always hating on Mattel? And you know how I just reviewed a whole week of Mattel figures? What’s the best thing for me to review the day after an over-a-week run of Mattel figures? Another Mattel figure, of course! Boy do I looooove me some Mattel…

So, today, I’m jumping back over to the DC side of things, with a Batman figure. I know, that’s a very rare occurrence. But this Batman’s special. This one’s a puffy Batman! Okay, actually, he’s from Dark Knight Returns, the Batman story that forever changed the face of comics, whether we like it or not. Now, this isn’t just a generic Batman from the story, but one from his climactic showdown with Superman, making it the perfect accent piece for this guy. Despite there being a number of toys based on DKR and this being both a distinctive and unique look from the story, this is its first appearance in three-dimensional form. Let’s see how it turned out!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Armored Batman is one of the three DKR-based figures from the latest series of Mattel’s larger scale DC Comics Multiverse. The figure stands roughly 7 inches tall and he has 25 points of articulation. Just about all of Mattel’s DKR figures have been built from pieces that structurally similar to the figures from Masters of the Universe Classics. While this Batman is stylistically very similar to the others, the only pieces he shares with the prior Batman and Superman are the upper and lower torso parts, and even those are completely covered by add-ons. The rest of the figure’s sculpt is all-new, and it’s pretty impressively handled. It does a very good job translating the design from the comics into three dimensions. In fact, it’s probably the most comic-faithful figure so far in this particular sub-set, since the large quantity of new pieces means that none of Miller’s tinier details have been left out. Each piece of armor has little wrinkles, and the face depicts an old, grizzled Bruce Wayne, which we didn’t really see on the last two figures that Mattel did. Really, the only complaint I can raise about this figure is that he falls victim to Mattel’s continued insistence on attaching capes with unnecessarily large chunks of plastic that plug into the figures’ backs. Is there absolutely no way they could make that connector any smaller? Oh well. Batman’s paintwork isn’t bad. It’s certainly better than Superman’s was. There’s a bit of slop, especially around the edges of the belt, but the overall appearance is pretty good. Batman is packed with the rifle he uses with this armor in the story. Unfortunately, he can’t really hold it very well, since neither of his hands is sculpted to hold it. He also includes the head and pelvis of the New 52 Doomsday, for those that care about such things.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

So, as I noted in my review of Superman, I’m only a moderate fan of The Dark Knight Returns. I do, however, love the issue with the fight between Superman and Batman. Since I already had Superman, I was looking forward to getting this guy. That being said, he wasn’t quite at the top of my list for this particular series. So, when I found this series at Target, this wasn’t the figure I intended to buy. No, I really, really wanted to buy the new Supergirl figure, based on the TV series. Target even had two of her, but I just couldn’t bring myself to buy it, because the figure just looked so terrible. I’m getting off topic. I ended up going with this guy because, while he may be ugly, at least he’s supposed to be. This isn’t a perfect figure, but he’s still pretty fun.