NIGHTWING BATMAN: HUSH MAFEX (MEDICOM TOY) Welcome back guys! I’m…well, refreshed isn’t the right word to use for my post-Christmas break state, since I pretty much just spent the week dealing with the flu, but…it’s a week later? Yep,...
NIGHTWING
BATMAN: HUSH MAFEX (MEDICOM TOY)
Welcome back guys! I’m…well, refreshed isn’t the right word to use for my post-Christmas break state, since I pretty much just spent the week dealing with the flu, but…it’s a week later? Yep, that’s it. First things first: I’ve got a bit of updating to be done. I’ll be honest with you all, after ten years of doing the site, it’s become routine, and out of routine can come monotony. And monotony doesn’t make for exciting writing or exciting reading. And, if I’m not having fun here, then I ask you, what’s the damn point? I might as well pack the whole thing up. But I don’t wanna do that, so I’m going to tweak my formula a bit. Namely, since I know from at least some portion of my readership, that the “Me Half of the Equation” is the bit they read first before going back to the rest if they think it’s worth it, and it’s also my favorite part to write, I’m moving it to the top. Well, some of it, at least. Overall assessment of the figure and post-review wrap-up will still be at the end, but the more interesting interludes are now starting things off. Additionally, I’m going to try to give my reviews a little bit of a peppy-fun-type fact of the day, be it tied to the item’s history, or to my own, because I think that sounds fun. And, because this is my site, I totally reserve the right to reverse the whole thing and go back to the old style. We’ll see. Awaaaaaaay we gooooo!
Fun FiQ Fact #0001: Dick Grayson is not DC’s first character to use the name Nightwing; in the Silver Age, Superman used the identity while fighting crime in the Bottle City of Kandor, and eventually passed it on to his cousin Van-Zee.
A good portion of my modern DC collecting is owed to early ’00s DC Direct, and one of the most formative lines for me was Batman: Hush, based on Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s run on Batman. In particular, it was the line’s second series, which featured Nightwing, which got me downright addicted. I had the release date memorized, and I’d check DCD’s shipping schedules every week for it. I’d ask about it at Cosmic Comix. I had pictures saved on my desktop. The figures haunted my dreams. And Nightwing stood above them all. So, when they finally *did* show up, and he was the one that was already gone when I got there, it only made the obsession worse. Thankfully, it wasn’t a long wait for a restock, and I did get one, which I loved to pieces. No, seriously, to pieces, because it was a ’00s DCD figure and they had the durability of wet toilet paper. I’ve still got him, but he’s more glue than plastic at this point, I think. Still, I do love that Jim Lee Nightwing. And then MAFEX comes along, with they’re updates to the Hush figures, and Nightwing’s there, and there’s *literally* no way I’m missing that one, right? Not on your life. It was another long wait, and one that made me very much remember the wait for the original, but that’s honestly pretty appropriate, right?
THE FIGURE ITSELF
Nightwing is figure 175 in Medicom’s MAFEX line-up, and is the most current of the line’s Hush tie-in figures, though Ivy is close behind. The figure stands right at about 6 inches tall and he has 43 points of articulation. The movement here is very similar to that of Hush, albeit less restricted, since Dick doesn’t have the trench coat to worry about. It’s a very handy articulation set-up for a guy who’s a trained acrobat, so that’s a very definite plus. Nightwing sports a sculpt based on Jim Lee’s illustrations of the character from the book. Lee’s take on the design isn’t drastically different from the design that came before it, but he ditches the padding on the forearms and shins, resulting in a far more streamlined look, and one that’s, quite frankly, Nightwing’s best. As with the other two MAFEXes I’ve looked at, the Jim Lee stylings are captured very 
nicely here, and in general, he makes for a very clean transition to toy form. Like the others, Nightwing gets two different heads, one calmer, and one gritting his teeth. They’re both very nice, very sharp sculpts, which really look the part. Nightwing’s color work is pretty much what it needs to be. It’s basic, but clean. The blue is appropriately bright and eye-catching, and they’ve even remembered to make the mask on both heads blue, fixing the error we saw on the Icons figure. Nightwing is packed with six pairs of hands (in fists, gripping, flat, open gesture, relaxed, and stick twirling), two standard eskrima sticks, one pair of sticks with a posable wire running between them, an alternate back piece with stick storage, and a display stand. I love all the options for the sticks, though I did have some difficulty getting the spinning ones to stay on their matching hands.
THE ME REMAINDER OF THE EQUATION
My very long wait for this guy was brought to an end courtesy of All Time Toys owner Jason, who gave me this one as a Christmas present (well, this was my more store related gift; I also got a spot cleaner for carpets, which excites me because I’m apparently an old person now). I very much enjoy him. I’ve got a lot of Nightwings, but this one is the best.
