It’s only once in the whole night that it shows… He’s given orders and all the mutants and S.O.B.s and everybody are gone for a minute… He just sags in his saddle like an old man…Then he straightens up and grins at me like it’s funny. He can’t die…
The final of our looks at Mezco’s One:12 Collective Dark Knight Returns comes from Mezco themselves, in the form of a website-store exclusive. Easily the most “bang for your buck” of the four versions, this one serves as a medium in color between the black of the standard version and the pastel blue of the Previews version, but with the accessories of both.
As with the other three figures, you are getting an impressive, high-end action figure that can and might shake your collecting sensibilities to the very core. At this point, I’m pretty familiar with this guy, and yet it’s still something special when you’re unboxing it.
Accessories are as I mentioned: the revolver and boot holster of the standard, the rifle and thigh pouches of the PX, the extra head, six extra hands, and the grapple hook. Even owning all the goodies already, it’s nice to get everything in one shot.
The uniform is what you would anticipate, but there is something about that damn blue that is making me wish I’d gone for two of it. The dark shade used here is canon to the comic, mostly Book Four, but I find it reminds me of Hush, and that’s certainly not a bad thing.
Everything about this version sings as it does on the others, although I have heard some of the PX ones had some quirks. None of that here. It’s nice to have a uniform feel for the quality of this line already settled because as the prices and demand dictate, you need to order these figures well in advance if you don’t want to pay the finder’s fees.
My only complaint now I wish a little that the MezEx version would also have the option of the yellow oval with this color blue. I love the PX colors, but now I have this compulsion to get every combination. My wallet, she weeps. It is possible to swap parts on these, as me and my cast-iron balls were able to determine, but there is no way I’m going to alter my only example of this version.
At this point, I’m feeling a little like it’s an hour after Thanksgiving dinner. I can’t imagine being more satisfied with what Mezco has done for my personal most iconic Batman. And as excited as I am to see Dredd, the Mutant Leader, hopefully a Superman, and the insanity that Mortal Kombat Klassic will bring, I mentioned this somewhat in my other reviews, but I’m still a little amused at what a difference this line has made in my collecting. When I reviewed Mattel’s Dark Knight Returns figure, I was feeling like I was at the end of that particular road, and that turned out to be pretty accurate. Now here I am with another Dark Knight, and he’s leading the charge into a new line, and on a new path, that couldn’t be more of an opposite to the one Mattel petered out on.
For the moment, I’m content to roll back in the saddle and let this horse take me forward. It’s going to be one helluva journey, and I’m not in any hurry.
