Jay's Toy Shelf : DC Collectibles Manbat

Thursday, March 8, 2018

DC Collectibles Manbat - Arkham Knight

Kirk Langstrom is a successful scientist and loving husband who is quickly developing chronic deafness. So what does he do? What any comic book good guy turned-villain would do. Splices DNA with that of a bat in order to counteract his disorder. Now, this is the part where you ignore science, because he ends up turning himself into an animalistic, superhuman strong bat creature.

As an opponent to Batman, he's a little bit limited in what is done story-wise with the character, in that he's more of a tragic villain. A bit of a Jekyll and Hyde type, rather than a malicious, evil psychopath that is typical of Batman's rogue gallery.
In the game, unlike some of the comics, he kills his wife during his transformation, then pretty much just flies around the city until you discover and try to cure him. Now, I was actually expecting his appearance, as it is a bit of a jump-scare, and he still scared the CRAP outta me when the scene came. His role is a side mission called Creature of the Night, which isn't particularly long.

This figure really does a ton of stuff well. The open mouth scream of rage, the sheer size is accurate, and the details are fantastic in terms of paint and wing texture. The damage to his body is sculpted, and the tubes that were attached to his body are fairly well done. The articulation isn't too bad, except for the elbow/wrists of the wings, where there isn't any. Don't get me wrong, it's hard to do wings effectively on figures. You either have to include alternate sets that can peg on (cons: looseness), have them in one position only (cons: limited posing), have normal arm articulation but put it in sections for the wings (cons: can look really silly in some poses) or try some kind of very elaborate cloth and joint type (I have never seen this). Here DC opted for one position: opened up to more or less full extension, which is just fine.

Sculpt & Paint: 5/5 Honestly the shading, paint apps and sculpting are top notch. They even have shading and textures for the skin and cracked skin-wing look. There might be the occasional QC issues for some of the IV and tubes, but really it's so good.

Articulation: 2/5 (14 points). Pros: He has a pretty nice ab crunch, very nice ankle articulation, thigh swivels and a decent hip range. Cons: Only his shoulders move on his arms...that takes away a ton of articulation points. Also, unlike some of the other primary characters, single jointed knees and his legs can't move back at all due to restrictions from his "tail". He also has no waist swivel.

Price/Availability: 4/5 I got him pretty recently on Amazon for 20% off his first release price. The nice thing is he's a standard figure price but the size of his wings make him seem quite a bit larger.

Accessories: 5/5 Technically he doesn't come with anything, but Manbat never has had any, and neither did this, so instead of redoing the verdict scale, he gets full points! Maybe work on the wings? or an alternate head? Realistically though, he pretty much spent the whole game screaming anyway.

Fun factor: 4/5 He is pretty well balanced and it's still fun getting him in a variety of scary poses.
I didn't expect to eventually include him in my Arkham figures, but with his price and look, I couldn't pass it up.

Verdict: 20/25 Good. He's a super nice figure, though not a particularly sought after character by most. I gotta say, he looks great on the shelf and if you can pick him up even at a slight discount, he's worth it for the Arkham collector!