For a while there I was a little worried at how many Character Cars were on the horizon, but holy guacamole, retailers seem to be keeping up for the time being (well, almost) and luckily with a little bit of patience, most of these guys have fallen into my lap.
Yeah yeah, originally I included Aquaman in this picture because I was convinced of some slight difference, but it turns out that it’s identical to the Justice League version.
Let’s get to the most unique new DCU Character Car, Martian Manhunter. They did a great job nailing down the colors, with a deep dark green, and the whole thing has a kind of cool red-blue-green-yellow (sometimes reference as our “psychological primaries”) theme going on. Both his cape and cloak clasp are built into the car’s design and get this: the “cape” part even opens up to show off some fancy engine parts. Besides the fact that he’s big and green, there’s not a lot of blatant one to two word descriptors for Martian Manhunter so I think the design was pulled off well. I might’ve gone for a slightly longer car myself, but overall I’m pleased.
Moving onward, we get the tail end of the Sketched Series, with Joker GT and Harley Quinn at 4/5 and 5/5 respectively. I’ve elaborated on my thoughts on the necessity of these “Sketched” cars in previous articles, similar to the Comic Book Styling subset of Marvel Character Cars. In short, I think the idea holds some merit, but I kinda think that this out-of-universe depiction of the characters takes away from the Character Cars as a whole. The vehicles are done well and I get the concept being put forth, it just doesn’t excite me much. Anywho, at least this subset has been put to rest and hopefully we can get back to more essential designs, i.e. heavyweights like Darkseid, Lex Luthor, Scarecrow, Nightwing, etc.
Aquaman and Hawkman were re-released as well, though neither appear to be anything new. Hawkman has remained unchanged for quite a while now and the Aquaman is the version we saw after the hokey torpedo-esque design but before the latest Justice League iteration. Basically it’s the one with the water and with the shiny gold stuff.
And that, as they say, is that! I know this is pointless, but here’s some characters I want to see enter the pantheon in the near future: (And why the hell didn’t we get a Steppenwolf for Justice League….?)
- Lex Luthor
- Darkseid
- Scarecrow
- Sinestro
- Nightwing
- Red Robin
- Red Hood
- Blue Beetle
- Deathstroke
- Ra’s al Ghul
- Clayface
- Reverse Flash
- Superboy Prime
Those are my big ones. I wouldn’t mind seeing others – Gorilla Grodd, Firestorm, Hawkgirl, and so on, but the above are kinda like my “main” picks. I was going to add Mera and Black Manta but I think they’ll be coming our way via the Aquaman film pretty soon so I’ll hold of. (What about Ocean Master…?)
Alrighty then…drop me a comment and tell me whatcha think of these new additions and/or who’d you most like to see make the future cut. I realize that some repetition will probably always be in order so that the most relevant and visible characters are routinely available, I just hope that Hot Wheels is smart enough to keep digging around in that back catalog for all-new faces.
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