BATMAN

SUPER POWERS (McFARLANE)

“As a child, Bruce Wayne watched as his parents were brutally killed in Gotham City’s Crime Alley. Traumatized by their deaths, he devoted his life to becoming the world’s greatest weapon against crime– the Batman.”

As prevalent as the character may be in toy form, I don’t actually review *a ton* of Batman figures around here, mostly because I think I’m just largely tapped out on buying new Batman figures these days?  McFarlane’s tenure with the DC license has had a lot of Batman figures, and their Super Powers line has Batman as its recurrent character.  Despite that, I’ve only thus far picked up and reviewed a single Super Powers Batman (I guess technically reviewed a Batman Beyond as well, but I feel like that’s different).  Well, they’re selling the figures in sets now, so I can’t avoid it if there’s a Batman variant, and if I’m gonna buy him, I guess I might as well review him.  So, here’s this Batman.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Batman is the first figure in Series 15 of McFarlane’s Super Powers line, where he’s officially numbered 73 in the overall line-up.  He’s the 12th Batman released in the line.  The figure is just the tiniest bit over 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 7 points of articulation.  This Batman marks the seventh use of the updated classic Batman mold, which was the only other Batman I’ve looked at from this line.  It’s clearly aiming to be a pretty close replica of the original Kenner mold, and it’s a good one at that.  I get why they keep using it.  What makes this release special?  The coloring.  The first release of the mold went for a pretty straight classic Batman blue and grey color palette, and subsequent uses have all tweaked it in some way.  We’ve gotten one subsequent take on that scheme through the crowd funded release, which was darker than the first version, and now we’ve got this one, which is…also darker?  Its aim is to be an early ‘90s Batman, per the naming, and I guess it does that fine, but it’s also not super different, aside from just being different.  It’s definitely a bit of different for different’s sake.  I know the Series 4 release was pretty hard to get, so I can’t say I fault McFarlane for wanting to put out another go at the mold with the blue and grey, but I also can’t say it’s terribly exciting.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I was very excited by the reveals of 13 and 14 of this line, but 15 was the first one where I just felt largely underwhelmed, and this Batman is certainly a large piece of that.  Maybe I’d feel different if I hadn’t gotten the Series 4 figure? I don’t know.  I do know I only have this one because I wanted the set.  He’s…fine.  Like, not bad, but just not anything to really give any much thought to.