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This was the first of the three Batman busts I attempted, and while I like the way it turned out, it's probably my least favorite of the three. That's because of the sculpt, which is a little too cartoony for my tastes. (That's one heckuva a scowl on Bats' face, though...)

I got this one off eBay, after seeing a few of these show up on various modeling sites over the past year or so. Charlie Dunton at CD Productions thinks it was sculpted by Paul Francis a few years back, but pulled from the market when DC Comics issued a cease and desist order. No firm info, but that's okay; I like a mystery.

The sculpt itself is of the aging Batman in Frank Miller's classic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Miller's rendition of the Batman changed considerably over the course of the four-issue mini-series, and this sculpt is obviously of the first-issue Bats -- the only full issue with Batman in the suit with the blue cape and yellow Bat-oval.

My color scheme here mirrored that of the mini-series, more or less. I went with Midnight Blue for the cape and cowl, a very light gray (Apple Barrel Country Gray) for the tights, and a very light yellow (Custard) for the Bat-oval. (I always have a hard time finding a yellow paint to match the yellow used in the comic books.) His face was Delta Creamcoat Medium Flesh, drybrushed with a dash of Dusty Mauve.

(This is probably the place to brag about another piece in my collection, a full page of Lynn Varley's original color art from The Dark Knight Returns issue one. It cost me a pretty penny, but it's a true collectible -- and includes both the painted color art and the ink overlay. It's a stunner!)

If you want to see how some other modelers have painted this bust, check out the versions by Cliff Dopson and Phil Campbell on the CultTVman site.

Before I end my presentation of my three Batman busts, I'm going to go off on a rant about scale. As you can see from one of the photos I took, all three of these Batman busts are quite different sizes. The War on Crime bust is billed as 1/4 scale, which seems generous; it looks more like 1/5 (or maybe even 1/6) to me. But if that bust is 1/4, then this one has to be 1/3 -- it's at least twice as big. And the third bust (the other Dark Knight bust, by Brian Dugas) is considerably larger than this puppy -- which would make it, what, a 1/2 scale? I don't think so.

I'm not at all sure what's real when it comes to scale, but I'm going to call War on Crime a 1/5 scale, this puppy a 1/4 scale, and the bigger Dark Knight bust a 1/3 scale. These measurements feel more right to me than the others. (Now if we could only get the garage kit producers to start putting realistic scales on all their models...)