I don’t buy many DC figures these days. My enjoyment of their comics reached a nadir coincidentally at around the same time the Mattel DCUC line was slowly dying. That said, it’s not every day a new company takes over a major license like DC so I was curious to see what McFarlane did with the line and picked up the most appealing figure from wave one. Let’s take a look at the McFarlane Hellbat Suit Batman!
The figure comes in a fairly large window box, similar to a lot of what we see from this type of figure. It’s not particularly cool, but gets the job done.
Hellbat comes with a small figure stand, removeable wings and a trading card. The stand is pretty tiny and since Hellbat is a massive figure with big ‘ol feet, fortunately doesn’t feel really necessary. It has a subtle little DC symbol and it does support the figure well.
The wings are massive pieces of solid black plastic that hinge in the middle. They hold their shape well and connect with hexagonal pegs to hexagonal holes in the figure’s back.
The shape of these pegs makes the swivel movement of the wings not as subtle as I would like and they pop out fairly easily when posing. I think it would have been good if the wings hinged where they attach at the back for more poseability.
I don’t particularly like the way the wings look hinged inward, but they are impressive when spread apart. They don’t fold back neatly against the body well folded back.
The figure is pretty massive and feels like a BAF from the legends line. The design of the character drew me to the figure and it has a nice mix of medieval and technological armor that evokes heavy metal album cover art. The design also feels a lot like a nod to Batman Beyond and the red and gloss black combo calls to mind the Barris Batmobile from the ’60s show.
The sculpting on this guy is sharp. Literally. There are some spikes on Hellbat that could cut you which is awesome.
The scale is a bit of a surprise for me since I haven’t been following the news on this line. At eight inches tall, it’s more of a seven inch scaled figure.
The figure moves pretty well for such a large chunk of plastic. Articulation includes:
- Swivel/Hinge shoulders, hips, ankles, and wrists
- Ball and socket head, upper torso, shoulder pads, and waist
- Double hinged knees
- Single hinged elbows, pecs, toes, and wings
- Swivel biceps
The nice thing about the swivel/hinge in the wrists and ankles is that they swivel at both ends which allows for more poseability. The joints are ratcheted and all feel pretty tight, but not so tight that I ever felt in danger of breaking the figure. If you’ve played with the McFarlane Fortnite figures, Hellbat feels similar. The ball joints on the shoulder pads are really nicely done and allow for a lot of arm movement. The swivel at the hip doesn’t swivel a lot due to the shape of the thigh and the ball joint at the neck doesn’t allow for much up/down movement, but otherwise Hellbat moves great.
Paint is pretty good. He’s mostly gloss black, but there is some metallic black in spots to add variety. The red pinstriping is also pretty clean.
Hellbat is a solid chunk of super-poseable action figure and at the $20 price point feels like a square deal. He actually moves a lot better than I would have thought considering the bulky design and has an appealing shelf presence. I think I’ll pick up the Armored Superman if I see one.
