While The Batman has finally landed in theaters after waves of delays, the latest interpretation of The Dark Knight has already been returning to shelves. The DC Multiverse wave of The Batman toys from McFarlane Toys recently hit shelves, bringing various versions of Batman and Catwoman to collectors, along with Riddler and The Penguin.
Of course, McFarlane Toys hasn't left collectors who aren't interested in the movies high and dry, with the DC Multiverse line expanding to even greater heights. During a recent Winter Showcase event, the company announced a huge array of new figures, spearheaded by a new series drawing inspiration from Dark Knights: Metal and beyond. McFarlane Toys founder and comic book legend Todd McFarlane joined CBR during a recent Twitch stream to discuss the new figures, The Batman toys, and what goes into creating these iconic figures.
CBR: Todd, we definitely want to talk about these Batman figures, but let's start with the Winter Showcase. You had a ton of stuff that you guys showed off! There are a few DC Direct statues, including this gorgeous Batman statue. What goes into the process of designing these statues? What are you looking for when you're coming up with a statue?
Todd McFarlane: Well, let's talk about DC Direct, to begin with. They've had a nice, long run where they put out many statues at different sizes and price points. We're just trying to carry that torch while doing our McFarlane thing with it. The statues of Riddler and Batman are 14 inches or so, which is a little bit smaller than some of the ones that DC Direct has done.
It's interesting when you're doing something from a movie. There are two goals. One, get it accurate. That's 90% of it; you've got to get it accurate. The other piece makes it dynamic and interesting while sitting up on the shelf. People over the years have said, "Man, look at how good you got that likeness!" Well, it should look exactly like what you're looking at! That's much different than when you're doing an interpretation of a drawing from a comic book or even a character who's been around for 30 years. Now you're amalgamating all these different visuals from TV or movies or video games. They have a very specific look that people are drawn to, and our goal is to make sure we get them right.
Speaking of that amalgamation of visuals, the Purple Haze Joker statue is gorgeous. What draws you to this interpretation of The Joker over a more traditional depiction?
I'm good friends with Greg Capullo and think if [he's] not the best in the business, he's one of the top two or three. The drawing this was based on is just cool in an odd, messed-up way. It's a little bit like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you know? Putting people's skin on yourself is sort of an odd thing.
What was really cool about this one is that the mask is a separate piece. Sometimes you have to sculpt it all together, and you lose some of the interest in it; when you paint it, it doesn't quite come out. When you have different pieces that you glue on top of each other, you get that much of a step-up in believability, given that this is interpreted from a comic book drawing. The eyes are sitting behind the mask; that's a separate piece. The teeth are a separate piece. When you get in close to that face, it's cool. The only reason I do toys is for the cool factor.
Now and then, we hit something that's even way better than I would have expected, and this face is one of them. Even the coat and pants have a texture to them; they don't feel like the same materials. It's subtle, you might not be able to see it until you get it in your hands, but those are the things that we're going for. Then we tweak the color of the purple top and bottom so that they're not quite 100%. Maybe we do things that the average person isn't going to catch, but we're constantly trying to have fun and make it as good as we would want if we were buying them.
You also announced a ton of DC Multiverse figures, and I want to start with what is probably the most incredible figure that line has seen to date. What can you tell us about the Joker Dragon?
I'm telling you, the Dragon -- that face is just awesome. The body is cool, but what completes it is then you put this big, gnarly face on it. Then the fun part is you've got the scales on the back and the horns, but some of them come out so that you can then sit somebody down, and they can ride the dragon. I think it comes with a piece up in here and a stand so you can float it. The tail is even bendable!
It's in pieces in the packaging, so it's not going to look too sexy in the box. It's frustrating sometimes when you do stuff that's bigger than your package and have to cram things in and bend stuff around, and sometimes it can even look like it's broken. This is one of these toys that you're better off just waiting to get it out of the packaging.
The line also features a new Duke Thomas figure based on his appearance in Tales From the Dark Multiverse. That's a pretty obscure version of the character. Is that something where DC or Warner Bros express interest in a specific character or figure?
No, not really. Sometimes we have conversations with the people in DC and Warner Brothers, but they're looking for us to say, "Hey, you guys know what you're doing. What figure do you want to make?"
The line has another Batman as well, the Earth-22 Infected Batman (a predecessor to The Batman Who Laughs). There's already a pretty heavy Batman representation throughout the DC Multiverse line. Why add this one to the mix?
Really, more than anything else? I'm just trying to give variety. You're right. There's a lot of Batman, and part of it is because he sells. A lot of people like Batman.
This is sort of the thing that's weird. You do a Batman, and then a little bit later you do a Batman, and then people go, "Hey, you just did a Batman." You can sell Batman 365 days a year, every year, for decades. There's never a day when somebody doesn't want it. I understand there's a core group of people who collect that say, "Hey, I already got that one two months ago," but the entire population didn't go shopping during the window when that toy came out. This is why you can keep coming back with generic-looking Superman and Batman figures, why people collect Spider-Man and Captain America figures. You can keep coming back with A-list characters all the time. I do it with Spawn.
For those that are collecting along the way, you want to mix and match, you know? If you like Batman, I'll give you another Batman for your collection. It's just not going to be the classic Bruce Wayne version of Batman. The Infected Batman is just part of building your big Batman collection.
With The Batman line of figures, you're creating a line designed to capture the appeal of the film. What's the challenge with making a line that ties in so close to a popular film?
Really, you're just trying to get it as accurate as possible. Obviously, it's pretty dark, and there's a lot of black, so you're trying to get areas that feel somewhat different even though it's all black. Sometimes you get flat black in its simplest form, and then you get a shiny black to create different materials. Even though they're all black, we try to do that on regular toys all the time. When you've got things that have color pops, like on his arms, those are much easier, but the costumes are designed for the movies, and our job is to nail them. We want the people who have images or movie posters or whatever, who get the toy to say, "Yeah, it's all replicated here."
I believe we had seen the prototype figure for The Batman in the background of a video on your Twitter quite a while before we got a good look at the suit. What's the lead time for a figure like this?
Obviously, the more time we have on any toy, the better, but we don't have that luxury when you're doing movies. They haven't designed a lot of things, and it's sort of late in the production of a movie, so sometimes we have to play catch up. Other times they give us plenty of time, so we can go through two or three iterations of it and get notes. Every movie, every brand, every license is its unique sort of character, if you will.
I find it interesting that The Batman's got a sort of karate chop hand that's specifically designed to hold his grapnel gun. Why did you opt for that design as opposed to a hand that could hold the accessory as usual?
Well, Warner Brothers right now doesn't want to give any kind of weapons or the appearance of weapons, if you will, in the fingers. Other than that, it would just be everybody standing there making fists because they're mad. You have to get a little bit inventive. Batman's a little bit limited, but you know his batarangs are part of his MO, so, okay. We'll give him those pieces and see if we can have a little bit of fun with it.
The Riddler figure in the line looks incredible, too, and there's a lot of detail that may not have been obvious in the trailers. Is how you communicate those details something you get in a note from the studio?
We're limited when we're making plastic toys. You can't do all the cool stuff they do in the movies, but he does have the fun goggles and the sort of gas mask-slash-duct tape. I think the design is uniquely odd, we'll call it that. Again, our job is to see if we can convey some of that. He's also green from head to toe, so we have a couple of different shades of green that we can put in there.
The Catwoman figures in the line might be some of the best female figures we've seen, and the unmasked variant looks great. How hard is it to capture those likenesses? What's the process for that?
I think that Catwoman came out really well! If you don't have a scan of their face, then sculpting is probably the greatest skill you can find. You can get body dynamics in detail, and those are hard to accomplish, but you've only got about a half of an inch to capture the likeness. If you're off a little bit, it stands out. Sometimes, we think the face looks perfect, but if your paint is off a little bit, it doesn't look like them all of a sudden. I would say the likeness of celebrities is probably the hardest thing for any toy manufacturer to capture. There are great details to it; you can see there are two skin tones in the paint, which added a lot of believability to the look.
There's an unmasked Batman figure that looks incredible, too. We've seen the DC Multiverse line include several unmasked variants so far. Why go for an unmasked Batman as opposed to including a different figure?
Sometimes we sneak it into the normal run that we're doing, and other times we do it as a truly separate figure. I think that there's going to be enough of it in this movie that the unmasked version will have a lot of weight to it in terms of importance. We thought it would be relevant for us to have him, and I think this looks cool, too, with the makeup around the eyes.
I've also got this figure of The Penguin. Penguin looks incredible in the film, and this figure captures the character's mood.
He's a fun character. I don't know he'll be as popular of a seller because everybody's going to want the hero, but if you're a completest and you're trying to do the whole movie, then there you go.
Is that a concern, even with a line like this? The figure looks great but in the scope of the line, it does just look like a guy in a suit.
Yeah, that's it. If he was in a robot suit, you could sell him, right? I don't care if he's the 10th most popular guy; if he's in a robot suit, it looks cool. Once you start getting characters that are popular, but they're dressed, if you will, "normal," those are sometimes difficult to move. You've got to be very careful about how many of them you make. Obviously, people will want Spider-Man way more than J. Jonah Jameson, or they're going to want Clark Kent and Superman way more than they're going to want Perry White or someone like Alfred.
We'll still make them from time to time, but they're usually way down the list. You're asking me why we would make another Joker or Batman figure; it's because I either do that or I do Alfred, which is something I can't sell. I can sell a Joker mixed with Batman 20 to 100 times easier. This one, because it's tied to a super popular movie -- hopefully, people will want a little bit of everything, and this character will have a place.