Monthly Archives: April 2023

Apr 5 2023

DC Multiverse: Death Metal Batman and Batcycle by McFarlane

Hey look! McFarlane made a Batman figure! Can you believe it? Sure you can, because the DC Multiverse line has been focused on Batman since the beginning, and while I think it’s gotten better at diversifying, it’s hard to collect this line without getting a bunch of The Batmans. Today I’m checking out the Dark Knight as he appeared in the book Dark Knights Death Metal from a couple years back, along with his rather unique looking Batcycle. I haven’t read the book, but I may remedy that some day. Oddly enough, I picked up the Batcycle last year before I even started collecting DC Multiverse, because it was down to $9 and I gave it to some of my Mythic Legions vampires to ride. But when I started collecting Multiverse, I decided to pick up Death Metal Batman to go with it. Let’s start with the figure!

As always the packaging is clean and simple, giving you a good look at the figure inside. The source that the figure is based on is printed on the side of the box, and I do wish they would list it down at the bottom too, rather than just say Batman, because there’s too many Batmans!!! There’s a simple figure stand and a collector card, but those are staying put for now, because you have to tear the bubble off the backing to get at them.

The grimdark filter of the Death Metal concept doesn’t really work for me with all the DC characters, but it sure does work for Batman here. The design is like something an angst-ridden 14yo would doodle on their Trapper Keeper while bored out of their mind in Sociology. And I mean that as a compliment in every possible sense, and McFarlane did an amazing job with the detail on this figure. The gray body suit with bold bat symbol is about the only thing standard here, while every thing else on the figure is badassery amped up to 11. And everyone knows the Badassery Scale only goes up to 10. There’s a trench coat has studded shoulders and heavy straps with silver painted buckles running down the front. It’s split down the middle in the back, most likely to help him mount his Batcycle. I dig how the back of the shoulders sort of forms another bat symbol, but not quite. The black boots are just rows of straps with bat-shaped knee guards. His arm bracers are silver with some gnarly looking spikes, and he even has studs on the knuckles of his black gloves. The belt has a silver bat symbol for a buckle and silver skulls with chains hanging down. Everything in the sculpted detail here is just beyond impressive.

The head sculpt is on point with the lower half of the exposed face forged into a scowl, which is conveyed mostly in the facial creases that frame the straight, horizontal slit of a mouth. I like the iron jaw and the wrinkle in the nose that carries through the mask. The ears are reduced to tiny bumps and the eye mask forms some harsh downturned brows of disapproval. I’ve been a bit critical of some of the McFarlane Batman portraits for being a tad soft, but this one is absolutely great.

Articulation is right in line with the DC Multiverse standards. Eventually I will stop running through the points, because it just gets redundant, but let’s do it here anyway. You get rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, with double-hinges in the elbows. The legs are ball jointed in the hips, with rotating hinges in the ankles, and double-hinged knees. There’s a ball joint under the chest and another in the neck. Everything here is serviceable and with the cut in the back of the coat, it doesn’t hinder the range of movement at all. The hands are designed to hold his accessory, as well as the handlebars of the Batcycle, but they can work as fists given the right perspective. The gray hinges between the black knee guards and boots is a bit distracting, but it ain’t terrible.

The accessory I mentioned is a giant scythe and it sure adds a lot of menace to the figure when on display. The contoured staff is sculpted to look like it’s wrapped from top to bottom in brown leather strips, which offers a lot of detail to what could otherwise just have been a brown stick. The blade is black with silver edges and forms what looks like a single batwing, or half of a bat insignia. Let’s check out the Batcycle!

The bike comes in an elongated box with a window to show off the goods. The styling is similar to the figure packaging with the outside being black and a blue background inside. You even get a collector card with the vehicle, which is pretty cool, but again it’s staying secured in the package for now.

And wow is this thing absolutely ridiculous and cool at the same time! It’s like someone took a motorcycle and grafted a giant bat skeleton onto it. The head forms the front, with the open jaw framing the back half of the front wheel. The ribcage wraps around the gas tank and the front of the engine, while there’s a little more bone sculpted behind the seat and over the back wheel. The bone is conveyed both in the sculpt and the superb paintwork and it looks pretty damn convincing to me. There’s an almost hypnotic swirl sculpted into the ears and the eyes are just creepy milky yellow orbs. There’s a wonderful contrast between the bright off-white of the bone and the dingy gray and black of the rest of the bike. You get some amazing detail in the engine and the tires too. I love the bat symbol inside the front tire, and how fat the back tire is. Wow, this thing looks cool. It’s like something that would be painted on the cover of a Meat Loaf album!

Thanks to that split in the trench coat, Batman can mount the bike perfectly. His hands form a good grip on the handlebars and his feat can rest on the pedals below. The exhaust pipes on the bike do reach the ground, so there’s no need for a kickstand to keep this thing vertical.

After having the Batcycle kicking around my collection for almost a year, I’m happy to have finally united it with its proper driver. McFarlane has been killing it with these small vehicles, offering them up at around $22-25, I think they’re some of the best values on the toy shelves. Even more so, considering I picked up mine for $9. The figure was actually $28, which is by far the most I’ve paid for a DC Multiverse figure. I think he’s been off the shelves for a while, which is why I had to pay a little extra. Still, I think it was worth it. Despite not having any real ties to the comic source material, I am thrilled to have this figure and bike displayed on my shelf! I don’t know if I’ll go for any of the other Death Metal figures, but I do have a certain giant Death Metal Batman Monster Truck on the way!

By figurefanzero
0
Apr 3 2023

Indiana Jones Adventure Series: Indiana Jones(Raiders of the Lost Ark) by Hasbro

Back when Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out, Hasbro went wild with their 3 3/4-inch Indiana Jones line. We got figures from all the films, as well as mini playsets, vehicles, and even a big playset. The line was not terribly popular with collectors as the paint apps had a habit of being rather rough, but I absolutely loved the line for being super fun and very expansive. I still maintain that it was the best thing to come out of what was a pretty poor film. Fast forward to now and we have yet another Indiana Jones film on the horizon and one which I am really dubious about. But hey… more Indy toys! This time we’re getting 6-inch and 3 3/4-inch retro lines. The first pair of the 6-inch Adventure Series figures have arrived, so let’s start with the man himself. If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones!

Yeah, I have no words for how much I love Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s on a short list of what I consider to be perfect films. It’s not a move I can have on in the background either. If it’s on, it has my total attention, even though I know it by heart. Adventure Series Indy comes in a fully enclosed box, which looks nice, but also illustrates the problem with these boxes. The figure pictured on the front just isn’t what’s in the box, mostly because of the portrait. And I’m not talking about paint flubs or QC issues. We’re clearly seeing a pre-production figure as opposed to what actually shipped, and that’s where you wander into the nefarious Temple of False Advertising. Inside the box the figure comes wrapped in a paper bag with the accessories in a second bag. Both bags have maps printed on them, which is a nice touch. This wave is also doing a Build-An-Artifact thing, so Indy comes with the two angels from the top of the Ark of the Covenant. But I’ll save those for when I check out the last figure and have all the pieces.

At casual glace, everything looks fairly solid. Indy comes in his trademark leather jacket, which is cast in soft plastic with the sleeves sculpted as part of the arms. The sleeves don’t really match up with the arm holes well enough, making it really obvious that they aren’t part of the jacket, but that’s often the case with this trick. There’s a button-down shirt sculpted under that and his satchel is worn with the shoulder strap under the jacket. You can easily remove the satchel if you want. The detail on the shirt is very nice and there’s some great weathering on the jacket. The khaki trousers have rumpling down by the cuffs and there’s some sharp detail in his boots. I really don’t have any complaints about the body sculpt.

The head sculpt features a permanently attached fedora, which I don’t really mind that much, although for a $25 figure, not having it be removable does hurt the value a bit. There’s also some bad mold flashing on the brim of my figure’s hat. As for the portrait itself, I don’t think it’s bad, but it’s a far cry from what’s on the box. The more I handle the figure, the more I like it. Had the figure been sold in a window box, I don’t think I would have a problem with it at all, but when compared to the picture on the box it still feels like a bit of bait and switch. I actually think it most resembles Indy from some the painted movie posters, and that’s not a bad thing. Hasbro has certainly done some better likenesses in this scale, but they’ve done a lot that have been far worse too. The nose and mouth are undeniably Harrison Ford and they even worked his chin scar into the likeness. After a few days of mulling it over, and not looking at the photo on the box, I ended up liking this portrait quite a bit.

Nearly every joint on my figure was fused right out of the box, so Indy had to take a bath in the Hot Tub to get him limbered up. I sure didn’t want to snap any joints. The articulation feels like it takes a step back from some of Hasbro’s other offerings in this scale. You get rotating hinges in the shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles. The hips are ball jointed, there are swivels in the thighs, a ball joint in the waist, and another for the neck. The hands are on dog bone-style double ball joints so they can be swapped out, with the peg in the arm and not in the hand, which is weird. You get a pair of fists, a gun-holding right hand, a whip-holding right hand, an idol-holding left hand, and a relaxed left hand. The elbows can do slightly better than 90-degrees, but boy do I wish they were double-hinged. The knee joints work alright, but they look absolutely awful when bent. Even the elbow joints look a bit bulbous when bent. Let’s look at accessories!

You get two versions of the iconic whip, one coiled to hang from his belt loop and one for action. The coiled whip looks very nice with some excellent sculpted braiding. Unfortunately, it is damn near impossible to close the loop and keep it closed. The peg is really soft and either doesn’t want to go into the hole or just pulls out a few seconds later. I was honestly amazed I was able to get any pictures at all with the loop closed around the whip. Sometimes the whip will stay in place for a while even after the loop’s peg pulls out, but eventually it will just fall to the floor. Something this simple should not be this poorly implemented, and especially not on a $25 figure.

The other whip is rubbery and wants to keep returning to a semi-coiled state. I can sometimes get a good pose with it, but it won’t do what I want it to do. I was thinking back to the Super7 ThunderCats Tygra figure, where his bolo whip would hold a shape and this one will not. I can’t believe Hasbro couldn’t work something out with a poseable wire, because that’s really what this accessory needed. And it’s no fun that it can’t be latched onto anything very well to make like he’s swinging. There were a bunch of different directions Hasbro could have gone with this version of the whip, but this just doesn’t work for me. At least this one still has the excellent braided sculpt as the coiled one.

Beside the whips, you get Indy’s revolver, which fits in his holster. The peg on the strap that holds the holster closed is almost as frustrating as the whip loop peg, but at least if it doesn’t stay pegged in, the gun can still stay in the holster. The sculpt for the gun is passable, but it’s real rubbery and kind of just blah. It does work well with the trigger-finger hand.

Finally, you get the fertility idol that Indy recovered from the temple at the beginning of Raiders. This is a nice little sculpt and while the gold plastic isn’t super vibrant, it looks good enough for me. Sadly, the hand that is designed to hold it really doesn’t work. I had to use a piece of poster putty to get it to stay in his hand for these photos.

Indiana Jones and the Death of A Thousand Cuts. It makes for an intriguing title, but a disappointing figure. I’m hard pressed to remember opening a figure that I wanted to love more, and yet there are just so many little things wrong with this one that it makes me kind of sad. Am I sorry I bought it? No. Indy is one of my favorite film characters and I’ll always buy him when he’s released as an action figure. This figure is by no means awful, but at $25, some of the aspects needed to be thought out a lot better, and I guess I had my hopes set high. It’s a rough start to the wave, doubly so since he’s the star, but we’ll see how the rest of the assortment pans out next time with Toht. Holy shit, they actually made a figure of the Nazi Gestapo agent Toht!