Today marks the release of the 98th Batman: Black & White Statue, based on Gene Colan‘s artwork from his 1980’s run on Batman and Detective Comics. It is available from Sideshow Collectibles, Amazon, Entertainment Earth, or your local comic book shop, and retails for $90 US.
In 2005, DC Collectibles released the first of their Batman: Black & White statues, one based on the art of Eduardo Risso. The line is still going strong, with their 100th statue due later this year. But, for now, this Gene Colon Black & White statue is one to covet.
Is this the Batman statue you’re seeking for your shelf? Read on!
Packaging
If you’re a collector, the design of the box matters almost as much as the collectible itself. DC has opted for clean, striking graphics, with a large photo of the figure on the front. Befitting the statue line, the graphics are solely black and white.
Inside of the box is the ubiquitous Styrofoam shell that you find in virtually all polystone figure boxes, designed to protect the statue during shipping and storage. The two halves of the shell were taped together with packing tape, but I cut a slit through the tape and removed the top of the styrofoam:
Assembly
As you can see in the picture above, this statue ships in two pieces. Putting it together is simplicity itself: just insert the square peg on Batman’s foot into the square hole in the base.
The metal peg fits securely into the hole, and you can lift the statue without the base coming free from the figure. However, as good practice you should always hold both the figure and its base when picking up the statue, as the fit could become looser over time.
The Statue
Once assembled, the Batman statue stands approximately 6.61 inches tall. As you can tell from the photos, it is painted in various shades of grey. Let’s take a closer look:
The sculpt is dynamic. If you’re familiar with his artwork, you know that Gene Colan’s heroes had a unique long-limbed physicality, which is captured in this figure.
Verdict
For such a relatively small statue, there’s a lot of good details in the sculpt and a clean brush line with the paint. Here’s a close up of the head and torso:
You can see a lot of good facial structure, both in the skin and under Batman’s cowl.
Importantly for a Batman figure, you also get some nice folds and flow to the cape. You can see those in both the profile image above, and the rear of the cape below:
There’s a good delineation of musculature as well, as you can see in this closeup of one of the figure’s arms:
If I had any quibble with the statue, it would be that I felt sculptor Jean St. Jean may have made Batman’s midsection a bit too skinny. Gene Colan’s heroes didn’t tend to be quite so wasp-waisted.
To give you an idea of scale, here’s the Gene Colan statue alongside a Sideshow Collectibles Premium Format Batman statue:
Obviously, the level of detail in the Sideshow Collectibles statue is much higher than the DC Collectibles statue. However, the Sideshow statue is A) 20″ tall, vs 6.61″ for the Black & White statue, B) Based on an actual actor vs comic book artwork, and C) $499 vs $90.
You can buy almost 6 of the Batman Black & White statues for one of those Sideshow Collectibles ones.
And there are so many of the DC Collectibles Batman: Black & White statues to choose from. As I’d mentioned before, this is #98 in the series. You can view at all of the different statues here.
So, is the Batman: Black & White Gene Colon statue for you? If you’re collecting the Black & White line, then it’s an easy “yes.” For others, it will depend on whether you like the black and white aesthetic, and/or if you’re a fan of Gene Colan’s artwork. But if you’d like a great looking Batman statue to either put onto your desk or add to your statue collection, it’s hard to go wrong with the DC Collectibles Batman: Black & White Batman by Gene Colan.
Note: DC Collectibles provided this statue for evaluation, but had no input into this review.
