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McFarlane Toys DC Multiverse The Vault Azrael Batman Armor (Detective Comics #667)
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00:00Bane may have broken the bat, but there's no reason that the bat needs to break your budget.
00:04Here's a look at McFarlane Toys, DC Multiverse, Detective Comics, 667, Batman Armor, Asriel.
00:22Pre-Flashpoint, Jean-Paul Valley's discovery of his dying father, Justice Asriel, changed his life forever.
00:27Brainwashed by the system to become the Church of St. Demand's Assassin, Jean-Paul worked with Batman instead, standing in
00:33for the Dark Knight when Bane broke the hero's back.
00:35Unbalanced by his upbringing, Valley became a more violent Batman and wore heavier armor.
00:40He later surrendered the mantle to a newly healed Bruce Wayne and set out his own adventure as Asriel.
00:46Luckily for Gotham, Jean-Paul surrendered the suit. Luckily for collectors, McFarlane didn't move on from the mold.
00:52Before, though, we get a closer look at the vault, Asriel, as armored Batman.
00:55Let's first take the tape measure and see how tall the figure's going to stand.
00:59I grabbed this from Popeye the Toyman.
01:02Thanks to him, and thanks to the vault, we're getting this figure at a more affordable price.
01:06If you checked online around the time that this guy was scarce, Asriel Batman in his armor was going for
01:11some stupid money.
01:13That kind of stupid money. I couldn't even, I couldn't justify paying those prices.
01:18I certainly, though, couldn't justify to my wife that I spent the prices to buy an Asriel Batman.
01:22I waited it out, and I could only have hoped. And luckily, though, my hopes were answered.
01:27As for how tall, again, like Asriel Batman's going to be, tape measure's telling me that the figure's clocking in
01:32at 7 inches in height, or about 18 centimeters tall.
01:36Of course, this is the way that Asriel looks when he first dons the new Batman suit.
01:40Here's, however, though, what he looks like when he gets near the end, and he has to give this back
01:43to Bruce.
01:44You can see that he augments the suit even that much further.
01:47Even though, when it came to releasing this figure, the body and the arms and the lower legs are all
01:52the same as Detective Homics number 667.
01:54One thing, though, that was done differently, though, with both the blue and in the red.
01:58The night's end does change the visor of the cowl.
02:01It also adds this whole front half piece, and it gives him these gnarly-looking bladed wings that you had
02:06to attach independently.
02:08Of course, this time of talking about Asriel, we, of course, have to bring in a Bruce.
02:12There's what the figure looks like with the Nightfall.
02:14I think this is a San Diego Comic-Con.
02:16The one that has the additional shadowing mill on the front of his cowl.
02:18I think it's just such a cool-looking bat.
02:20And you can also be talking about breaking bats.
02:22You have to be talking about the guy that's responsible for doing that.
02:25Here's what the figure looks like with the two-pack Nightfall Bane.
02:27Indeed, now I'm sure this is only just by coincidence alone, that the prices of the Asriel original Batman have
02:32now started to drop on eBay.
02:33That's because scalpers realize now, with the vault releasing of him, there's no way now that they can charge the
02:38prices that they did for the original.
02:40At one point, honestly, I would go on eBay, try to find one of these, and he was selling for
02:45$150 to $180.
02:47Now this guy sells for retail.
02:49And one thing that you can tell by the difference between this one and the original one is the DC
02:53-branded logo down below.
02:55I would imagine, though, that the original Nightfall Asriel probably would have had still the original DC black logo.
03:02Now, though, you have the insurance, the assurance, that somebody's not trying to hawk to you.
03:06Although you would still have to try to check inside the packaging and see if you can make out the
03:10display stand.
03:10Because accessory-wise, this guy's pretty light.
03:13I don't think that the original one had much more than this.
03:16He only really comes in clue with his display stand.
03:18He also comes in clue with his trading card.
03:21Now, I'm just going to reach to the side and bring in the trading card from the Night's End Batman,
03:25where, again, you can see that he goes a little crazier with his new armor.
03:29I like, though, the fact that the cowl still has the little red eyes individually,
03:33whereas, like now, this one, the Night's End, had kind of a visor that went across the whole front of
03:38it.
03:38Kind of gave him more of a medieval armor as well.
03:41This one does have, of course, this is pulled from the actual issue itself of Detective Comics 667,
03:46an issue that I still have in my collection right now.
03:49Now, the back of the card does give him his real name of Jean-Paul Valli,
03:53and it also, of course, gives him the paragraph read.
03:56You, I'm sure, could spend the time to take and just read all this yourself.
04:00I've already done it for you.
04:01I mean, of course, we have to speed along in this review.
04:03I'm not going to waste this time of pausing the camera like this,
04:07making you guys sit and read through this yourself,
04:09when, again, I've done this for you.
04:11It's a shame, really, that the figure comes with no other accessories,
04:14but really, to be fair, though, he doesn't really have necessarily gripping hands anyways,
04:17so it's not like even if you gave him a batarang.
04:20From what I remember, though, I think Jean-Paul actually had batarangs that shot out his gauntlets.
04:25Thereby, again, including batarangs would make no sense whatsoever.
04:28Picking the figure up, again, I don't think there's much that's really been changed to this figure.
04:32He still is relying on a plastic cape,
04:34which I don't think necessarily is a bad thing at all,
04:36because the way that the cape is constructed,
04:40it has to be all one piece that then goes into the shoulder pad area
04:43and then wraps around the front.
04:45There's two ways you could have either done this.
04:47You could have cut this piece off kind of the way it is right now.
04:50Have all this fabric underneath, which I would think would look jarring.
04:54Or you'd have to devise even more of a clever way to wrap the fabric around,
04:58and it would never look as good as it does right now.
05:00Being, again, that this is a vault release,
05:02I don't expect them necessarily go in there and start to tweak the things to update the figure.
05:06So not having a fabric cape doesn't really bum me out that much.
05:09The cape itself looks okay, though.
05:11I mean, if you still like plastic capes, this one does the job fine.
05:14The cowl, again, has now two red eyes instead of the visor.
05:18So I'm going to grab the blue Night's End Batman,
05:20just so you guys can see the differences.
05:23Night's End Batman had, again, one complete visor,
05:26and a little bit more of an armored cowl.
05:28But if you look at the costumes, though, they seem to be exactly the same.
05:31Same torso, same arms.
05:33Now, if we were looking at this Batman the first time around,
05:36I probably would be saying the exact same thing.
05:38He's got the need to have the 90s leg pockets.
05:41Why do we have heroes in the 90s, everybody having to have leg pockets?
05:46What is he storing inside of there anyways?
05:49Even if he had the means to store something,
05:51I mean, like with the way that his hands are designed,
05:53these Edward Scissorhand-like blades,
05:56how would he possibly be able to reach inside small pockets like this,
06:01even to reach out and pull out the Batmobile keys,
06:04maybe spare change?
06:05I mean, he's also got pockets here featured on the front as well.
06:08These spikes don't serve much purpose for being gentle.
06:11I mean, obviously, they're only there just to be cutting up criminals.
06:14They're cool.
06:14I mean, like, they're painted.
06:15They definitely look like they've gone in there and painted them.
06:17They look really nice there.
06:18The one issue I kind of really have with the figure
06:20probably would have been the same issue that I had
06:22if I picked this figure up the first time.
06:23It certainly is the issue that I had with the Knights and Batman
06:26is that his legs do kind of look a little like they're 3D printed.
06:31I get that they wanted to add a little bit of texturing to this
06:34as opposed to just making this completely smooth.
06:36But by adding lines like this,
06:38it reads to me more like 3D printed legs
06:41and less like something that was made in a factory.
06:44Of course, he does have nice spikes down the sides of his leg.
06:46It's a really neat Batman.
06:47It breaks clearly, though, the molds
06:49of what traditionally a Batman figure would really look like.
06:52Again, like armored-looking cowl.
06:54Big spiked shoulders on the sides.
06:56Which, by the way, are softer plastic.
06:57I think if you're really running through the house
06:59and you happen to have Nightfall Batman in your hands
07:01and you fall on him,
07:03you're probably going to get more damage to your eyes
07:05from the points of his cowl
07:06than you're going to get from the damage for his shoulders.
07:08Because, again, they're using softer plastic.
07:10The metal for the gold looks good.
07:11This whole front skirting, by the way,
07:13it does...
07:13Because the way that the kind of the construction of the figure is,
07:16as you're kind of moving things around,
07:18I've noticed this already with the Knights and Batman,
07:20that this part down below here starts to lift over time
07:23just because they're using softer plastic there.
07:25But, again, like the colors,
07:26I don't think have changed all that much
07:28from now the vault release of him
07:30and the original Nightfall Batman.
07:32I think the Detective Comics 667
07:34stays true and faithful to the original mold.
07:36And, again, I don't think they've done anything
07:38really differently when it comes to the paint.
07:40For Nightfall's Batman,
07:42Azrael Batman does have the ball joint in the head.
07:45Same rule would have, of course, applied
07:46if we looked at the original.
07:47The head does move, yes, it does, up and down,
07:49back and forth there as well.
07:51I could maybe say that the face is a little too shiny.
07:53It would be nice maybe if they had just toned it back just a bit,
07:56maybe making the coloring a little bit more like,
07:58I don't know, maybe like the blue for his shoulders,
08:01rather than making it as dark of a blue as they did.
08:04The top of the torso is going to be on a ball joint,
08:07so it's doing what it's doing right now.
08:09Then there's also the ball joint at the base of the abdomen.
08:12Now, with this being soft or plastic,
08:14you can feel that there's actually a crunch in his torso
08:16and more in his stomach there.
08:18Of course, the arms do rotate all the way around.
08:20Despite having large shoulder pads like this,
08:22his arms don't seem too much like they're going to be an issue
08:25getting all the way around.
08:26If anything, they do seem a little loose,
08:29maybe too loose for a figure I just got out of the packaging.
08:32There's a bicep swivel, bicep swivel right there,
08:36double hinge on the elbow,
08:37with, though, the size of his gauntlets as they are.
08:39They're a little harder to get a much more of a bend
08:41than what you're pretty much getting right now.
08:43Hands rotate all the way around.
08:45The spikes, though, on his fingers are softer plastic,
08:47so again, I don't think you have to necessarily worry, though,
08:49too much about damaging anything with them.
08:51Legs do split,
08:52and once again, they are using the ratcheted joints
08:54for the tops of the thighs.
08:56The legs go forward, they go back.
08:57Yes, they do.
08:58Swivel there at the top of the thigh,
09:00double hinge on the knee.
09:02The only other thing I've noticed also with the Basriel Batman
09:04is that his ankles loose.
09:06They shouldn't really be so loose,
09:08getting them out of the packaging.
09:09I've only had, really, the figure out of the package
09:10for 35 minutes, 45 minutes at most,
09:13but they really shouldn't be as loose as they are already.
09:16I don't know if that's mold degradation,
09:17the fact that the mold's been used again.
09:20The figure does also have toe articulation.
09:22Toe articulation.
09:24Toe articulation.
09:25Good-looking Nightfall Batman, though.
09:27You know, again, I'm glad that I waited.
09:29I'm glad that I didn't.
09:31I was tempted.
09:32I was really tempted.
09:33I saw listings on eBay,
09:34and I thought to myself,
09:36$150 seems rather steep.
09:39But again, like, I already had Knights and Batmans,
09:42both in the blue and, of course, in the red.
09:44The red, by the way, though,
09:45I didn't really show you too much.
09:47With the way that the wings worked,
09:49they pegged to the top like this.
09:51And actually, you could hinge them out,
09:53but only just a little bit.
09:54But yeah, I had the blue.
09:55I had the red.
09:56But what I didn't have, though,
09:57was the original, the OG.
09:59And it was just like one of those cases.
10:01It was kind of like the Red Energy Superman.
10:03I never got the Red Energy Superman
10:04for basically the same reason.
10:06He seemed harder to get,
10:07and the prices for him started to skyrocket.
10:10Now, with the Volt kind of coming around,
10:12as really, though,
10:13McFarlane comes to a close
10:14with his DC multiverse properties,
10:16I'm glad that he's now looked at figures
10:18that were hard to come by,
10:20like that Wonder Woman, for example,
10:21like Nightfall Batman here.
10:24Those would all be figures
10:25that collectors really did want
10:26to get their hands on.
10:27I mean, McFarlane doesn't benefit at all
10:29by having scalpers sell these
10:31at increased prices online.
10:32It's not like McFarlane gets a cut in that.
10:34So really, the only one that's benefiting
10:36from having these older figures
10:37and listing them are the ones
10:38that were lucky enough
10:39to get them the first time around.
10:41Now, I'm sure, though,
10:42the Volt figures are going to kind of disappoint
10:43some of these sellers that wanted still
10:45to sell them the prices that they did.
10:47But again, like this guy sells.
10:49I mean, I picked this one up.
10:50I think it was like $30, $35.
10:52It is, though, a far cry,
10:55a very far cry from what the figure
10:57was selling for initially,
10:59you know, when, again,
10:59there wasn't the available option of the Vault.
11:01I'm just kind of moving this guy over
11:03just a little bit
11:03so I can bring back in the Bane.
11:04Any reason that I have
11:05to bring back in the Bane.
11:08Where's the Batman?
11:08Let's bring also in the Batman
11:09because I really like that Batman.
11:12If you missed your chance, by the way,
11:13I mean, think of this really as a FYI.
11:16If you missed your chance
11:16to get the Azrael Batman armor
11:18Batman in the first place,
11:20just know, though,
11:20with the Vault release of him,
11:22he's going to be available.
11:22He's going to be more widely available
11:24and he's going to be at a price
11:26that's a little bit more easier
11:27on your budget.
11:28Right now, I could throw out
11:28two good reasons
11:29of why you would want to get
11:30the Vault version Azrael Batman
11:31over the original one.
11:33Well, first, the obvious one
11:34is the price.
11:35This guy right now
11:36would be about $30 to $40.
11:38The original Azrael,
11:39I did say it went down in price.
11:41He still sits at around $100.
11:44Two listings right now on eBay.
11:46One is for $98
11:47and one, I think, is for like $94.
11:49So they're still sitting pretty high.
11:51The other thing, though,
11:53is that the colors
11:54are actually different.
11:55The Vault version
11:56does give us darker colors
11:58that more resemble
11:59the Knights, Quest, and Knights
12:00and Batmans,
12:01the one that we also brought in
12:02for this review.
12:03So if you want to keep
12:04the colors consistent,
12:05this one actually would do
12:06a better job of matching
12:08those blues,
12:08matching those grays,
12:09and matching the gold.
12:11The gold label collection
12:13Azrael Batman from years back
12:15had actually lighter blue,
12:17more of a pastel blue
12:19for his cape,
12:19the cowl,
12:20and the shoulders.
12:20He had also lighter grays.
12:22The problem with that figure,
12:23though, is not only
12:24was he more expensive,
12:25but if you wanted to have him
12:26technically on display
12:28within your Knights
12:28and Batmans,
12:29the colors for those
12:30wouldn't match at all.
12:31This one does.
12:33I wonder if that's going to be
12:34something that they're going
12:35to do trend-wise
12:35if all the Vault series figures
12:37are going to be slight tweaks.
12:39Maybe, yeah,
12:40using the same body.
12:41Maybe, in this case,
12:41having still a plastic cape.
12:43But tweaking them slightly, though,
12:45so the ones that picked up
12:47the initial figures
12:47aren't going to be miffed
12:48like, hey, I was holding
12:50onto this figure.
12:51I was keeping him sealed
12:51inside of his plastic prison
12:53with the hopes
12:54that the value would increase.
12:56I'm sure for the reasons being
12:57that the colors, again,
12:58on him are a little bit different,
12:59his value will still be high,
13:01but maybe not as high now
13:03now that the Vault series
13:04has been released.
13:05Now, again,
13:05I did grab this one
13:06on the Facebook marketplace
13:07from Popeye the Toy Man.
13:09Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
13:10Big thank you to him for that.
13:11Thanks to him also as well,
13:13and you can thank him too
13:14because you're going to be
13:15hearing that trumpet sound
13:15all throughout this week.
13:17He hooked me up,
13:18and we're going to be looking
13:18at some other new
13:19DC multiverse figures.
13:21So if that's your bread and butter,
13:22if that's the reason
13:23that you come to the yard,
13:24just know that we're going
13:25to have more videos
13:26coming your way
13:26for the rest of this week.
13:27In the meantime, though,
13:28if you guys did enjoy this video,
13:30do it as well and throw it a like.
13:31You guys want to stick around
13:32for more so?
13:33I do hope so.
13:34We're going to have, yeah,
13:34more content coming your way.
13:35As always,
13:36thanks for watching.
13:37See you guys next time.