“I want you to remember…my hand…at your throat…”
McFarlane Toys and DC unleashed a fearsome foursome recently. Based upon their comic likenesses in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns story line, McFarlane gives us figures for Batman, Superman, Robin (Carrie Kelley), and the Joker. Not only were four figures released, but each one comes with pieces to build the horse that Batman rides in the story in the final battle. As far as I know this is the first time that the build-a-figure has been a full-sized horse. It’s pretty epic.
This review is going to be a bit different since I am covering five figures. I’ll start with Batman, Superman, Joker, and Robin, giving you general pros and cons about all of them. Then I’ll focus on the horse figure. Feel free to look through the images in order to get a good look at each figure. Also, please forgive the “dust” in some of the photos. I didn’t use my photo box because of the size of this collection, so these photos may look a little dirty. It’s actually dust from opening up the boxes. I tried to clean it up as much as possible.
All four figures come with a DC figure base and a collector card. All four of them also come with at least one accessory and at least two pieces to build the horse figure. Batman comes with the tail and both front legs. Superman comes with both rear legs. The Joker has the head and saddle. Carrie Kelley comes with the two largest pieces of the horse, its left and ride torso. Batman and Superman come with a swappable set of hands. Batman also comes with the lasso with a batarang on the end that he uses in the comic. Joker comes with a knife and a swappable left hand. Carrie Kelley comes with her slingshot.
All three of the males in this line feature very stiff joints with the exception of Joker’s ankles which are extremely loose. This may be specific to my figure but it’s worth mentioning as it does make posing Joker a bit of a challenge. Carrie Kelley’s ankles and arms are also very loose. Batman and Joker’s accessories are very soft and it’s extremely difficult to get the lasso and knife in their respective hands. In fact, I stopped trying to put Joker’s knife in his hand because I didn’t want to damage the figure or the accessory.
I’m not a big fan of Miller’s art style. The clunky figures look awkward on the page in my opinion. That being said, Miller’s style translates extremely well in these action figures. All of them, excepting Robin, are heavy and solid figures. All four of them look simply amazing. I really love how the bright colors pop on Robin and Superman. Joker looks quite dapper in his white suit with a flowing tie. Batman looks absolutely fierce.
The horse is surprisingly light once you put it all together. The pieces snap together with relative ease. The horse has slight articulation at the top of its neck and the entire head can move up and down at the shoulder. All four legs have multiple points of articulation at well. The tail is fairly limited to spinning around. Once the horse is assembled, you can take it apart if you’d like. The front legs are the hardest pieces to disassemble. Also, the saddle does not unbuckle, so make sure that you place it on the horse’s torso before you snap in the legs and head or you’ll end up having to remove them like I did.
The horse looks pretty good but mine has a few marks on the head. It can be posed with relative ease but if you plan on posing it reared up on two legs with Batman in the saddle, you’ll need some sort of support as the ankles can’t handle the weight. Batman does fit on the horse but the reins are too soft to easily snap into Batman’s hands. Otherwise, Batman looks good in the saddle.
All five of these figures look nice. I don’t plan on displaying Batman on the horse because he looks better standing in my opinion. If I had to pick only one figure out of the bunch to grab, it would be Carrie Kelley simply because she doesn’t have a lot of figures and this one looks amazing. All four of them would be great for display, though, so buy one or buy all of them if you’d like.
Thanks for reading my post. I’ve included a couple of comparison photos below of other McFarlane figures to give you an idea of the size of each figure. The Armored Batman from The Dark Knight Returns was a previous release but it goes well with this line. I hope that you enjoyed this review. Let me know what you think of the figures in the comments.
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