[En Sabah Nerd]

Was doing some random browsing on BBTS and stumbled across this Mattel Dark Knight Returns two pack. It styles them after the cover for the 4th book which I think looks quite striking. Both figures are just straight repaints of their normal releases (the Walmart exclusive Superman and the Doomsday wave Batman) but this time they also threw in a laser beam effect for Superman's eyes. Mattel's Dark Knight Returns figures from the Multiverse line wound up being a pleasant surprise so I like adding to that with this set.



Also from BBTS I got McFarlane's 7" scale Geralt. I had previously seen the Walmart gold label version in hand but was just really thrown off by the lighter color choices used there so I passed on it. I'm definitely happier with the standard release, the colors are his default and then this one has a werewolf's severed head. Speaking of the werewolf head, it's pretty fantastic and gross. The sculpt and paint are really nice for an accessory piece, like it even has the bloody exposed section of vertebrae from where it was cut off. Moving on to the figure itself, it's pretty damn nice. The first thing that stood out to me was the great sculpting all around, there's a lot of texture change from leather to chainmail and it's all nicely done. The paint isn't as great as the sculpt but it's still good and clean, mainly it's just a bit flat though so it doesn't astonish. His head is the one exception as it is painted in various tones and it appears printing was used to keep it all tidy, so that's really good. The articulation is overall good although the body is implemented in a weird way where the main torso piece is a soft plastic on top of an articulated under-body so when the ab-crunch is used it looks strange. The limbs though are all well articulated and any armor that looks like it might be in the way actually isn't. So all in all he can get in some good battle poses. Lastly then I'll touch on his swords and scabbard piece. The swords are sculpted well, particularly the "silver" one, but they aren't painted very much at all rather they've just been cast in the same kind-of-metal color. I also feel like the "steel" one is maybe just a bit too large but maybe I'm misremembering that detail. The scabbard piece then plugs into his back and is painted decently but then it doesn't have an underside sculpted which while odd on its own does get covered by the figure so it's just a weird thing they did. I may have rambled on quite a bit but the point is I'm really liking this figure and I hope series two is Ciri and Yennefer so we can complete the core trio.