I will save my unbelievably vitriolic
rant about how fucking long these fucking figures took to get to me
for another day. But just so you know, I got my September Matty order
a full week after Monkey,
Evil, and Carl. Re-fucking-diculous.
I'll
also get into why I'm saving that rant for later... uh... later.
I know
this guy isn't specifically a horror-related character, but I think
he qualifies for Halloween coverage. He has a skull for a head, he
murdered a teenage girl, and if I don't go ahead and cover him now I
might forget for a while like I did with poor Icarius
last year.
If I'm
being totally honest, the main reason I don't think much of Black
Mask is because he killed Stephanie Brown just when I was really
starting to like her. And in a way that was totally cheap and meant
to make you take Black Mask seriously, not in a way that necessarily
flowed from the narrative. Steph was sacrificed to get a lesser
character over – a guy that couldn't get any heat on his own. But
the problem was that he killed a teenage girl that the Batman comics
had been telling us for quite some time was inferior and incompetent.
The whole thing came off about as well as if CM Punk beat Santino
Morella.
But I
do like the design of Black Mask, as he's quite sinister-looking and
typically has a suit on. It's a very original look that...
Oh.
Well.
Maybe
at least the figure is distinctive enough that it won't be an issue.
First Glance: This is the
most visually impressive figure so far, as far as just sitting there
in the box goes. He really does look like pure evil and I dig that.
Articulation: Your
standard suit-wearing-dude DCUC articulation.
Head – ball joint (sort of)
Shoulders – swivel/pivot
Biceps - swivel
Elbows – pivot
Wrists – swivel
Abdomen - pivot
Waist – swivel
Hips – swivel/pivot
Thighs – swivel
Knees – pivot
Ankles – pivot
The head is on a ball joint, but mostly
just swivels. I kins of hate his neck, but we'll get to that later.
His feet seem to have just a wee bit
more of a range of motion than other suited DCUC figures.
Sculpt: I don't own
every DCUC figure, but I think we've seen most of Black Mask's parts
before. The Horsemen just did their thing and combined them in a way
that is fresh. I believe Mask's jacket, hands, tie, and (of course)
head are new.
The head may bear a similarity to a
certain other comic book company’s much more famous character, but
it does look awesome. I kind of wish they had taken the teeth down a
bit and made him look more like just a skull. His top teeth are
exaggerated a bit too much and that's what's making him look like the
Mask. And don't get me wrong – this head looks great. But it does
make me wish Dark Horse had a line of 6" action figures.
The hands might not actually be new,
but I didn't see them in my collection. They're nice and slim and
somehow very sinister. They have little lines on the back like Mickey
Mouse's and that's just horrifying.
The shoes are the regular DCUC dress
shoes. I would've liked to see some wingtips on this guy, but that's
just nitpicky. These are fine.
Coloring: Black Mask is
pretty simple, but what is colored is pretty good aside from some
gloss issues.
The head looks fantastic. I can't tell
through the glare, but there appears to be a slight wash on the face
area to bring out all of the sculpt details. The eyes arw a bright
white and very tightly done. The teeth are a different shade of white
and also well-placed. There is no bleeding or missed spots.
The tie has a great gray and black
stripe design; broader stripes alternating with narrow ones. It looks
very good and adds so much more to the figure than a plain tie would
have. It's little details like that that keep me buying these things.
Well, that and the fact that I would have to cancel my credit card to
stop buying them.
The gloss of the arms and legs don't
quite match the jacket. It isn't bad, but it is noticeable. The shoes
are much glossier than either and look really good, despite being one
solid color.
Flair: The jacket is the
best suit jacket to come out of DCUC. It hangs very nicely, the arm
holes are very snug and don;t detract from the aesthetics at all, and
it doesn't interfere with the abdominal joint as much as you might
expect. It's just a slick, two-button jacket, but it looks very good.
The tie looks nice and is glued in
place well enough that it blends into the sculpt well. I'm glad we're
(for the time being) away from the era of ties being sculpted to flap
in the wind and stupid crap like that. Now if we could just stop
getting "yelling" faces.
Accessories: Black Mask
comes with a Batman mask, a knife, and some kind of giant serving
fork. This is where we run into the real problems.
Let's start with the bad – the knife
is all fucked up by my standards for implements of stabbing. The
guard is on the worn side, the hilt is just a bit too small for the
figure's hand, and it's made of fucking rubber. Mattel had stated
that a collector's line did not have to meet safety standards, so I
do not understand why any accessories would still be made of rubber.
The Batman mask looks great. It is
sculpted nicely and even sports a paint job. Unfortunately, whatever
the intention was for Black Mask to be holding it or stabbing it with
one of his stabby items it does not work. There is a raised portion
with a small slot in the back that looks like the part where the
figure is supposed to hold it, but nothing fits in that slot or can
hold the raised portion. Like Atrocitus' lantern, I don;t know
what the fuck we're supposed to do with this thing.
The two-tined fork is okay. It's
rubber, but it looks fine.
Packaging: It’s a neat
little window box. This is a case where the window box works against
the product, but it hardly matters since you were either forced to
buy this (yes – I know you didn’t have to sign up for the sub,
but if you did you had no choice but to buy this guy) or are ordering
it in some other online method.
Very few people will get to see it in
person before they make the purchase. But if they did they might pass
because you really can’t tell how neat he is while he’s in the
box. The art on these is great, by the way.
Value: $23.70 (including
shipping) for a six inch scale figure with a lot of shared parts. Not
very good.
Overall: I fell like I
was a little hard on this figure in spots. I actually really like him
and am fairly satisfied. The accessories irritate me, but they aren't
critical to this character so I actually don't care that much. I'm
probably going to give him the DCD version’s weapons. That drill is
rad.
4
out of 5
Yeah, he's fine. Not worth what I paid,
but if he had been fifteen I'd be perfectly content.
Phantom
Troublemaker vs. 31 Days of Halloween
If you’re new here or haven’t been
keeping up, this is where I give my thoughts on SyFy’s “31 days
of Halloween” programming. Obviously I haven’t seen everything
I’ll be talking about, but that’s kind of what the internet is
all about – talking out of your ass.
Each day I will cover the schedule from
the time my post goes live (usually 11 AM) through the following 24
hours. On Fridays I will cover the whole weekend, which is a huge
pain in the ass but also kind of fun.
Enjoy!
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM – Copperhead
– As much as I wish this was a motion picture about the pilot of
the COBRA Water Moccasin; that just wouldn't be very Halloweeny. I
mean, unless he's a serial killer or something. Which he isn't.
This movie actually has two things going for it – it's set just
after the Civil War, making it more interesting than your typical
"attack of (animal)" movie. The other thing is Billy Drago.
Halloween score – 2
Quality score – 4
2:00 PM – 4:00 PM – Anacondas 3
– Crystal Allen has starred in two of these
things now and, shockingly, neither of them is bad. Well, they're
both bad, but fun. Not unwatchable by any means. As a matter of fact,
SyFy's snake day is looking pretty fun so far. Not very Halloweeny,
but fun.
Halloween score – 2
Quality score – 3
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM – Anacondas: Trail
of Blood
– This is the second Crystal Allen one. It's okay. John Rhys-Davies
is also in it and I find him to be such an odd entity. I like him
when he's in good movies, but I tend to not feel the same way when
he's in shitty movies. Well, not shitty. Just lower-budget I guess.
And I don't think there's a difference in his performance. I dunno.
Halloween score – 2
Quality score – 3
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM – Anaconda
– The one that – implausibly – started it all. They showed
these out of sequence because when Ice Cube punches a
eighty-foot-long snake in the head and calls it "bitch",
you save that shit for dinner time. I fucking love this movie.
Halloween score – 2
Quality score – 4
8:00 PM – 11:00 PM – Haven/Alphas
Adventure Hour(s) – I don't care enough about these
to say anything and I'm tired of doing entries for repeats in
alternating slots.
Halloween
score - 2
Quality score – 2
11:00 PM – 1:00 AM – Anaconda
– It's so good they're showing it again!
No – wait – they show everything again.
Halloween
score - 2
Quality score – 4
WEDNESDAY
1:00 AM – 3:00 AM – Anaconda 3
– What's the deal with this? I don't get why SyFy skips over
certain sequels. What the heck happened to Anacondas?
It isn't bad. They're just skipping it. Weird.
Halloween score – 2
Quality score – 3
3:00 AM – 4:00 AM – Ghost Whisperer
– I can't believe it, but I saw the title sequence for this for the
first time the other day. I had never really thought about not having
seen it, but once I saw it I was like, "What the fuck
is this? I have never seen this before".
Halloween score – 4
Quality score – 5
4:00 AM – 8:00 AM – Paid Programming
– Show some support for SyFy’s Original Programming and watch a
few minutes of creepy old men extolling the virtues of penis pumps.
Halloween score – 1
Quality score – 5 (for paying the
bills)
8:00 AM – 11:00 AM – Ghost Hunters
International – "Witnesses" with funny
accents do not make this retarded show any more watchable.
Halloween score – 4
Quality score – 1
Come back tomorrow for my review of the
2012 Atlanta Zombie Apocalypse!
-Phantom
I don't know that much about Black Mask other than what I've seen in various animated movies and tv shows, but this is a cool looking figure.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I am really sick of this body.
I wish we could get a suited body that still has the bulkier comic book proportions of just about every other figure in the line. Very few of the characters that use this body look correct to me, with the rest just looking emaciated.
I have to say, the narrow suit body just doesn't bother me. At least, until you put it next to Riddler, a guy who famously wears suits and you realize he couldn't possibly fit in this suit. I never noticed it before. YOU HAVE RUINED MY LIFE.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSorry about that. My wife always tells me I'm a life ruiner, but she always seems to be talking so I never listen to her.
DeleteThe worst use of this body has got to be Clark Kent. It's bad enough to compare Riddlers, but packaging two versions of the same character side-by-side in a clamshell package just makes this suit look ridiculous.