[En Sabah Nerd]

Got the entire Arkham City wave through Amazon. From the moment this assortment leaked I knew I was interested but by the time Grundy was revealed as the collect-to-build I was all-in.

First I'll get my thoughts on Batman out of the way. He's the least impressive of the lot since he's largely just a reuse of the Arkham Asylum Batman from near the beginning of the line. Having said that, the new head and bat symbol are significant improvements over that first figure (the bat difference is accurate to the games, I just prefer the City version). He also sports different gauntlets and a new cape sculpt but those details are relatively minor. His eyes being whited out is not game accurate but damn I think it looks nice on the figure, similarly the belt isn't metallic as in the game but it helps give him a potential place in non-game lineups.

Catwoman as an individual figure was the one I was most anticipating and for the most part she's pretty great. My main criticism is that she has some wonky anatomy (not rare with McFarlane's Multiverse and admittedly often present in the source material) with longer lower legs and a too-pronounced rear. There's a subtler issue where the black of her suit above the waist and the black below don't quite match, one is kinda sleek and the other is matte. Onward to my positive points; first I really like how this figure can be displayed among comic figures just fine, the sculpt and paint are both well done, and she's got some great range of movement.

Ra's Al Ghul notably differs from the rest of the wave in that they took his Arkham City design but elected not to strictly use game-accurate colors. In the game his torso armor is primarily a plain brown-ish but for this figure they went with a really dark green which isn't really that different in effect but I do like that it brings in more of his usual comic color scheme. Paint apps are clean, particularly his arm tats, and articulation is mostly standard stuff. The knee joint cuts are pretty damn rough though, if you only bend the lower one it's tolerable but any pose needing to use both will take an ugly turn.

Finally of the base figures is Penguin. Unsurprisingly this figure values looks over function since the character design doesn't lend itself to dynamic posing. The sculpting and paint do a great job of capturing this ugly mug wrapped up in his coat. The look is completed with a non-removable top hat and a nice, closed umbrella. I look at this figure and I can just hear Nolan North's nasty faux-cockney accent, the delivery of which makes this version of Oswald so much fun to hate.

Last up is Solomon Grundy. As a CtB figure, this time you get to participate in Grundy's resurrection! The main point of discussion around this figure is bound to be his size. In Arkham City he's practically as big as King Kong, this figure on the other hand settles for somewhere shy of 8.5" tall. Comparing CtBs that I own he's roughly the same height as LKoE Bane but not nearly as bulky, he's pretty strictly smaller than King Shark. Now I actually like Grundy at this size, it reflects more of his comic appearances (I'm thinking along the lines of how Tim Sale drew him in Long Halloween) and is certainly much easier to fit into a display. Once again this is a figure that looks excellent with a ton of great sculpt work and some solid paint backing it up. His articulation is more limited than the standard figures but is still sufficient to work with for me. Big note, his legs don't seem to really "click" into place when assembling Grundy and multiple times when posing him I inadvertently pulled one or the other off. Similarly but not as bad his shoulders can also be pulled out accidentally, though compared to the legs they produce a clear sound when popped into place. It's like the opposite problem from the common complaint that LKoE Bane was difficult to put together but when assembled he was very tight, with Grundy it's quite easy to assemble but not a super-solid connection when tested.

All in all I think this is a really nice bunch of figures that takes these video game appearances but twists on some comic-leaning elements.