The Dark Knight rises

This week weather was unpleasant again. Once again more than 30 °C with only two 'cooler' days in between. Honestly that kind of summer I really don't need. Anyway besides the progress with the gladiators I spent some time with Batman and finally finished him:

The Dark Knight is by Knight Models who make a really alluring range of 35mm miniatues. The figures are mostly inspired by the recent video games from the 'Arkham Asylum' series and by the recent movies by Christopher Nolan. 35mm makes them rather unique in size and more or less uncombinable with other ranges. Actually that doesn't hurt because the range is stylewise very extraordinary and I doubt whether there are other manufacturers making suitable models.

Anyway the quality of the figure is excellent. The proportions and the dynamic of its body language is captured excellently and full of expression. Especially the cape looks wonderfully vivid. Usually he comes with a 30mm slotted base but I didn't like its thickness. Thus I replaced it with a 25mm Renedra plastic base and added some greenstuff and plastic card to create an idea of banged up pavement. Not my best work but at least it doesn't spoil the miniature.

Only disadvantage of the figure is it's price. About £11 / 16 € is a lot for a single miniature. Nevertheless I don't regret the purchase. It granted me a couple of entertaining hours when I painted it and I enjoyed it very much to plunge into the DC universe. Honestly cinema tickets for the same time - meaning for two or three movies - would have been more expensive. I'm not sure whether this figure will be my first step into the Batman Miniature Game since I'm lacking like-minded wargaming fellow here but at least it lead me back to a story cycle I enjoyed very much during my younger days.

Painting Table Saturday - The Dark Knight WIP

During the last months a friend of mine has been working working on his first figures for the Batman miniatures game. No need to say that his wonderful work inspired me. It lead me to the literary place Gotham City. A place I left about twenty-five years ago. Not that I lost sympathy for Bob Kane's sinister avenger but somehow I lost touch to comic books. Anyway during the ht weeks I plunged into Christopher Nolan's excellent movie triology once more, played the Arkham Origins video game and read a couple of the newer Batman graphic novel. They're rather different from my older 80s comic books: Darker, more serious, somehow adult. But without any doubt worth a try in case that you like superheroe stories. Many thanks to the well-known Michael Awdry esq.

Finally I wasn't able to withstand Knight Models's interesting range of 35mm miniatures and bought one of Batman's incarnations:

It's a very nice miniature that entertained me during the last week. A wonderful piece of lead but I added another base because I don't like those rather thick slotta bases. Of course the colour palette for the Dark Knight is very limited but I decided to paint the cape, boots, gloves etc. blueish. To my mind more interesting than black and grey only. Hopefully I'll finish him next week.

Anyway I'm not sure whether this will grow to a larger project but besides there price there's nothing bad to say about those miniatures. Honestly in my mind's view there are the dark allies of Gotham appearing and Penguin, Joker and other villains lurking...

Enjoy the weekend !