Halloween is coming up and you want your home to look festive, but you still need to represent your love for The Dark Knight, right? Mondo has you covered with this handsome tribute to 1991’s Batman & Dracula: Red Rain. In case this is your first time hearing about the famous Elseworlds tale, Batman News recently reviewed the book by Doug Moench & Kelley Jones and you can expect to see commentary on its sequels Bloodstorm and Crimson Mist as we continue to keep things horror-themed in the comics section this month. However, the statue you see on display here isn’t totally modeled after Kelley Jones’ beautifully creepy pencils. No, it’s actually a tribute to artist Francesco Francavilla’s homage to Kelley Jones’ pencils and it’s about the best thing a Batman fan could plant on their coffee table this October.
That’s right, the design comes from Francavilla’s popular Red Rain poster that was a Mondo exclusive release just a few years back. The statue successfully incorporates elements from the poster like the tombstone, the rocky hillside, and that eerie pose, and then goes even further with a few inventions of its own. Transforming a 2D work of art into a 3D one required Mondo to get creative, and so the unseen hand takes form clutching a skull the same blood red hue as the poster’s backdrop, and those vampire skulls floating like smoke in the sky are fully realized but brought down to earth as grotesque remains spilling from an antique coffin the opposite side of Batman’s hilltop.
It all comes together brilliantly and it’s a surprisingly heavy work of art as well! The collectible includes three pieces that are simple to assemble: a hefty polystone base, a polyurethane Batman, and a polyurethane hand. The exclusive version with the hand clutching a stake is currently sold out, but personally I think the standard version looks far better anyway as it keeps with the image from the poster.
The sculpted base is the real highlight, I love the cracked Wayne headstone and the design and paint on the skull casket is so bad ass that I would hate to display the collectible on a wall shelf. This is something that MUST be shown atop a table so you and your friends can walk around and take in a full 360-degree view of all those amazing details. As for our hero, Batman’s body is excellent. The cape in particular features all the swirls and wrinkles you desire, plus those disgusting vertebrae protruding from his hunched back! The only portion of the figure I think falters a bit is the head sculpt. It’s terrific on its own, but in a side-by-side comparison with Francavilla’s artwork it doesn’t look like it totally capture the narrow eyes or the wrinkled brow. It might simply be a matter of lighting, but the statue’s face appears about 15-20% less menacing to me somehow. My only other complaint with the statue would have to be with my model specifically– it showed up with a broken arm. Luckily the break occurred well beneath the cape and I was able to glue the limb into place with no problem whatsoever.
