Hot Wheels Pop Culture 2022 – DC Comics

OK, so I have been after these for a while now – found 3 of them right off the bat with no issue, the fourth maybe a week later, and then it was maybe another 2 or 3 before I finally got that last one (the Kool Kombi). I always enjoy the level of detail and artwork that goes into these sets and this one doesn’t disappoint. Even the artwork on the cards is beautiful, made all the more striking by running edge to edge. Something in the way that color and brightness is used causes these images to almost glow.

This lineup consists of 5 well-known Justice League alumni plastered across some commonly used vehicles although Hot Wheels has thrown in a couple that are a little less familiar (to me, anyway).

• 1 / 5 – Wonder Woman – Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Tourer
• 2 / 5 – Green Lantern – Kool Kombi
• 3 / 5 – Superman – 88 Mercedes Unimog U1300
• 4 / 5 – Batman – HW Tour Bus
• 5 / 5 – The Flash – Combat Medic

This Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Tourer isn’t a vehicle that’s immediately familiar to me. It’s a very large vehicle – not sure if all that space is for holding people or gear, but it also comes with a massive sports rack on top. The overall shape lends itself well to artwork, providing a nice open canvas to work with.

This van/bus/truck thing is clad in a base-coat of gold, perfect for all the godliness and regality that underscores Wonder Woman’s being. The paint is metalflake, giving it some luster without being reflective. Her logo adorns the front hood, and each side contains a fierce looking Wonder Woman. The colors are bright and deep and a lot of care was put into the lighting and shadows. It’s all too easy to make Wonder Woman’s outfit look super-cheesy, but this artwork casts a darker, armor-like feel to her clothing.

Overall this was a great vehicle for the job and I love how the metalflake stands out without having that reflective chrome look to it. Wonder Woman is portrayed with an appropriate fierceness, and while my reptile-brain kinda wants to see more boobs, I do appreciate how tough she looks while retaining her femininity.

The Kool Kombi is a weird choice for this line, but I guess it’s got enough blank space to make it work. The black and green palette is eye-catching and I like how several shades of green are worked into it. The Green Lantern emblem covers the top.

Somewhat unique to this piece is which Green Lantern is being shown. We’re used to Hal Jordan by default, but this time we get Jon Stewart. He looks to be in some sort of meditative state on either side of the van.

Next up is Superman in the Unimog. This truck always strikes a chord with me because of how light it is. The frame is metal but the big cargo bay is made of plastic and as a result it all has a very off-kilter feel. That being said it does provide a good surface for an image. One side sees Superman looking rather heroic and friendly, yet on the other his eyes are ablaze and he is thoroughly ready to lay down the pain.

In case you’re in the air, the iconic “S” is on the roof.

I can’t say I’m in love with the weird split two-tone red and blue color scheme. It looks a little too much like a cartoon or something. I wouldn’t mind, seeing some blacks and silvers break up that wildness just a bit.

Now we get to the Dark Knight himself, in a vehicle I know I personally haven’t ever seen, the HW Tour Bus. It’s actually quite nice looking, and I’ve love to jaunt around the country in it alongside my band. A midnight purplish blue serves as the background and for everyone with wings or a helicopter, the Bat-logo is on the roof.

As far as Batman goes, well, he’s just sortta leaping outta the shadows at us…but we’ll cut him a little slack because leaping outta the shadows is one of the things he’s best at.

Finally we have the Flash represented by a Combat Medic…somewhat fitting, right? Combat Medic has been used over and over and over again, but realistically it does have a nice, big, squarish space conducive to unbroken artwork so I don’t wanna knock it too heavily. The guys at Hot Wheels have been around a while so I feel like if there was a better or alternate vehicle they’d naturally use it.

This big red van couldn’t be much more obvious. The Flash emblem almost comes across as cheesy and old-fashioned though it also feels a bit a speedy courier. I feel like a bunch newspapers should fall out the back.

Unless you’re a comic enthusiast, I can understand seeing The Flash as a little on the hokey side. (A lot of DC guys are stuck in this goody-two-shoes rut, and it’s unfortunate because most of ’em get pretty damn dark within DC’s wild world of run-away universe-sprawl followed by cataclysmic contraction.) And even if this bright red version doesn’t do much to change your mind, hopefully it’ll give you a sense of just how much power this guy has access to. The left side sports a great illustration of Flash just sort of posing in all his Speed Force essence.

So what do you think? In so many cases these artwork-focused cars feature lots of “classic” artwork from seminal issues that are now decades old. Here, however, we get what I’m thinking are very modern examples of these characters, appearing much less like the heroes in tights of yesteryear.

Someone Get This to Hot Wheels: DC COMICS Edition (Character Cars You Should’ve Made By Now!)

So a couple of weeks ago I did this very same thing as it pertained to the Marvel Universe. (You may want to give the first couple of paragraphs a read just so we’re on the same page – but I’ll try to be clear in this article as well.) Well, it ain’t just Marvel who’s skipped over some majorly awesome and important characters in their run of Character Cars. What irks me most of all is that Hot Wheels seems to skip around somewhat arbitrarily with regards to who gets a car and who doesn’t. And what really gets my eyes rollin’ is when we get 5+ versions of Batman, 3 versions of Robin, 4 (depending on how you count it) versions of the Joker, etc. and we can’t even get one…stinkin’…Lex Luthor car… Why, Hot Wheels? Why!? We’ve also got multiple versions of Harley, Flash, Cyborg, Katana, Batgirl, Superman, Supergirl… C’mon.

When I say that the skippage is somewhat arbitrary, I’m speaking to the same problem that plagues the Marvel cars – a lack of villains. For some reason the DC arm hasn’t been as nearly as imbalanced as Marvel, but when weighing the sheer number of even just Batman villains against DC’s main heroes, it’s odd that we’re missing so many. So let’s get down to brass tacks – let’s pretend Hot Wheels has this run across “their” desk. How do we determine a pool to draw from? We can’t go with something as vast as DC’s entire publication history, so how do we whittle that down?

With Marvel we had a pretty dang good starting point: the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The MCU provided a nice centralized repository of characters that were a) loosely connected and b) culturally relevant. Ok, so easy answer, right? We go with the DCEU. Well that was what I was gonna do, but the DCEU isn’t nearly as big as the MCU and it hasn’t matured enough to tell some of the best stories. I feel like limiting ourselves to the DCEU will feel like we’re trying too hard to arbitrarily stick only to the DCEU when there are plenty of other worthy, culturally appropriate characters that haven’t yet appeared in the shared universe.

Now DC does have it’s “Arrowverse” TV universe, but gee golly gosh willikers that shit gets confusing – some of it’s Earth-2 and some of it ain’t, but it is all still part of the same multiverse, which is not the same multiverse that includes the DCEU…whatTFever. Besides, I don’t know enough about the TV shows anyway.

To give ourselves just a little more access to some of the classics, I’m going to branch out into the 7 Batman films prior to the DCEU. I would also include the 5 preceding Superman films, but I don’t think any of them will give us access to any extra characters.

So if you’ll allow it – and you will because you have to – I’m going to go out on a little bit of a stretch here. In addition to the DCEU and other films, we’re going to draw from the playable rosters of the video games Injustice: Gods Among Us and Injustice 2. Please click here for a glimpse at these rosters and an additional note about “what counts.”

Why these video games? Well, I figured they offered decent insight into what the DCU is nowadays. Both games act as a nice little window in the world of DC, and while the storylines may be a little “severe” and conducive to fighting, we do learn a bit about the characters and we get a bit of modern-day, cultural grounding for these personalities. Apart from the DCEU, I feel like Injustice and its sequel are the most widely visible glimpses into the DCU. And keep in mind that just because we’re drawing from these games doesn’t mean we’re going to draw in every single character from them.

I had at one point considered using the Batman: Arkham series of video games (generally known as the “Arkham-verse”) for reference but decided against it for a couple of reasons. First, although the list probably will weight towards Batman naturally, I don’t want to feed that imbalance by using a source that’s centered around Batman. Second, it can be difficult to draw the line between what’s in the Arkham-verse and what isn’t. Some are obvious: you can’t even really play the game (Arkham Knight) without running into the Arkham Knight or the Riddler or Penguin. But if you start really paying attention to all the little Easter Eggs, you’ll find out that Kathy Kane exists (via a message on Bruce’s answering machine)…of course that doesn’t mean anything unless you already know that Kathy Kane = Batwoman. There’s also a snippet of radio chatter amongst the thugs where one of them brings up Firefly while another muses about “some kinda bug,” a reference to a much more obscure foe known as “Firebug.”

Finally, there are 5 characters that do not fit into any of the above criteria that I would like to include: Red Robin, Batwoman, Bizarro, Clayface, and Firefly.

So let’s tidy this up as much as we can:

This list will draw from the 7 existing films in the DCEU, from 2013’s Man of Steel up through 2019’s Shazam!

This list will draw from the 7 Batman films outside of the DCEU, including the Burton/Schumacher tetralogy (or “quadrilogy,” if you prefer) and Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy.

This list will not draw from DC’s television “Arrow-verse” or anything “Arrow-verse adjacent.” This includes (but is not limited to!) shows like Arrow, The Flash, Gotham, and Supergirl.

This list will not draw from any other TV shows centered on DC characters, such as (but not limited to!) the Batman serials from the 1940’s, Wonder Woman (from the 70’s), the 1966 – 69 Batman TV series, and Batman: The Animated Series along with any other animated series, specials, shorts, or films featuring any of DC’s IPs.

This list will include 5 characters who don’t match the criteria: Red Robin, Batwoman, Clayface, Bizarro, & Firefly.

• emboldened characters are at the absolute top of the list
• “regular text” is for second priority
• italicized characters are the least significant but this doesn’t mean I don’t think they warrant inclusion; any and every entry on the list ought to have car made in his or her honor
• (V) – denotes character as a villain (generally speaking)
• (H) – denotes character as a hero (generally speaking)
• (?) – denotes shifting alliances; ambiguous or unknown affiliation

1. Jor-El (H)
2. General Zod (V)
3. Faora-Ul (V)
4. Nam-Ek (V)
5. Lois Lane (H)
6. Lex Luthor (V)
7. Rick Flag (H)
8. The Enchantress (V)
9. Incubus (V)
10. Captain Boomerang (V / ?)
11. El Diablo (V / ?)
12. Slipknot (V / ?)
13. Steve Trevor (H)
14. Queen Hippolyta (H)
15. Antiope (H)
16. Menalippe (H)
17. Steppenwolf (V)
18. Parademon (V)
19. Orm / Ocean Master (V)
20. Vulko (H)
21. King Nereus (?)
22. Captain Murk (?)
23. Atlanna (H)
24. Brine King (?)
25. Trench Warrior (?)

26. Dr. Sivanna (V)
27. Mary (H)
28. Eugene (H)
29. Pedro (H)
30. Ra’s al Ghul (V)
31. Scarecrow (V)
32. Alfred (H)
33. Commissioner Gordon (H)
34. Talia al Ghul (V / ?)
35. Black Adam (V)
36. Hawkgirl (H)
37. Sinestro (V)
38. Solomon Grundy (V)
39. Blue Beetle (H)
40. Brainiac (V)
41. Cheetah (V)
42. Darkseid (V)
43. Firestorm (H)
44. Gorilla Grodd (V)
45. Red Hood (H)
46. Batwoman (H)
47. Red Robin (H)
48. Clayface (V)
49. Bizarro (V)
50. Firefly (V)

Note: It’s possible that some candidates appear in multiple works, i.e. Scarecrow is in Batman Begins and he’s also in Injustice 2. In the interest of simplicity I’m just going to list the “closest” source.

• 1 – 6 – Man of Steel
• (No new characters appeared in Batman v Superman in need of cars.)
• 7 – 12 – Suicide Squad
• 13 – 16 – Wonder Woman
• 17 – 18 – Justice League
• 19 – 25 – Aquaman
• 26 – 29 – Shazam!
• (Believe it or not, all relevant characters from the Burton/Schumacher films have already been covered! All of the antagonists are accounted for – Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, Riddler, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, and Bane – as are the sidekicks, Robin and Batgirl. There are some supporting villains like Bob (Joker’s main thug), Max Shreck (a manifestation of systemic, corporate evil in Batman Returns, ultimately he’s 100% for the creation of Catwoman and Penguin. I also kinda liked Sugar and Spice, Two-Face’s “ladies.” However these are such bit parts in the scheme of things, so I wouldn’t lobby for them unless we were specifically honing in on these films.)
• 30 – 33 – Batman Begins
• (Again, no new characters requiring cars appear in The Dark Knight.)
• 34 – The Dark Knight Rises
• 35 – 38 – Injustice
• 39 – 45 – Injustice 2
• 46 – 50 – Personal Picks

Again, this list is a little more scattershot and piecemeal than the Marvel list, but I still don’t think that just sticking to the DCEU was the right move, especially since the line of Character Cars has branched out in other directions. (Although having dedicated, ongoing subsets for both the MCU and DCEU with muted colors and more metallic paint jobs might not be such a terrible idea…) For the most part I tried to stick to core JL members and major villains of said members. I purposefully left out most of the “Power Ring” stuff, because once you start down that hole, you can’t just pump the brakes in the middle. Yeah we’ve got Green Lantern and I opted to add Sinestro, but that’s it, no Larfleeze or Atrocitus or Saint Walker etc.

As far as defending my personal picks, I chose Bizarro because I think he would round out a 5 pack of Superman villains quite nicely: Bizarro, Darkseid, Doomsday, Luthor, and Zod. Clayface, at least in his most well-known iteration, is a unique and visually striking 2nd tier Batman villain. Someone could really let their imagination run wild in designing a Clayface car. Firefly understandably feels a little obscure, but a flame-thrower-wielding nut operating a ramshackle flight suit…how cool is that!? And then there’s Batwoman, who’s got comparatively little attention over the years, yet she’s starting to pop up more and more as a positive LGBT symbol in the current climate. I feel like she’s teetering on the edge of really breaking through…though that assumes the character is handled correctly. I want to go ahead stick Red Hood and Red Robin in the mix because a) we just got a Nightwing car, and b) the artwork used on the Robin 2.0T card is clearly meant to be Damian Wayne. If Damian is the “current” Robin according to this “Hot Wheels – DC Universe” and Dick Grayson has since moved on to Nightwing, I instinctively want to fill in the “Robin gaps” with Jason Todd as Red Hood and Tim Drake as Red Robin.

So whatcha think of my DC Character Select Screen? I know 12 is quite a bit fewer than the 20 I did for Marvel, but overall this one turned out better with less fine tuning.

Anyway, Mr. (or Ms.) Hot Wheels – wherever you are – that’s my plan for your DC line. Overall I think it’s more well-rounded than the Marvel cars and I also appreciate somewhat limited number of minutely-different duplicates though I do think it’s am issue to be mindful of. Anyway, that’s all I got for now, so sit tight and feel free to tell me what you agree or don’t agree with!

New DC Character Cars – Nightwing & Deathstroke!

I saw these floating around eBay maybe a month or so ago and wouldn’t you know, Walmart started stocking ’em last weekend. Plenty of other cars are in the same wave, but they’re all re-releases. Whatever, it feels good to finally have a Nightwing and Deathsroke! Now if only Hot Wheels would fast-track that Lex Luthor car…

Nightwing looks a lot like a random Batmobile plucked from the comics, but I’m ok with that since Nightwing is supposed to be on equal footing with Batman and not subservient to. The Nightwing “logo” (if we can call it that) is stretched across the hood, the lighter blue contrasting against a deep, cobalt blue base. At first he looks a little plain and featureless, but if you look between the wings, you’ll see Nightwing’s signature electrified escrima sticks stowed away. (They used to have handy lil’ bios on the cards that would tell you this stuff but for some reason those bios got scrapped a couple years back.)

And now there’s Deathstroke! Part of me kinda wishes he’d been re-branded as “Slade” and released within the Teen Titans Go! subset, though then again I could see myself wanting a “purer” version of the character…I don’t know. Anyway, Deathstroke comes to us in the form of a giant, armored van, almost like a tank sans the cannon and the treads. I guess his vast arsenal must be implied, because we don’t get a lot of overt references to his equipment. There’s that white chunk at the rear of his “orange side” that I’m sure is supposed to be something but I don’t know what. We do get a glimpse of (at least) one sword on his “back” but that’s all I can find – no grenades or knives or guns or clips or anything. I feel like they could’ve really decked this guy out with all sorts of barrels and blades and made a much more menacing machine. Oh well; I’m at least glad they implemented an appropriate color scheme and I guess the implication of having wicked amounts of firepower on the inside counts for something.

So there’s 2 more we can tick off the ol’ “DC list.” (Yeah I don’t have a list, not yet anyway.) It’s 2 good choices no doubt, but I’m a little confused as to why they’re coming out with a slew of re-releases. I get that Hot Wheels doesn’t want to alienate possible new fans but with the nature of these and the number of them it may not always be feasible to wait around for a re-release – they should keep some in a warehouse, charge $5 a year for some kinda membership, and give members the ability to purchase out-of-production vehicles. A “Character Car Club” would just be so perfect for this stuff…

For now I’ll raise my cup of watery, frozen(ish) chai from Sheetz to the prospect of Lex Luthor and Scarecrow…and I’ll secretly keep my fingers crossed for a Red Hood, Red Robin, and Batwoman to help round out the Bat-Family. (I know I know, there’s Black Bat and Bat Wing and Bluebird and Huntress and The Signal and Spoiler and Batman Beyond but I’d be perfectly content with the aforementioned trio!)

New DC Character Cars Part 2: “Action Feature”

God, I really hate that term, “Action Feature,” but it’s what Hot Wheels calls it, their “Action Feature Series.” It makes it sound like toys with moving parts are a new thing, like the industry just discovered springs and levers or some shit. Maybe even just “Action Series” would be ok…”Feature” is just too much of a euphemism for “gimmick” and I don’t particularly care for the inauthenticity of the term. Whatever, I know I’m getting bent over nothing, but after seeing how silly the Star Wars “Action Feature” cars were I just can’t help it. (Read about them here and here if you haven’t already. Also take a look at Part 1: Shazam! Character Cars if you haven’t already.)

Right now this looks like the front half of a 5-car subset:

• 1 / 5 – Superman (with Blasting Heat Vision)
• 2 / 5 – Batman (with Lift & Spin Batarang)
• 3 / 5 – Wonder Woman (with Sliding Lasso of Truth)

It looks like Joker and Harley will be rounding out the set at some point in the near future.

First of all I want to quickly address the look of the cars themselves. They’re all familiar designs but a couple of them look a little different than we’re used to. Superman remains more or less what we’re accustomed to…you may could argue for some brighter colors but that’s about it. Wonder Woman, while also quite similar, has never been quite this cartoon-y before. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, I’m kinda glad the whole red-blue-gold gets a chance to stand out.

Batman is the most visually interesting of the lot. It’s his Character Car introduced back in the Justice League (film) era but passed off almost as a sort of Batmobile. Ever since 90’s (or near-90’s) staples of Batman lore like Burton’s 2 films, Batman: The Animated Series, and even going a little further back to Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986), Batman has been suited up in black black black and maybe some gray, dark gray, and more black. And really you’ll get no argument from most people; after all, bats are black, it fits with his whole theme of fear and the night and all that, etc. But for a while there, and even still persisting in some areas, a recognizable color scheme of blue, gray, and yellow has been adopted. Useful for everything from more kid-friendly material to comics that are less visually dark and dreary, most people are familiar with this scheme – hell, it’s the colors that Adam West sported throughout the 60’s TV series. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that as gimmicky as these fucking “Action Feature” mofos are, I actually really like the fact that we finally have real Character Car with the blue-gray-yellow scheme. Yes, we’ve seen Batmobiles like this, but not Character Cars (until now). And it all jives well with the shape of the car besides.

Alright alright, now let’s move on to these little sliding bits of sliding plastic.

Superman features blasting heat vision. Not a bad idea, and a nice identifiable power to go with…there’s a small lever on the passenger’s side that, when slid forward, pushes 2 red “beams” out of the front near the headlights. I mean there’s nothing really wrong with that…and it’s not as if it’s based on something wildly abstract..it just feels superfluous. I dunno. Call me a grump, I don’t care!

Wonder Woman’s sliding Lasso of Truth is slightly more interesting. For this one the lever extends through to the passenger and driver’s side for some reason. The end result is a closed loop extending from the front, and while this certainly isn’t enough to envelope another car, it could be a fun way to latch onto an extended piece of another vehicle.

Finally there’s Batman and his utterly worthless lift & spin batarang. What is this!!?? It’s a good thing the car itself is relatively unique because not only does this gimmick feel pointless, I’m also fairly sure it doesn’t function properly. See, the little bat-shaped spoiler lifts up off the body by like, 1/8th of a inch. And then…you can spin it in a circle! Umm, ok, but why? Is the car gonna take off like a helicopter…? I don’t understand this at all. To make matters even wore, even if here was some intrinsic value in having a spinning spoiler, the damn thing just slips back down into place when aligned properly. There’s no simple locking mechanism to keep it upright! Why!!?? I don’t even&emdash;

Dear Hot Wheels, if you really want to keep up with this “action feature” malarky I guess that’s ok, but take a cue from LEGO’s exhaustive catalog of minifigs and please quit leaving inexplicable holes like Orm (Aquaman), Steppenwolf (Justice League), the “Children of Thanos” / Black Thorn (Infinity War), and we can just keep on goin’ back into MCU territory (Whiplash, Malekith, Crossbones, Ronan, Abomination, Yellow Jacket, Ghost, Shocker, Hela, Ego…) where are these people?! You wanna bang out a few highly distinct versions of Batman? I got no problem with that. But why the endless variations when we don’t so much as have a Nightwing? Or hell, an Alfred? Take heed, Hot Wheels! Dream up some kind of subscription service. Mail one out every month. I’ll pay; you can even come up with some badass storage/display cases for them!

Alright I’m done with my quick rail against the “action feature” weirdos. Until next time! And if you haven’t already, be sure to go back and take a look at Part 1 where we look at new Shazam! cars!