TheBatstan

I mean maybe this is just me being on severe hopium after seeing the movie but one of the minifigures from the Wicked bookends set has the S curl Superman hair piece in black (the first time it's appeared in 5 years in that color since the DC CMF's), so Lego could easily use it for a Corenswet Superman minifigure next year now that it's seemigly back in production again.

It's great to get that hat piece in another set, plus the torso is perfect for Jervis. Slap on a red bowtie piece, yellow hands, orange legs along with your head of choice and boom, you'll have a great (and at this point, probably only) 2008 Mad Hatter minifigure. The Peter Pettigrew head has always been the one I've seen a lot of people use, and you can make it work by using the eraser method to get rid of the second face print. But if you don't want to use it, I've found that the Marcus Flint head works too with that facial expression and the buck teeth.

At this point it's become a running joke with all the 'main' Arkham sets (I'm not counting the 4+ version even though they included his hat as an easter egg). Though Penguin is probably the most 'sane' big name Batman villain and usually goes to Blackgate with the other inmates who aren't criminally insane, he had his own cell nametag sticker in the 2006 Arkham despite not appearing in the set, he showed up in the 2013 Arkham, the 2017 TLBM Arkham, and now this one.

At this point, I think we need to let go of the idea that Lego will make a Mad Hatter, they don't even want to make the Disney version for some reason. It's been nearly 20 years since the first Lego Batman game and he's still the only main villain from all 3 gangs that hasn't been made...and it's not looking good. However, thanks to the Wicked sets, we finally have the most important piece needed in Dark Green so a purist version can easily be put together now (that's my plan at least anyways). The rest of the lineup was expected with the usual suspects, though it's great to finally get a new Croc and Bane after almost a decade. I'm hoping they're both big figs but there's no way that Lego will throw in 2 of them in a single set, so one of them is going to end up being a minifigure, if not both. Maybe it's just my nostalgia for the OG Batman theme talking (that's also turning 20 next year), but I wouldn't be so torn up about it. Batwing and Batwoman being included instead of Nightwing and Batgirl are interesting choices, I would've killed to finally get a blue Nightwing that has arm printing with the blue stripes instead of completely blue/black arms. Knowing Lego, they included them here as a tie-in to the CW Batwoman show despite that being cancelled for 3 years now. Now I really want to see what the actual Asylum will look like. Based on the minifigures it seems pretty much confirmed that it's going to be a comic Arkham so that rumor about it being based on the Burton/Schumacher films can finally be put to rest, thank god.

ANYTHING would be better than slapping some fire pieces on the feet and power blast pieces in the hands and thinking that that would be even close to satisfactory. The Ghost Rider/pumpkin bomb piece like what they with Firestorm would be the cleanest look for Johnny, but I wouldn't mind the spiky hair in red either. Personally for me, I have the flame dome headpiece ready because I always liked how it has some flames sticking out on the top, and you can use any head for it instead of the Ghost Rider style of head where it's permanently stuck together.

Hey, I don't have that head either...yet. That's what the magic of Bricklink is for. And speaking of Johnny, Hasbro just revealed their Marvel Legends Human Torch figure and it's only made me more mad at Lego's pathetic attempt. All we needed was the F4 torso recolored in red as the BARE MINIMUM, but now we have to hope that they listen for the Doomsday sets.

Is it the prettiest solution? Hardly. But it's the best purist method I could find to give Ozempic Ben some desperately needed bulk and width since I'm nowhere near skilled enough to paint it, and bias aside, I've been warming up to how it looks. This Axl torso works the best compared to the other ones since those are in Silver/Flat Silver/Pearl Gold and this one is *technically* orange since the armor piece is in Bright Light Orange. Plus I'm using a little imagination to pretend it's shirtless Ben instead of the MCU sweater because I never like it when Ben gets a "costume" for his upper body. I'd be fine with the minifigure route if he didn't look hilariously undersized when you put him next to any Hulk bigfig (unless you want to make it a fair fight and use one of the many Hulk minifigures). And at least with the Axl torso it gives him more of a height boost as well so while he's still smaller than a bigfig, it's more accurate to the comics where Ben is maybe a head smaller than the Hulk but still taller than the average person. I'll stick with my cursed abomination over Ben looking like he's wearing his own merch. Seriously, none of the Hulk minifigures were given these fist pieces in green, you really couldn't have given him regular Medium Nougat hands Lego?

...You know, I never considered using his arms, specifically the ones from this Hagrid. I'm not sure if their pins will fit in the Axl torso piece but at first glance they just might. I wish they didn't stick out so much but I'm going to have to try this out, thanks for the idea. I think I've seen them usually be around $30-45 Canadian. It depends for some of the figures that come with larger items like the Green Goblin figure coming with his glider that bumped the price up to $45 or the Batman figure with the Batpod that retails for $90. But for just the figures themselves I think they've always been in the $30-40 range. I still don't think a bigfig Thing would be size accurate as well and that Lego should put some effort in to make that Mr. Incredible video game torso piece a reality, but I'll take a bigfig comic Ben like the one from the Mission Demolition special until a new torso type shows up...someday.

What do you know, Lego finally realized that they should upload official images 2 WEEKS after someone found the set (in Azerbaijan of all places) and uploaded a detailed review of it on Youtube. And now that it's up on Shop@Home, I can get even more mad at the set after finding out it'll be 80 CANADIAN. That is absolutely insane, for that price the Silver Surfer should've been included without question as well as a brick built HERBIE. I know I've been waiting 12 years for a Fantastic Four set, but I don't know if I'm THIS desperate to buy it on day 1. I'm really hoping next year has a spot for a comic F4 set since they've met the "MCU set comes first" requirement now. But now that official pics are up, I think I'm allowed to show my terrible 2 minute phone edit of what Ben looks like with Ultimate Axl's torso as my modification to make him more bulkier. Yeah, It's not even close to the right color, and I'm going to have to use an eraser to get rid of the bull logo, but it's easily the best solution I have for now besides buying a knockoff big fig. I gave him the regular blue legs with black dual molded boots because I always preferred the black/blue color scheme of the comic suits, and because dual molded boots don't exist in Medium Nougat for Ben's "feet":

I've been tempted, but the OCD half of me is paranoid that I'll ruin it. I just don't get it, there's been THREE Dr. Strange hairpieces that would also fit perfectly for Reed...and none of them come in the right color. What, will the Light Bluish Grey paint streaks get messed up on any other color besides black? I just hope if we ever get a comic set that they finally recolor this or this in Reddish Brown for Reed.

I'll do you one better for Johnny, Jonesy's head from the Fortnite sets. It is literally made for a comic Johnny, and it can work for Joseph Quinn too: Now for Reed, I was thinking of using the Han Solo head but the brown eyebrows with the Dr. Strange hair wouldn't match too well. It would be way more easier if there was a brown hairpiece with the grey streaks on the side since Reed has brown hair in the comics, but for some reason they only put them on black hairpieces.

Glad to see someone enjoyed my essay. For my Torch, I'm planning on basically swiping this guy's custom design from Youtube but I'm not taking the arms off since I'm always scared of cracking the torso that way. Head: Golden Dragon Kai with the dome from Infearno/Flama Torso: Flama from Nexo Knights Legs: Golden Dragon Kai (which are also transparent so bonus) I was thinking about using the head from NRG Kai but the expression doesn't suit Johnny as much as the one from Golden Dragon Kai's. So until the day comes where Lego finds their brain and makes an official flame on Johnny, this'll do just nicely. Now If only some of these pieces weren't so expensive on Bricklink in New condition...

Now that we've gotten actual pics of the first Fantastic Four set in 13 years...man what a letdown. Make no mistake, I'll still end up buying it because I NEED Lego to take the hint and make a comic F4 set to make up for this set, but I expected so much better with the minifigures especially since this is the only CBM that Lego decided to give a set to this year. Getting the best part of the set out of the way, Galactus looks great. If this is any indication of how he appears in the movie, Matt Shakman and co. really went out of their way to put an end to the fart cloud jokes that have plagued the character for nearly 20 years. I just wish he wasn't another construction figure and was actually an upscaled minifigure. Lego literally released another one this year, you're telling me they couldn't have done it again here? Now to the worst part of this whole thing which really should've been the standouts, our first ever Fantastic Four minifigures. It's bad enough that Lego didn't even try to make Sue's torso different from the others like they usually do with female superhero minifigures, but reusing the EXACT same torso for 3/4 of them is just a new level of cheap. It wouldn't be so bad if their movie suits were all uniform designs like the comics, but in this instance they're all visually distinct from each other in some way, most notably the white on the arms when it comes to Johnny and Ben. However, Sue's suit is basically the closest thing to the comic outfits, so I'd be lying if I say I didn't want her design to be what all their costumes were like in the first place (along with Ben not wearing a sweater). Hell, a part of me is tempted to buy a spare torso and give it to Reed's minifigure to fix that annoying issue of his suit not having the white collar at all. If I had to rank them from best to worst (and bear with me because after 13 years of waiting, I have a LOT to say): 1. Sue: Easily the "best" of the bunch since it's the most accurate, even the severely overused face works here because it kind of looks like Vanessa Kirby. I don't mind that she doesn't have a transparent arm/leg, having some pieces to represent her force fields works well enough for now. 2. Reed: Even though he got a completely new face print and his own unique torso, I'm switching the head to a clean shaven one because I am sick of Pedro Pascal refusing to shave for any role that he takes now. Reed's grey temples are one of the most recognizable parts of his appearance since his inception and Lego is STILL reusing the exact same hair piece with the grey streaks on the side for Doctor Strange in a set that came out this very year, so why didn't they use it here exactly? I know a lot of people say he should've had the Ms. Marvel/Elastigirl stretchy arms torso, but those pieces are kind of limited since you can't remove the arms. Having brick built legs works here, though Lego had the nerve to stick on white "boots" at the end of them despite none of the other members having dual molded white legs which apparently don't exist in this extremely specific shade of azure either. I'm still hoping the Frozone legs will match well enough, but now I'm a little worried. 3. Ben: I've made peace with the Thing not being a big fig since he's only slightly taller than the rest of the team, which is the same in the comics too, but he REALLY needed a new torso piece to make him wider. Mega Bloks realized this since they were planning on releasing a Thing figure that looked absolutely beautiful in 2011 before Lego took the Marvel license. I know they're not even close to the same color but I'm going to use Ultimate Axl's torso for him instead as it's the closest thing in terms of body proportions and color for Ben than the other Axl figures. The head and rock hat attachment are easily the best parts about him, which is more than I can say for his "hands". I get that Lego needed to give the minifigure a unique accessory, but if you were just going to make him a standard minifigure, then he didn't need those gorilla fist hands. Every time that the Hulk was turned into a minifigure, Lego never used these pieces in green for his hands, and now with them on it makes it look like Lego was stuck in the middle between wanting to keep Ben as a minifigure or wanting him to appear bigger/or Ben was stung by a cosmic ray bee. I hope that with a comic F4 set, we finally get that big fig that was teased in the Mission Demolition special despite it being way out of scale too, but hey it's better than Ben looking like he went on Ozempic. 4. Johnny: As you can tell by my gif choice above, I'm at a loss for words. Good. God. What did they do to you. I didn't think Lego would be stupid enough to actually slap some power blast pieces on a FLAMED OFF Johnny and call it a day, but somehow they proved me wrong. His flame form has always been the version that came first whenever the Torch would get merchandise, because who would want a regular Johnny Storm instead? How did you get completely mogged by your bootleg competitor with a figure that came out 20 YEARS AGO. I've never been so livid over a minifigure than this one, it baffles me how Lego really couldn't have just recolored one of the torso's in red at the very least so that you could fix up the rest by adding this flame dome piece over the head and some red legs. And to make matters worse, apparently Joseph Quinn looks like Paul Rudd who looks like Tom Holland because that same damn head has showed up here AGAIN. I had already planned on using the Jonesy head from the Fortnite sets for a comic Johnny, and it looks like I'll have to order another one too now. Unless Lego ends up making a proper flamed on Johnny for the Doomsday sets, I'm going to end up making my own custom Torch to make up for their stupidity, which is fine by me. Huge rant over, can't wait for the day we get comic minifigures instead along with the Baxter Building as a D2C.

Good point, didn't even think of that. And even if it doesn't, there'll definitely be another one since the MCU/Disney loves its toys with how many new costumes they make for the heroes with each movie. And wow, forget my comparison, that speeder literally looks like the exact same thing. If Lego ever makes that as a set, I know what I'll be reusing. I don't doubt that Pascal can act, my issue has always been his look. For some ungodly reason, he refuses to shave his mustache for ANY role lately. These are from 4 separate shows/films and you can't even tell the difference at first glance, it's just like the Rock in any movie he's in but Pedro refuses to lose the hair instead. I need that classic look for Ben too, was never a fan of him wearing a sweater/singlet. The good news is that he'll be shirtless in the movie so maybe we'll get that as a minifig variant down the line. But fingers crossed for something comic F4 related next year now that they've crossed the MCU threshold requirement.

Believe me, no would be more first in line for a comic FF set than me. But Lego has always prioritized MCU sets over comic sets, which is why I NEED this set and the movie to be a hit, because then the chances of getting a comic set would be higher than ever. Johnny and Sue would be easy to double as purist comic minifigures, but Reed's going to need a head change so that he actually looks like Reed and not Pedro Pascal in a Fantastic Four costume. Ben could work either way for me since he's not that big in the comics, but I wouldn't say no to a comic big fig like the one from the Mission Demolition special. The Surfer is pretty simple to make as a purist figure too thanks to Zane's head and Orion from last year's CMF's. And I would do ANYTHING to get the flying bathtub version of the Fantasticar, especially since half the time whenever I see the MCU version, all I see is Bruce Wayne's limo from Batman Beyond: