My hands must be secreting some sort of anti-Batdude chemical. First my new Movie Masters Batman snapped in half at the waist this weekend (luckily I was able to return him), and then I managed to snap off Batzarro's arm during today's photo extended shoot. The fit of the arm is tight enough that I can still wedge it back into position and have it stay (the extreme tightness of the joint requires some pretty forceful motion to turn the arm to begin with, which is likely how I managed to break it off), but I'm still not too pleased about that. 🙁

Anyway, here are the figures I picked up this weekend and some of the ones that arrived in a box today. Click on the thumbnails to see larger pics!

I've actually had Edward Scissorhands around here a while -- my sister gave him to me for Christmas several years ago -- but I didn't take him out of his package until last Friday. Although he's not superarticulated (though he gets a fairly high joint count because all of his scissorfingers move individually), he's still pretty cool. The Scarecrow, however, is completely new to the collection. I actually considering ordering him on eBay a few weeks ago -- I was thinking of using him in my Legion of Doom, although this Scarecrow is the Marvel version -- but dropped that idea when I happened upon a legitimate DC Scarecrow on clearance. Still, I thought it was pretty amazing that I happened upon this figure for $3.97 at KB Toys this weekend, since he's pretty much been out of retail circulation since 2006. (He must have been hidden away in the back room, since I've been to that KB before and never come across the toy.) It almost felt like this Scarecrow was destined to come home with me... and so he did.

Speaking of DC characters and figures on clearance, I couldn't pass up the Justice Brainiac when I saw him for $4.98 at Spencer Gifts... so now my Legion of Doom has six of its original thirteen members. Spike no longer has to pull double duty, but he was all too happy to pose with Brainiac before rejoining Angel and the gang.

Donna Troy was the last of the figures I picked up this weekend -- like Brainiac, she was $4.98 at Spencer's. Dr. Light arrived today along with some other toys I ordered last week. He's pretty cool for $3.75, though if I divide the $7.18 shipping charge evenly among the four figures and add it to his official cost he comes out to $5.55. I'd still have paid that for him -- my Teen Titans figures need an antagonist and my DC figure collection needs more rogues -- so it's all good.

I knew next to nothing about Black Hand when I decided to order him, but since he's a DC villain and only cost $2.99 (or $4.79 after the shipping charge) he was practically a shoe-in for the collection. I didn't expect to like him nearly as much as I do, though. Not only is the sculpt impressively detailed, what with the complexity of his costume and the veins and deformities of his exposed skin, but his joints turned quite smoothly and never made me feel like I ran the risk of breaking him -- an assurance I needed given my recent "fun" with Batmen. And whereas I tend to think that ball-jointed necks are overrated among action figures (some folks swear by them), here's a guy whose ball-jointed neck is extremely useful. I'm hardly familiar with Black Hand, yet he's seriously in the running for being my favorite DC Direct figure.

In this respect, however, Hand's got stiff competition from the just-released New Gods Darkseid, which was really the main reason I placed the order. In fact, as of now, he's the only DC Direct figure that I've ever paid full price ($12.75 here, or $14.55 with shipping) to own. I'm not sure I would be quite as impressed with the figure if I weren't totally into Darkseid -- it's pretty much perfect as a Kirby Darkseid, but he's not markedly superior to Mattel's DC Superheroes Darkseid (see above, along with the smaller JLU version) -- but I can never have too much Darkseid. I heart Darkseid. 🙂

And that is all for now.