“It’s only once in the whole night that it shows. He’s given the orders and all the Mutants and S.O.B.s and everybody is 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 …” — Robin, The Dark Knight Returns
In our age of a female Thor, a female Wolverine, and a female Iron Man, The Dark Knight Returns’ 13-year-old Carrie Kelley can be considered a pioneer in the realm of gender-fluid superheroes ever since she stood in fron of that mirror and became the first “official” female Robin. Even though The Dark Knight Returns is considered to be an alternate-universe tale of Batman in his later years, Carrie Kelley’s role in the story is no less significant for a couple reasons.
First, her role as Robin was remarkable in 1987 since the world could barely deal with a Robin who wasn’t Dick Grayson, so even a character like Jason Todd wasn’t exactly getting traction in the mainstream. For Frank Miller to fill the role with a young girl as Batman’s partner, well, it was a little bit earth-shattering at the time. It blew minds and made us consider new possibilities and reexamine what we thought we knew about these characters. And secondly, she was never actually recruited to be Robin. She just up and decided on her own that she was going to be Batman’s partner and then bought her own costume and took to the streets, and THEN Batman kinda went along with it when she proved to be useful. This further advanced the notion that “anyone can be a superhero,” and in this story of massive man-gods duking it out, Carrie Kelley was the grounding force that made the story somewhat relatable for us kids who were devouring this series.
To put it mildly, like the Armored Batman, I’ve been waiting for this Robin in 6-inch figure form for decades, and I am so excited to have her on my shelves, even though the figure does have its shortcomings.
Her packaging is the standard DC Multiverse window box. And, as was the case with her armored wave-mate, it’s awesome seeing Frank Miller’s artwork in a toy aisle. She comes with the New 52 Doomsday’s left leg, which takes up just as much packaging real estate as she does. About that …
It’s clear that the lion’s share of the tooling costs of this wave went to the Armored Batman because this figure is positively tiny. I mean, she SHOULD be tiny because the character is tiny, but she almost feels as though she should be a pack-in rather than an individual figure that costs $20. But taken in context with the entire wave, it all evens out, I suppose.
Her sculpt is decent, though I’m disappointed her glasses are solid and painted green rather than being see-through. The paint on her glasses here is not the greatest, so I may have to be on the lookout for a replacement. Her head sculpt captures the character adequately, but from certain angles she looks like she’s much older than 13, but I’ll concede that’s debatable.
Her articulation is a little iffy in terms of functionality. I have a long history of Mattel’s DC figures breaking on me, and Robin here is making me nervous, particularly her legs. Her knees bend, but it’s a very tight bend and I’m just waiting for the familiar “snap.” So I’m not bending them all that much. Her ankles have a tilt, but mine won’t move, and I don’t want to force them because my DCUC Robin broke at the ankle and I don’t want to go through that again, so her ankles are staying as-is. The “skirt” portion of her uniform is a softer plastic, so it doesn’t hinder hip movement all that much, but it still gets in the way a bit. Her head feels like it’s on a ball joint, but I can’t get her to look up, just side-to-side and slightly downward.
Fortunately her arms move just fine, at least as they’re designed to, and her waist swivel moves without issue, but I have to say her articulation feels somewhat limited in general. Compared to a figure of similar size like Hasbro’s Spider-Gwen, this Robin is left in the dust, plain and simple.
Otherwise, her articulation breakdown is as follows:
- Ball-jointed neck
- Hinge-and-swivel shoulders and hips
- “Elbro-style” elbows
- Swivel wrists, waist, and thighs
- Hinged knees and ankles
For accessories, she comes with her respective New 52 Doomsday piece, and she also comes sporting the slingshot she wielded in the comic. It fits in her hand securely and can also be stored on her belt, and it’s fine, I guess. She can’t really do anything with it since the elastic part of the slingshot is part of the sculpt and isn’t actually “elastic,” so it can’t be posed at all. But even if that were possible, her giant fists couldn’t convincingly be posed drawing it back to, say, launch a rock at Superman’s face. It’s neat that it’s here, but it’s really kinda lame.
Despite all its flaws, I love having this figure in my collection because I love the character and the source material, so that bias may be partially blinding me to the figure’s more objective shortcomings when I admire the figure in my display. If you’re a fan of the comic, the figure is a must-have just because. But for anyone without an attachment to the Frank Miller series, this figure may be an easy pass and simply not worth the cost (unless you get a great deal).
Robin is currently hitting all the usual retailers, and there are lots of reports of people finding her for a whopping $5 at Walmart. I paid full price for mine through Amazon, so it wasn’t quite as sweet. Be on the lookout if you’d like to add her to your Batman shelf.