I know my birthday must be right around the corner because I received my annual mailing from the local funeral home & crematorium reminding me that it’s maybe a good idea to prepay for my funeral & cremation so as not to be a burden to those I leave behind. The joke’s on them, though because I intend to be just as much of a burden in death as I was in life.
With that somewhat in mind I have, of late, been possessed by the need to complete as many projects around my house as time permits. After my back had fully healed from last month’s fiasco I jumped right back into landscaping. Once that was done I decided to rip all the carpet out of my study, a project I thought would take me a single night but stretched into a 2-3 day undertaking.
I need some place nice to showcase all my sweet toys. It is Figure Friday, after all.
Batman: Hush MAFEX No.175 Nightwing
Almost exactly a year ago I placed a preorder for this sweet bastard though Amazon Japan and after scads of delays that are part and parcel of the MAFEX preordering experience it finally arrived last week.
Since I’ve written about it ad nauseam, regular FF readers should be well aware that my figure collection focuses largely on definitive versions of characters. Which is to say, once I’ve obtained a definitive version of a character, I’ll never need to purchase another version ever again. This is not legally binding, of course.
MAFEX’s comic book-inspired superhero figures are some of the best in the game. It’s truly mind-blowing how they’re able to reproduce figures that look exactly like the art they were inspired by and that’s what finally hooked me on them. This Nightwing figure looks like it was pulled right from Jim Lee’s art on Batman: Hush.
It’s also worth remarking that it comes with tons of accessories: heads, hands, weapons, and the like. I’m regretting that I hadn’t yet gotten on the bandwagon when they released their version of Lee’s Batman and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll be reissued.
I’ve always been partial to Dick Grayson’s third Nightwing costume; the disco-era collar of the first one didn’t do it for me, and when they got rid of that it was only a slight improvement. The best super-suits in the business are always sheer elegance in their simplicity and, not for nothing, every subsequent Nightwing get up for the last two decades has been variations on this costume. You can’t improve upon perfection which is why Spider-Man and Superman always seem to return to their classic looks.
Also, I’m hoping that the announcement of a Hush Tim Drake Robin figure is imminent since they’ve done most of the major players from that story arc already it seems like it’d be a slam dunk of a figure.
And now for something completely different…
It’s shaping up to be a great summer for movies and I’d say one of the most hotly anticipated flicks is going to be Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. Show me someone who’s not looking forward to this movie and I will show you a god damn liar.
At this risk of sounding like SNL’s Stefon, this movie has everything: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, metatextuality.
Like any good blockbuster destined to dominate the summer it has toys, of course. There’s a Margot Robbie-ish Barbie, a Ryan Gosling Ken that is positively dripping with “Kenergy” and it most certainly will be the one all your bros are buying “ironically” and not just to have or customize into the Driver from Drive.
There’s even some Little People from Fisher-Price because it’s never too soon to get your toddlers into Barbie. Look upon Barbie’s works, ye mighty and despair.
