Iron Man Movie

Darkhawk

Height: 11cm to top of head.

Articulation: 22 points total- ball-jointed neck; 5 points each arm: universal joint shoulder, bicep swivel, hinged elbow, swivel wrist; mid-torso ball joint; 5 points each leg: ball-joint hip, double-joint knee, universal joint ankle.

Colors: Molded dark blue, silver and black; painted metallic blue, silver and red.

Accessories: Wings, Stand.

Release Data: Released Fall 2011 at an MSRP of $7.99.

Author: RAC

Darkhawk was among a pile of comics that my uncle gave me when I was young, and though I didn't stick with it- or any other comics, really -I enjoyed it a lot at the time. The idea that Chris Powell swapped places with the Darkhawk entity (Wikipedia says android, but I don't think this was mentioned in the issues I read) instead of turning into this other form was a neat twist. Apparently that was undone at the end of his run, then un-undone when he reappeared recently. Wise choice!

First off, ExVee deserves much credit and gratitude for finding one of these for me, which was time-consuming and a real pain for him... only to have them show up en masse in his local Wal-Mart once this one was in my hands. Which is the inevitable outcome of struggling to find practically any figure in a current assortment. How many times have I seen something locally after some good-natured soul tracked it down for me? All of them.

This is kind of my equivalent of Ice Cream Maker Guy -the character I never expected to see in toy form for any reason. Apparently Darkhawk's been making a comeback in a couple of minor Marvel events lately though, and last I checked Star Wars was too busy inventing tortured Skywalker descendants and Yet Another Galactic Civil Wars to bother with a series of ICMG novels, so hey! Score one for Darkhawk.


The Figure

Darkhawk is another of those characters that the writers didn't have much of an idea of what to do with, so he went through a fair number of costume variations. One is a completely forgettable totally-`90s powerup form, a more recent one is a totally different powerup form, or possibly a less `90s interpretation of the original- apparently there's a variant of this figure that represents that. But this is one of those figures where it's hard to tell what specific version of Darkhawk they're going for. If they're going for the original, he should only have one gauntlet- the one with the claw/grappling hook thing -and his visor/amulet should be purple. Also the wings should be black and purple. The most recent appearances of Darkhawk seem to have these colors and gauntlets, but then the wings are a different design, looking more like a mass of metallic feathers. So it's sort-of inbetween, leaning towards the modern. I prefer the original wing design and the modern suit is otherwise shaped more or less like the original, so that's a fairly good choice. And the two gauntlets make sense since the wings anchor to them...

The helmet sculpt is good, and the visor and facemask look about spot on from any direction I look. The shoulder armor's about the right size, but due to the need to both connect to the collar and clear the shoulders, they sit up a bit high. Likewise, the amulet in the chest overlaps the collar piece, which is probably preferable to having it either be a tampographed design on the chest or glued-on off-center, which a piece this small would surely otherwise have been. It's hard to see here, but the amulet design is sculpted properly: a diamond shape with a smaller diamond shape at the top of it. The rest of the costume pieces on the figure are the gauntlets and the belt, all molded separately and free-floating. The belt settles so low on the figure that it has the effect of making the torso look even longer than it otherwise would. The color is quite nice- I always assumed the Darkhawk suit was always supposed to be black in the comics, so the rules of printing mean he was generally blue with heavy black inking. To that end, the figure is a dark blue with a metallic blue finish- it looks really nice.

Finally, my copy of the figure has a bit of glue on the torso that I tried to pry off, but couldn't; this is unique to my figure (as are any scratches I inflicted that may turn up in photos), so of course no deductions there.

Of course, all these new-molded pieces had to be made up in the budget somehow. In this case, "somehow" is using a Version 1 MU body- apparently a Spider-Man. It works okay, though Darkhawk could actually stand to be a bit more bulky. That's true of a lot of early MU figures, though- judging from the Taskmaster figure, the options are extremely skinny or too bulky. The neck is a ball-joint but really only swivels. The shoulders get great range, Which is really crucial for a figure with arm-wings. The bicep swivel poses no problems, and the elbow folds about as well as a single-joint can, even with the big gauntlets interfering a bit. More notably, the fist swivel on the right intersects the claws on that gauntlet when it turns. The open hand on the left doesn't have that problem of course. The torso joint is up there with the most flexible I've seen in this scale, bending in any direction quite well and swiveling without issue. The hip ball-joints have better range than some of the newer figures, pity there's no rocker ankles to take full advantage. They move laterally more effectively than they move forward, though. The knees fold to a tight U. The ankles are kind of stiff, sadly- they don't have a lot of give, which doesn't help the otherwise great legs. But overall, this is about the best you can get from this articulation scheme. But I'm still glad they've upgraded since.


Accessories

-Wings

Like I said above, they're the original design if not the original color scheme. They look good! They also plug very securely into the gauntlets. They're shaped for a fairly specific pose, with the arms outstretched over the head, and follow the contours of the torso and arms closely. It's not a perfect fit- and of course if you want any other poses it's worse- but considering retractable wings at this scale are somewhere between unfeasible and impossible, this is the best way to do this and not have one of the two configurations crippled in favor of the other.

-Stand

It's solid, it's functional, it's just sort of there. He needs it less than some figures.


Closing Remarks

Hasbro is pretty good at the fan-wish-fulfillment thing, and beyond my being happy with Darkhawk even just existing, it's quite a good figure too. I wish it were on a newer body... but since all the parts are molded separately you could transplant them if you're feeling ambitious. I'm not, and it's a Very Good figure, so I'm going to enjoy it as it is.

-RAC