As a character, it’s super easy to find Lex Luthor interesting. He’s devious, egotistical, brilliant, powerful, cutthroat, and even sometimes funny. As a figure, though, the real Lex would just be a guy in a custom-made, fifty thousand dollar suit who spends all his time mucking up Superman’s life. Not all that interesting of a toy. Luckily for us toy collectors, writers and artists are always finding ways for Lex to go all “Stark” on the Justice League and cram himself into an armored, robotic suit.
This particular suit of armor was crafted to fight the Crime Syndicate during the New 52 “Forever Evil” storyline. It has it’s usual green and purple color scheme but sports a much slimmer and streamlined design than previous chunky armors of his past. Check it out below.
Packaging is the same standard DC Icons design, with primary colors individualized for the character. Lex’s box is green with his “L” symbol on the side. Like every other Icons figure, their look is attributed to a certain storyline. Like I mentioned earlier, Lex’s design is from the “Forver Evil” mini-series. He’s the eighth figure of the line and has a big “eight” on the package to prove it.
DC Collectibles has done a nice job with the Icons line of accessorizing them, and Lex is no different. He comes with three sets of hands: fists, open “blast” hands, and two hands that are molded with weapons. One is an energy effect buzzsaw, and the other he’s holding a rod. The rod is the lightning rod that Luthor used to kill Mazahs, who was actually the Lex Luthor of Earth Three, where the Crime Syndicate hailed from. His other accessory is a blade that snaps onto his hand for some close-quarters fighting.
As a figure, Luthor makes for a very cool design. All of his armor is sculpted very well, and he has some really nice detail work to make him pop. His hands in particular are some of my favorite ever, and the tiny details and level of work put into them is impressive. Although he is wearing a suit of armor, none of it hinders his articulation, as the designers and sculptors did a good job of making certain parts softer plastic to allow for movement.
His articulation is standard Icons level with ball-jointed head, hinge-and-swivel shoulders, ball-jointed torso, double-hinged elbows and knees, ab/waist crunch, ball-jointed hips, and hinge-and-swivel ankles and wrists.
Flying poses aren’t a problem either with this articulation setup. Once again though, just like most of the other Icons figures, his neck movement is restricted when trying to look up.
He can kinda look up, but not to the point where I’d like it. The range of movement side-to-side and down is fine, but they need to re-egineer the head movement. It’s weird, too, because while DC Direct/ Collectibles was always the “less articulated, more statue-esque designed figures” company, they always had killer ball-jointed necks that worked perfectly. Now with this more articulated line, they seem to have messed with the one point of articulation they always nailed.
The head sculpt is very nice, and has some seriously strong jaw lines. Luthor looks determined and confident, which is pretty perfect. Jesse Eisenberg this ain’t. I know this will sound weird, but he has some really nicely sculpted ears. It’s something that always bugs me when I get a figure who has some mangled-looking ear sculpts. His paints, while clean and well done, still leave me wishing they had gone more metallic — at least the green parts of his suit. A nice metallic shine to them would have made this figure go from a solid seven to a ten in my book.
As you can see, he scales well with the other villains in this line so far. Their looks both hail from the same “Forever Evil” storyline, but, truthfully, both could just be standard representations of their current looks. So while they fit in story-wise together, they’ll fit into any DC modern villain display.
Joker, Harley Quinn, and Atomica are being released very soon from this line, so it looks like the villain section of the Icons display will be shaping up very nicely.
You can grab Lex Luthor at your local comic shops, Big Bad Toy Store or on Amazon.