Tag Archives: Bruce Wayne

#2987: Arkham Asylum Escape

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , , ,

BATMAN, TWO-FACE, POISON IVY, & HARLEY QUINN

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF BATMAN (HASBRO)

“They’re on the loose!  Those sinister, diabolical misfits of society, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn have broken the boundaries of incarceration and once again hit the streets on a path of destruction.  But Batman is ready to put them behind bars once and for all…where they belong!”

Hey, we’re heading down this late-game Hasbro DC rabbit-hole, so I guess we might as well just, you know, do that.  I sure do like themes, right?  And at least this theme is definitively not a Marvel Legends one, which is a nice change of pace these days.  I might be suffering from a bit of Legends burn out here, you guys.  But I’m not talking about them today!  No!  I’m talking about DC!  Yeah!  Let’s do it!

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

Arkham Asylum Escape, a set made up of Batman, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn, was released by Hasbro in early 2000 as a Toys R Us exclusive.  The set has the four figures, as well as a selection of accessories, some character specific, some less so.  The least specific is the Arkham Asylum sign, which actually should have two additional supports not seen in my photo.  It’s a cool piece that makes for a fun backdrop, which isn’t the sort of thing we tended to get for this line.  There’s also a straightjacket, which is listed as being Two-Faces, but which can easily be used for either him or Batman, and I honestly like it more with Batman.

BATMAN

“The people of Gotham City see Batman as an almost mythological figure, able to tame any adversary, no matter how powerful.  But now, with so many bizarre criminals running amok in Gotham City, Batman turns to his trusted allies to aid him in his battle against evil.  The Dark Knight has evened the odds by creating more amazing weapons, gadgets, and vehicles, all of which are available to his crime fighting team.”

You gotta have a Batman, so here’s the Batman.  He’s all Batman-y.  The figure stands 4 1/2 inches tall and has 6 points of articulation.  Amazingly, he gets a whole extra point of articulation, thanks to the swivel at the waist.  This Batman re-uses the mold of the Batman originally packed in the “Batman Vs Two-Face Battle Pack,” which is a rather basic Batman, but running.  Or lunging.  For some reason.  I guess it’s more dynamic.  It’s honestly not a bad sculpt, apart from being a little hard to keep standing.  It’s rather clean, and internally consistent with the standard Detective Batman sculpt.  To match his more dynamic pose, his cape is also more dynamic, with a whole arc and flow to it, which is really cool.  Though this set generally goes for TNBA designs, and the figure’s sculpt is clearly TNBA-based, the paint scheme on this guy is decidedly BTAS-based.  It’s not a terrible look.  The only downside is that it doesn’t really hold up so well to wear and tear.  Batman was originally packed with a grappling hook, but it was lost by foolish child Ethan.

TWO-FACE

“Two-Face (Harvey Dent), well-entrenched as an underworld crime boss, continues to be a major threat to Batman and Gotham City.  However, Two-Face is always finding himself at odds with his dual nature, torn between his own good and evil sides.”

Though prominent early in the show’s run, Two-Face’s only toy release during TNBA‘s actual run was in a two-pack with a Batman variant.  This one upgrades that to a four pack, so I guess it’s sort of a lateral move.  The figure stands 5 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  His sculpt is shared with the two-pack release, and is based on his updated appearance from TNBA.  It’s a good look, and the figure does a good job of capturing the design and translating it into three dimensions.  Given how basic a suited body this is, it’s genuinely a bit surprising that no other uses came from this figure.  It seems like it would be kind of natural.  It was certainly a popular piece amongst customizers at the time.  The paint work was ever so slightly changed here.  Instead of off-white, the lighter parts are a true white, and the lip on the scarred side is red, rather than black.  Technically, the original release was the more accurate scheme, but this one I think maybe presents a bit better in figure form.  Two-Face was originally packed with a machine gun and a pistol, both of which I have been missing since shortly after getting the figure.

POISON IVY

“Villainous vixen of vines, Poison Ivy (Pamela Isley) returns to continue her crusade for botanical supremacy.  While essentially a loner, Ivy is not above ‘hanging with the girls,’ as she occasionally teams up with Harley Quinn.”

Ivy was completely absent from the TNBA tie-ins, at least for the main line.  So, this figure was the first of hers under that specific branding.  It’s a bit of a cheat, of course, since she’s actually not TNBA at all, but I’ll get to that.  The figure stands about 4 1/2 inches tall and she has 5 points of articulation…technically.  The neck joint doesn’t really do anything, honestly.  Since there was no TNBA Ivy sculpt from Kenner, this figure re-uses the BTAS sculpt.  It’s not a great sculpt, but it’s not a terrible sculpt either.  It’s biggest issue is that it’s rather squat and a bit pre-posed.  Of course, it’s biggest issue here in particular is that Ivy’s design changed pretty drastically between the two iterations of the show, so she doesn’t match the theme here all that well.  The paint is also kind of suspect.  Technically, they’re following her TNBA scheme…sort of.  I mean, she doesn’t have leggings, which is the main thing.  Her skin tone is still peach, rather than a greenish white, and her outfit is a far brighter green than it really should be.  Ivy is packed with a crossbow and a plant capture weapon.  Astoundingly, I’ve actually still got both of them.

HARLEY QUINN

“Harley Quinn (Harleen Quinzel) continues to be Gotham City’s deadly wild card.  Her lethal toys come in handy whether she’s working out her aggressions with her ‘puddin,’ The Joker, best gal-pal Poison Ivy, or taking on Batman solo.  While she masks her dark and unpredictable nature with playfulness, her hatred of Batman is never far from the surface.”

Introduced within the original run of BTAS, Harley, unsurprisingly, got her very first figure in that line.  It was, however, never an exceedingly easy one to find.  So a second release was far from the worst idea.  The figure stands about 4 3/4 inches tall and she has 5 points of articulation.  She makes use of the single-release BTAS Harley’s sculpt.  It’s a good sculpt, which is pretty on model, and unlike Ivy, it actually matches okay with the TNBA set-up of this release, since her overall design wasn’t really that different between the two shows.  Her paint work is generally pretty decent.  The only change between this release and the single release is the color of the lips, which are red here, in contrast to the black on the original.  Harley was packed with a boxing glove launcher, as well as a gun with a “bang” flag.  Curiously, no mallet.  Mine is missing the gun, but still has the glove launcher.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I actually got this set at the same time as the set I looked at last week, both of them being given to me for my 8th birthday in 2000.  I was more interested in the Gordon set overall, but this one was a definite sleeper hit for me, because all of the figures in it were actually pretty solid, at least to child me.  Harley and Two-Face are still my go-to versions for this scale, and I definitely dig the Batman.  Ivy only really ranks lower because I wound up with the original BTAS release later down the line, and didn’t need it’s off-color repaint so much.

#2980: Gotham City Enforcement Team

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

BATMAN, NIGHTWING, COMMISSIONER GORDON, & BATGIRL

THE NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES (HASBRO)

“By day, they are ordinary citizens of Gotham City.  At night, they take on a crime fighting identity known only to a certain few, but respected and feared by all.  This is the Gotham City Enforcement Team, committed to righting the wrongs of society and getting crime off the streets for good!”

Last week, I delved into the late-game Animated Series tie-in sets that Hasbro used to help officially launch their tenure with the DC license.  I’m going to continue down that road today, moving away from Superman, and into the slightly-more-loved-by-Hasbro realm of Batman.  Much like with Superman, Hasbro used these sets to delve into some of Batman’s less toy worthy supporting players, intermixed with some of the more toy worthy ones to keep things more exciting, I suppose.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

The Gotham City Enforcement Team, which included Batman, Nightwing, Commissioner Gordon, and Batgirl, was released in the summer of 2000, technically as a Toys R Us-exclusive (although due to their partnership at the time, Amazon also offered them for online ordering).

BATMAN

“The people of Gotham City see Batman as an almost mythical figure, able to tame any adversary, no matter how powerful.  But now, with so many bizarre criminals running amok in Gotham City, Batman turns to his trusted friends and allies to aid him in his battle against evil.  The Dark Knight was evened the odds by creating more amazing weapons, gadgets and vehicles, all of which are available to his crime fighting team.”

You’re really not getting one of these sets without a Batman to go with it.  This one went for the far more basic take on the character, specifically his New Adventures look, since that was the general theme of this set.  With that in mind, this figure is, at his core, a re-issue of Detective Batman from Kenner’s The New Batman Adventures line.  The figure stands 5 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  The Detective Batman sculpt was a pretty strong one, replicating the design from the shown pretty much spot-on.  It’s a little stiffer than the BTAS stuff was in terms of posing, but it still works alright.  It’s a very clean, very bold sculpt, which just really works.  It’s not a shock that Kenner and Hasbro both strove to get a lot out of this one.  His cape can be removed, and had been adjusted to a plastic piece, rather than cloth at this point.  It looks a lot nicer, though I suppose it’s more limiting from a posing standpoint.  The figure’s paint work is pretty basic for a Batman.  The grey is a bit brighter than the single release, and they’ve also adjusted the cape so that it’s two-tone now, with a lighter grey liner, which was a really cool touch.  Batman was originally packed with a weird capture-trap thing, which was super goofy, a theme of the accessories in this set.  I don’t have mine anymore, another theme for this set.

NIGHTWING

“After graduating from college, Dick Grayson — once the young sidekick of Batman known as Robin — traveled the world to study criminology.  While living abroad, Dick realized that he had outgrown his youthful role as Batman’s assistant.  Upon his return to Gotham City, Dick used his trust fund from Haley’s Circus to buy a building and convert its top two floors into a high-tech, urban headquarters.  He developed a new heroic identity called Nightwing, and, with the blessings of his one-time mentor, Batman, joined the battle against evil.”

I’ve actually looked at a Nightwing from this line before, though it was under the “wacky variants” heading, and not just a standard.  This figure is actually just that one, but painted up in the standard colors, since that mold was actually a little more accurate than the initial sculpt had been.  He’s just shy of 5 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  As I noted when I reviewed the sculpt the first time, it’s pretty much spot-on to the show, and I stand by that.  Much like Batman, it just really works.  The paint work is clean and bright, which is nice for this look.  He was packed with the grapple and shield of the single release, now done up to match the standard Nightwing colors.  No grapple for mine, but he does still have the shield.

COMMISSIONER GORDON

“One of the few incorruptible cops on the Gotham City Police Department, James Gordon rose to the rank of Police Commissioner.  Commissioner Gordon worked tirelessly to clean up the GCPD and is now loved by Gotham City’s citizens and hated and feared by its criminals.  Though he cannot officially sanction Batman’s methods, he is an unofficial and behind-the-scenes supporter of the Dark Knight and uses his position to support Batman’s crime fighting efforts in any way he can.”

The primary selling point of this set was Commissioner James Gordon’s very first action figure.  It was kind of a big deal at the time, and it would serve to inspire a handful of others, which is always cool.  As with most of the set, Gordon is TNBA-based.  It’s not my preferred of the two designs, but it’s admittedly the one that’s easier to translate to three dimensions, and it was technically the “current” look at the time.  The figure is just under 5 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  Gordon was an all-new sculpt, and it’s a little bit of a mixed bag.  The head is fantastic; it’s got a lot of great detail work and is generally just a spot-on take on his later animated design.  The body, on the other hand, is a little rougher.  He’s definitely got too much paunch on his stomach, and the slightly odd posing of the upper body as a whole doesn’t really help so much.  Generally, it’s not the worst thing, but it’s not quite there.  The paint is even more not quite there; it’s very basic and drab, and missing key details.  Most notable?  He’s got no eyes.  At all.  It’s kind of creepy, really.  Gordon was packed with two very oversized revolvers, which just generally never felt very right for the character.

BATGIRL

“Barbara Gordon has just graduated from college with a degree in computer science.  She has landed a job on the police force, working elbow to elbow with her father, Commissioner James Gordon.  And each night she fights crime as Batgirl, alongside the greatest crime fighter the world has ever known.  This double life sometimes threatens to put Barbara in a sticky situation, and each time she puts on her costume, she knows she is stepping outside the law that she was raised to respect.  Yet Barbara believes that the good she does as Batgirl outweighs the risk to herself and her father.”

Batgirl technically got a single-carded release in Kenner’s BTAS line, but it was during the Duo-Force era, and it meant that she wasn’t in her standard colors.  That mold would be re-decoed for the first of the box sets under Hasbro (which was just the main four in metallic colors), and then would be further improved upon for this release.  Yay!  The figure stands just under 5 inches tall and she has 4 points of articulation.  Technically, there’s a joint at the neck, but since the head and cape are all one piece, it’s effectively useless.  The sculpt for this figure is pretty clearly meant to be the BTAS version, not the TNBA version like the others  It’s not absurdly far off, but it’s also not nearly as sharp and clean as it should be.  Ultimately, it’s an okay offering, but probably the weakest of the ones included here.  The paint does at least put her into her New Adventures color scheme, to do it’s best to sell the idea.  I prefer that scheme, and it looks good on a toy, so I’ve always liked it here.  Batgirl was packed with a big ol’ missile launcher, which I don’t have anymore.  Not an incredibly loss, since she couldn’t really hold it anyway.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

For my eighth birthday, this set was quite high on the list of things I wanted.  So high, in fact, that I actually ended up with two of them, in a continuation of a running gag that would go across my birthday for a few years where my grandmother and my aunt would wind up buying me the same gift with an eerie level of frequency.  I only kept one of them, of course, but these days I kind of wish I’d held onto both.  Though not really new to me, Batman, Nightwing, and Batgirl would become my definitive versions of the characters growing up, and while he’s far from perfect, Gordon was the only one I had for a good while. In general, this was a set that got a lot of mileage for me, and it remains one I’m very fond of, even now.

#2720: Bat-Tech Batman & The Joker

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , ,

BAT-TECH BATMAN & THE JOKER

BATMAN: THE CAPED CRUSADER (SPIN MASTER)

So, did you guys here about that exciting new DC-related thing that dropped last week?  It was pretty big.  It had Batman and Joker, and some others as well from what I hear.  Lot of time in the making.  I am, of course, referring to the latest assortment of Spin Master’s Batman: The Caped Crusader, dubbed “Bat-Tech,” which gives us some new, teched-out variants of the main players.  What else could I possibly be talking about?  Amongst these teched-out variants are, unsurprisingly, Batman and Joker, who are sort of headlining this whole thing.  I’ll be taking a look at the two of them today!

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

Bat-Tech Batman and Joker are both part of fifth series of Spin Master’s The Caped Crusader line, which is the first official assortment of 2021.  The two of them both key into the whole “Bat-Tech” theme of this assortment, and the whole line has been slightly rebranded, with a new packaging set-up.  They’ve kept the same general look and feel, including the blind boxed accessories, but the whole thing is slightly more refined, and just generally different.

There are three different Batmen in the main assortment, but this one’s the one that officially carries the “Bat-Tech” name, and is really the one that most clearly evokes that wacky variant feel.  This particular Batman design doesn’t really have any direct ties to the comics that I know of, but instead does sort of a Tron-esque tech suit thing, which is mostly black, with some bright blue mixed in.  I dig it.  I dig it a lot.  The figure stands about 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 17 points of articulation.  I’ve had some issues with stuck joints on some of these guys previously, but I had no such issues for this guy, which I definitely appreciated.  He’s an all-new sculpt, rather than borrowing from one of the previous Batmen.  He’s slightly armored up, but in a different fashion than the two prior armored Batman designs.  This one’s definitely more streamlined, which fits well with the overall design.  Like the other caped figures in the line so far, Batman’s is cloth.  It seems to be a slightly sturdier material than prior capes, and generally hangs a little better than the slightly more paper-like material from previous releases.  He’s still got the hole in it, to keep with the line’s overall playability set-up.  Batman’s paint work is pretty basic and straight forward, but also his strongest asset.  It’s quite eye catching, and the application is generally pretty clean, without any notable slop or bleed over. Batman’s blind packed accessories consist of a winged back pack, an oversized batarang, and what looks to be a grenade launcher of some sort.  Mine are all in a clear blue; I don’t know if they have varied potential colors like prior releases, but the all blue certainly works for me; it looks kind of like they’re hard light constructs or something.

Joker has been a consistent fixture of the Caped Crusader line so far, turning up in just about every assortment.  It makes sense, him being Joker and all.  Like Batman, he gets wacky-variant-ized here, taking the classic Joker design of earlier figures, and sort of disheveling it a bit.  He’s 3 3/4 inches tall with 17 points of articulation, and like with Batman, I had no issues with stuck joints this time around.  Joker’s sculpt is a mostly new offering, although he does make use of the head from the prior Joker.  It’s sensible from a consistency stand point, so I can’t really knock it.  This Joker sculpt takes the prior, more classic and clean Joker, and sort of makes him look like he’s been in the midst of the action, picking things up as he goes.  He’s ditched his tie, and lost one of his shoes, replacing it with a stray boot.  He’s also added a few straps of pouches, as well as adding his own utility belt.  It’s a cool, sort of wasteland-looking Joker design, and definitely a lot of fun.  His paint work mostly keeps with the classic Joker color scheme, with the added details getting their own paint work…for the most part.  One of the straps goes unpainted, but the others are good to go.  The application gets a little fuzzy on a few of the edges, but generally looks pretty solid.  Joker’s secret weapons are a boxing-glove arm attachment (which is totally getting used with my GL figure), a laughing fish, and a little wind up chattering teeth bomb.  They’re all in a clear green, which makes a nice contrast for the blue with Batman, and I love how they’re all so well tied to the character.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Full disclosure: the two figures reviewed here were sent to me in exchange for a review courtesy of Spin Master, in order to help promote their figures in conjunction with the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League.  Per Spin Master, The Bat-Tech collection features exciting, high-tech styles of figures to collect featuring a variety of 4-inch and 12-inch figures from the Batman universe, and they are available in stores now.

I’ve been supporting Spin Master’s DC stuff pretty much since day 1, and I have definitely been pulling for them to really succeed with this line, because everything I’ve gotten from them has been so fun.  With the Bat-Tech set-up, it really feels like they’re starting to find their footing with the brand, and are making it more their own thing.  Both of these figures are a lot of fun, and give us two pretty solid new designs for characters that we’re undoubtedly going to see crop up again and again.  The new play pattern really works, and I’m definitely going to be snagging other figures from this set as I find them.

#2700: Batman

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

BATMAN

FIRST APPEARANCE (DC DIRECT)

“Adopting a ghastly, bat-like costume designed to inspire fear in the hearts of the “superstitious & cowardly” criminal element of Gotham City, Bruce Wayne burst onto the comics scene as Batman in 1939’s Detective Comics #27!”

2700 reviews.  That’s a nice sort of clean number, easily divisible by 27.  27’s a notable number in the world of comics, what with it being the issue number of the first appearance of Batman, who’s kind of a big deal, I guess.  What a crazy great tie-in for my 2700th review, right?  What great planning, right?  I’m very clever and organized, aren’t I?  ….Are you buying any of this?  Or is it just patently obvious that this was totally a coincidence, and the significance that I picked a First Appearance Batman for my 2700th review only dawned on me when I actually sat down to write the review.  Because, well, that’s what happened.  Thrilling story, I know.  Look, let’s just get to the review, shall we?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Batman was released as part of the first series of DC Direct’s First Appearance line in 2004, the 65th anniversary of the character.  Batman got into the first assortment over Superman, despite Superman’s first appearance being, you know, first, but hey, it was early ’00s DCD; if there was a chance at making a Batman, they were making Batman.  The figure stands 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 13 points of articulation.  He was by far DCD’s most articulated Batman at the time, possessing movement at both the wrists and the tops of the biceps.  He could almost cross his arms, even.  How quaint.  DCD was beginning its hard turn to artist-specific figures at this point in time, and First Appearance really embraced that.  Batman’s sculpt is very clearly patterned on Bob Kane’s….studio’s illustrations of Batman from the pages of Detective #27.  It’s a simpler style of art by modern standards, but the figure nevertheless stuck to it.  It’s a pretty clean looking sculpt, and it captures the highlights of what made this version of the costume distinctive, as well as doing a pretty alright job of making him work as an actual posable figure.  That’s something DCD historically had a lot of trouble handling, so they did a very respectable job here.  The range of motion on the joints is actually pretty respectable, especially on the neck, which is really the most key.  For the first few assortments, the First Appearance line dabbled in some cloth goods for most of the figures, a rather new venture for DCD at the time.  In accordance with this, Batman’s cape is a cloth piece.  It’s rather thickly constructed, with two sides; on black, one blue.  In order to give Batman’s the wing-like presence it had in the comic, there are some wires running through.  It’s one of those “better in theory than in practice” deals, but it’s not awful, especially for the time.  Batman’s paint work is pretty straightforward, as is to be expected, given its attempts to stick to the source material.  The colors are rather vibrant, and they’ve even done some rather nice work on the black sections, which have a quite impressive glossy sheen to them.  In terms of accessories, DCD was still going rather sparse.  Batman got a display stand and a small reprint of Detective Comics #27.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

While only a moderate Batman fan myself, I’ve always really liked his first appearance look, and I used to doodle it a lot on various papers and such as a kid.  This figure was really right up my alley at the time, and I snagged him back when he was new, courtesy of my local haunt, Cosmic Comix.  He’s perhaps not an incredibly impressive figure by today’s standards, but he was quite good for a DCD figure at the time, and he still holds up as a really good recreation of the design from the comics, and a distinctive figure at that.

#2652: Batman

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , ,

BATMAN

DC C3 CONSTRUCTION (PLAY ALONG)

The initial assortment of DC C3 Construction hit in the summer of 2004, and they were really focused on actually selling it as a line of construction sets that also included some Minimates.  In their second year in 2005, they tried that again, albeit with a smaller assortment this time.  Following that assortment, they kind of gave up even trying to pretend about what they were doing, and transitioned the line to a much more compact, lower price point selection of “Mini Flyers”, small vehicles that were a very thin excuse to put out the Minimates effectively on their own, only, you know, not.  Even through this end, they stuck to their heavy focus on Batman characters, including variants of the main man himself.  I’m looking at one of those variants today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Batman was released in April 2005 in the very originally named “Batman Mini Flyer” set, one of the six Mini Flyer sets that made up the final assortment of the DC C3 Construction line.  By this point, they were only packing a single Minimate with each set, so as to keep the price down, so Batman was all by his lonesome.  He was a comic-based figure, specifically drawn from his ’70s era appearances, as denoted by his predominately blue color scheme.  He’s built on the standard ‘mate body with C3 feet.  Still no standard peg holes for the heads, so he’s got a solid noggin piece.  He’s got add-ons for his mask, cape, belt, and gloves.  The mask, cape, and belt are the same ones used on the Dark Knight Batman included with the larger Batmobile set, but the gloves are new pieces for…reasons?  There were four standard Batmen in the C3 line, and every one of them used a different set of glove pieces, and I couldn’t for the life of me begin to tell you why.  These ones do at least put the arm spikes on the back of the gloves, where they’re supposed to be but tend not to be.  So, that makes them cool, I guess.  Also, these parts are not rubbery like last week’s Robin, so that’s another marked improvement.  Batman’s paint was generally pretty basic, and definitely not as involved as Robin.  Given the classic inspiration, that’s somewhat sensible, but not doing the shading on the front of the mask does feel like a missed opportunity.  I do like the slightly different expression on the face under the mask, though; it’s a nice change-up from the usual neutral expressions.  This Batman didn’t get any accessories, but there was the Mini Flyer, I guess.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The Mini Flyer’s are really where this line lost me, so I missed out on picking all of them but one when they were at retail.  Batman wasn’t that one, but he was a figure I was always interested to have.  Thankfully for me, he came in with the larger Minimate collection that showed up at All Time last year, and here we are.  Ultimately, I think DCD’s later classic Batman was slightly better, but this one’s still got his own charm to him.

#2602: Batman – Gotham By Gaslight

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , ,

BATMAN — GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT

ELSEWORLDS (DC DIRECT)

“As a young Bruce Wayne takes up the mantle of the Bat, a series of slayings mirroring the work of Jack the Ripper begins.”

DC’s Elseworlds line allowed them to tell stories that fell outside of the confines of a normal universe story, which opened the playing field to all sorts of crazy concepts.  It also lent itself pretty well to lots of “let’s mash up this DC thing with another established thing” scenarios.  This actually goes back to the very first Elseworlds tale, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, which is “what if Batman was Victorian era and fought Jack the Ripper?”  It’s not high concept, but it’s certainly fun.  It’s also some of Mike Mignola’s earlier work, and has some pretty impressive design work.  The story’s Victorian Batman design is quite distinctive, which makes it ripe for making action figures, as DC Direct did in 2007.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Gotham By Gaslight Batman was released in the second series of DC Direct’s Elseworlds line.  He was one of two Batmen included, the other being the Red Son version of the character, which is another quite distinctive, if perhaps slightly thematically similar version of the Batman design.  The figure stands 6 1/2 inches tall and he has 13 points of articulation.  The articulation’s not a lot, but it was about what you’d expect from DCD at the time.  It’s good for some slight tweaks to his posture, but that’s really it.  It’s certainly better than nothing.  The sculpt was an all-new piece, and it was definitely DCD at their best.  They really had a lot of fun with the artist-specific work in this line, and in the case of this Batman, they’ve done a pretty spot on job of capturing that early Mignola art style.  He doesn’t quite have the extreme hallmarks of later Mignola stuff, but there’s still enough to make it recognizable.  I really like how they’ve translated the texturing of Mignola’s work into something three dimensional, and I also quite enjoy how they’ve managed to keep him rather dynamic while also keeping a fairly neutral pose.  The flow of that cape is just beautiful.  The only thing I’m not too keen on are the ears, which always point a bit inward on mine.  It’s an unfortunate side effect of how small they have to be and how they were packaged in the box, I suppose.  The paint work does a nice job of replicating the way Mignola’s work is illustrated in the book, with a subdued palette and a decent job of outlining the features on the face.  There’s also some great accenting on the belt, as well as some impressive work on the mud stains on his boots and cape.  All in all, a very well rendered paint scheme.  The only slight let down to this guy are the accessories.  All he gets is a stand.  Its not much to go on, and felt quite light given the price these things were going for relative to everything else at the time.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I picked up this guy back when he was brand new, courtesy of my usual comics haunt, Cosmic Comix.  He was the first of the Elseworlds line I grabbed, mostly because I wanted a Mignola Batman figure, and I wasn’t picky about which particular design it was.  I hadn’t even read the comic at the time (I have since).  He’s certainly a nice looking figure, even if he’s maybe not so exciting to actually play with.

#2581: Batman & Joker

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , ,

BATMAN & JOKER

BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN (DC DIRECT)

“An epic tale of mystery and suspense that takes Batman deep into the underworld of Gotham City.”

Well, we’re firmly a week into November.  Perfect timing for me to have *just* missed Halloween in order to properly theme what I’m about to review.   Yes, I’m jumping into the world of Batman: The Long Halloween, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s year-long miniseries following an early in his career Batman as he tracks down Holiday, a serial killer who strikes once a month on a holiday.  While on his quest to find the killer, Batman also manages to face down most of his major rogues gallery, making it a nice, all-encompassing Batman story, and certainly one of the best out there.  It’s distinctive style, and the fact that it includes so many heavy hitters made it a perfect choice for a toy line.  Today, I’m delving into the heaviest of hitters, Batman and the Joker.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

Batman and The Joker were released as a special collector’s set from DC Direct in 2008, after they’d completed their main Long Halloween and Dark Victory lines.  The set included the two figures and some stripped down accessories, as well as a trade paperback of The Long Halloween.

BATMAN

“Batman races agains the calendar as he tries to discover who the killer Holiday is before he claims his next victim.”

Tim Sale’s Batman is a rather distinctive piece, and the chance to own it in three dimensions was one of the primary selling points of the first Long Halloween line.  It was so popular that it sold out the first time, so they just did a straight re-issue of it when it came time for the figures from Dark Victory…and then that one pretty much did the same thing.  So, this guy was the third pretty much straight re-release of this figure, although this one did get a new head sculpt out of it.  He’s almost 7 inches tall and he has 13 points of articulation.  It’s not a ton of posability, but it’s enough to get a few decent poses out of him.  The real weakness of the joints, I’d say, is the shoulders, which don’t really have much up and down.  This means he’s always just got them sort of jutting out to the sides like that.  Given Sale’s tendency to draw Bruce in rather dynamic poses while in costume, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s somewhat limiting.  In terms of the actual sculpt, Sale’s artwork proved a little difficult for DCD to translate into 3D.  His style is somewhat impressionistic, and he likes to keep his characters fluid, so getting them really nailed down in a single sculpt is tricky.  That’s definitely the case with Batman, who ends up looking close to Sale’s work to be sure, but there’s something…off.  The face in particular seems a bit out of place.  It’s a little bit pinched, I think, and almost too simian for the character.  It’s not far off, and definitely a marked improvement over the two single releases, but it’s still not quite there.  The other piece that seems to have given them trouble is the cape.  Sale always had Bruce’s cape all over the place, and he liked for it to be really long.  This figure aims to capture that, with a cape that trails behind and even lays on the ground at the back.  It’s not terrible, but the shaping doesn’t quite seem right here.  In this case, it’s really a matter of fighting with gravity, and it’s hard to fault DCD there.  The paint work on this guy remains pretty much the same as the two prior releases.  It’s black and grey, with just a touch of brown, which is to say it’s exactly what you’d expect from a standard Batman.  It’s pretty cleanly handled, and there’s no notable issues with mine, so I’m calling it a win in my book.  Batman includes a batarang with a line on it (which is the Dark Victory release) and a simple display stand with the book’s name printed on it.  I do miss the cool sidewalk stands that came with the single releases, but it’s fairly minor.

JOKER

“Sofia Falcone risked innocent lives when she unleashed The Joker after the Holiday killer!”

Joker’s an interesting choice for inclusion here.  I mean, yeah, he’s definitely Batman’s most distinctive foe and all, and his appearance in the book is a notable one, but beyond being the Joker, he’s not that prominent.  Two-Face and Catwoman are both far more plot relevant, and would have made for a more sensible second.  But, at the end of the day, DCD was hard pressed to say no to another Batman/Joker pairing, especially one the same year as The Dark Knight…which, of course, also had Two-Face in a prominent role, making his inclusion the more logical–nope, I’m spiraling again.  Stop it, Ethan.  What’s done is done.  This figure stands again just shy of 7 inches tall and he has again 13 points of articulation.  In terms of movement, Joker is even more static than Batman, largely because he’s far more pose-specific than Batman.  He’s patterned on a specific visual from the comic, which was more important for the single release of the figure, since it more tied in with that figure’s accessories.  Whatever the case, it’s got him in sort of a mid-stride appearance, which is a little tricky to work with, since it makes him rather hard to get standing.  I was mentioning above how Sale’s characters are very fluid; well, going by that method, his Joker is fully liquified.  He goes for the height of expressiveness, and that means he’s really hard to nail down in three dimensions.  Because of this, his sculpt is probably the weakest of the whole set.  It’s not bad, and when viewed from the right angle, it actually looks really cool.  The profile in particular is really killer.  It’s just not great for posing, and looking too closely at the internal proportions is bound to drive you batty, and not in the thematically appropriate way.  Joker’s paint work marked quite a change from the prior release, with a few changes to the actual color palette.  This is actually a case of DCD making good use of a second release of a mold, as Joker’s colors shift later in the series.  His single release matches the earlier appearance, while this one’s more of an end of the series look.  This release also cleans up the application a bit more, especially on the face, which is now a much cleaner end product.  The accessories are where this guy really takes a hit compared to the single.  He gets his gun and a display stand, but loses the santa hat and bag of gifts from the original.  While I get why they were cut, it’s still a little sad that they aren’t here.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I hadn’t yet read Long Halloween when DCD first released figures from it.  By the time I got around to reading it (and loving it, because boy do I love it), all of the figures, including this pack, had disappeared.  I’ve had my eye out for a set of them for a bit, but never really went to the trouble of tracking them down.  This pair came into All Time as part of a rather large collection a few months ago, and they were at the right price at the right time, so I was definitely on board.  These two were probably the weakest of DCD’s Sale-based figures, but that doesn’t make either one of them a bad figure at all.  In fact, I really quite like them, and I’m happy to finally be making my way through this set of figures.

Thanks to my sponsors at All Time Toys for setting me up with these guys for review.  If you’re looking for toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.

#2566: Batman – Defender

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , ,

BATMAN — DEFENDER

BATMAN: THE CAPED CRUSADER (SPIN MASTER)

Remember earlier in this week when I was talking about the DC line’s wacky variant coverage?  Remember the thing about getting the variant before getting the standard?  And also the thing with the gold?  Great, that makes writing this intro a bit easier for me.  This time it’s Batman.  Here we go.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Gold Batman, who is apparently called “Batman Defender,” is part of the very first series of the Batman: The Caped Crusader line.  He ups that “rare” game that was going on with Wonder Woman to a “Super Rare” game…again, whatever that means.  I’ve got this one and not the standard one, so I don’t know about the relative rarity.  The figure stands 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 17 points of articulation.  There are currently three Batman sculpts floating around in this line, and this figure makes use of the most “standard” of the the three.  It’s based on the Rebirth design for his costume, which is a pretty darn solid Batman design, all things considered.  The sculpt is pretty much on par with the rest of the Spin Master DC stuff, so it’s a little bit bulked up when compared to the comics depiction, but honestly, it has a pretty good basic Batman feel to it.  The costume details are well rendered, and I appreciate the level of work that’s gone into it.  The head in particular has a nice classic Batman vibe, which I can definitely dig.  He’s got a cloth cape, and like I noted with Superman and Shazam, it’s not a terribly impressive piece, but it’s also not like it’s particularly bad either.  They made a point of leaving a hole in it that corresponds with the port on his back, so at least he can make use of all of the gear from other figures, if you’re so inclined.  While the Gold Wonder Woman was totally devoid of paint, Batman mixes things up slightly.  He’s got his black insignia, white for his eyes, and flesh tone for his lower face, indicating that this is supposed to be a costume, I guess.  It’s different from all of the other gold variants, but it was also the first one, so I guess they hadn’t quite made up their minds fully on the concept yet.  I think I might have preferred the straight gold, but this isn’t bad either.  Gold Batman includes three blind packed accessories: a grapple in neon green, chest armor in black, and a shield in yellow.  It’s a shame they didn’t go for the all gold pieces like with Wonder Woman.  I feel that would have inclined me to use them, instead of just tossing them to the side.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I liked the Wonder Woman a fair bit, and I definitely want the Gold Superman, so I figured I might as well grab a Gold Batman too.  The one from the corresponding series is built on the armored body, which I wasn’t quite as big on, but fortunately for me, Max was on board with trading out that one for this one, and passing this one along to me.  It’s a little weird that they changed the gimmick mid-run on these guys, but I still like this figure.  I guess I should pick up a Batman in standard colors now.

#2531: Decoy Batman

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

DECOY BATMAN

BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM (KENNER)

Interspersed with its selection of rather faithful recreations of characters and designs from the show, Kenner’s Batman Animated offerings also had a need to keep a lot of colorful variants of its main character coming at a regular pace.  So, we definitely got a *lot* of Batmen, whose importance to the overall narrative definitely had a range.  Some of them were sensible additions, perhaps taking one gadget or moment and building a whole figure around it, while some were just kind of bonkers.  And some were bonkers at the forefront, but ultimately not that weird when you explored them just a bit further.  Today’s figure fits that particular, very narrow mold.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Decoy Batman was officially part of Kenner’s tie-in line for Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, released in 1993.  While the last two figures I looked at from this line were directly lifted from the film, this one’s a bit more dubious.  His whole gimmick is that his torso launches away as a “decoy”, while the underlying Bruce Wayne figure can get away, I suppose, which kind of tracks with the scene in the movie where Bruce places his cape and cowl on a sawhorse and flings it out of a building in an attempt to escape the police…and now that I’ve written that out, I realize this figure’s maybe a better tie-in than I realized.  I mean, sure he’s not a direct lift from the scene, but I guess the concept’s there.  He fits into that “building a figure around one moment” dynamic.  Kudos to Kenner, I guess.  And, like, anti-kudos to me for not thinking this through before writing the review.  I mean, sure, I could go back and re-write the whole thing and make it look like I knew from the start, but tell me: where’s the fun in that?  Okay, maybe I should actually get to the reviewing.  This figure stands just shy of 5 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  The body sculpt for the figure is unique to him and it’s not bad.  The build is in line with the other standard Batmen from the line, and while the costume details are somewhat made up, they aren’t too crazy or zany.  He re-uses the main line’s Bruce Wayne figure’s head, and it’s a pretty darn spot-on old-style Bruce Wayne head, so no complaints there.  Perhaps the weirdest element of the whole thing is the way his action feature works; the Bruce head is on a spring-loaded neck piece, which can be depressed into the torso, much like a turtle, allowing for the “decoy” head and chest piece to snap over top.  It was a gimmick that Kenner would use a few more times for their DC lines, as well as their Shadow tie-in line.  It’s goofy as heck, but it does get the job done, and honestly doesn’t really impede the figure too badly. The clip-on decoy piece is another pretty solid match for the animated series designs, and is a pretty basic Batman from the show.  Well, in sculpt, anyway.  The paint work opts to forego the usual Batman colors for a black and red number.  For some reason, they really liked making Bruce-to-Batman figure’s red.  I really don’t know why that is, but it happened on three separate occasions, so that’s one heck of a pattern.   Ultimately, it’s not the worst color scheme ever, and does sort of fit the art deco designs of the show, at least somewhat, but it’d certainly be cool to see this figure in a more standard color scheme.  In addition to his decoy chest piece, Decoy Batman was also packed with a grapple…which I lost.  Look, it hardly seemed as essential as the main gimmick of the figure, alright?

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I didn’t get Decoy Batman new, since the whole line was gone from retail shelves by the time I was actually getting into collecting.  So, I was definitely on the follow-up market for him.  Ultimately, he was kind of a bit of a consolation prize, if I’m honest.  I was at Baltimore Comic Con, and saw the Phantasm at a dealer’s table.  It was, however, $20, and that was too much for me, so instead I got this guy because he was $5.  Can’t really say I was at all let-down by the set up, because I wound up getting the Phantasm a bit later down the line anyway, and Decoy Batman’s a pretty fun figure in his own right.

#2517: Retro Batman

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , ,

RETRO BATMAN

BATMAM: MASK OF THE PHANTASM (KENNER)

I’ve looked at a surprisingly small amount of Kenner’s Animated Batman tie-in product.  I’ve certainly looked at a chunk of the DCC follow-ups, and even a handful of Mattel’s JLU-era stuff, but I’m averaging about a single Kenner animated figure a year right now.  Well, I’m aiming to mix things up a bit.  In tandem with my looks back at the other toys of my childhood with X-Men and Power of the Force, let’s throw a little bit of Batman into the mix, shall we?  And what better place to start than with a variant of the main guy himself, hailing from one of my absolute favorite pieces of the Animated Verse, and one of my favorite DC-related things in general, Mask of the Phantasm.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Retro Batman is one handful of Batman variants that were released in 1994 as part of Kenner’s Batman: Mask of the Phantasm tie-in line.  Unlike most of those other variants, which were mostly made up by the minds at Kenner, this one was actually in the film, depicting Batman as he’s seen in the flashbacks (it also showed up during some of the flashbacks in the episode “Robin’s Reckoning”, which is a good companion piece to the film in general).  He’s not terribly far-removed from the standard Batman design, and in retrospect is kind of a merging of the BTAS, TNBA, and JLU designs all into one.  The figure stands just shy of 5 inches tall and he has 6 points of articulation.  He keeps the standard Kenner 5 points, and also has a swivel on his right forearm to assist with his action feature.  It won’t really hold many poses, but it does add a slight bit more of variation to the posing.  His sculpt is fairly typical of this era of figure from Kenner.  He’s not a pitch-perfect match for the animation models, but he’s pretty close, and fits consistently with the styling of the other figures in the line.  The sculpt is clean, and hits all the important notes, and he’s pretty darn sturdy.  As was the way at this point, his cape is cloth.  Again, not super accurate, but it works for their purposes, and it certainly helps with the playability.  His paint work is pretty cleanly handled overall, though Kenner for some reason opted to make the body suit a sort of bluish silver, rather than the typical grey.  It’s not super far removed, and it reads the same way as the standard colors.  I honestly don’t mind it, but it’s still a weird choice.  Batman’s accessory selection here is…interesting to say the least.  He’s got a battle spear and a sort of a gun looking thing?  I don’t know exactly what they’re supposed to be, nor do they really line-up with anything from the movie or the episodes where this look appears.  But, they certainly feel toyetic.  The spear is meant to be placed in his right hand, allowing it to be spun using the wheel mechanism in his arm and back.  It’s odd, but harmless.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

While the majority of my Animated stuff is actually from when I was a kid, this one is not.  I always wanted him, but just never managed to find one.  Fortunately, one came into All Time a couple of weeks ago, new, sealed, and in pretty much pristine condition, so it was almost like getting it when it was brand new.  He’s a fun variant of Batman, and also a sensible variant of Batman, and those two didn’t tend to cross-over in this line too much, so I gotta say he really works for me.