Hah, you’ve gotta love these old-school bland-as-icy-hell character designs, all black with a helmet, now that’s a cool villain. Black Manta is so confident he’s a bad-bum that he goes up against Aquaman and the Justice League wearing nothing but a giant black latex glove and a can on his head. Bad-bum to the bone, baby! Of course that giant trident might have something to do with confidence…

Manta is about 6.5 inches to the top of the dome. I like this contraption, the helmet is connected to the backpack with two ribbed hoses, the whole thing is nicely detailed and has a weathered look to it. The trident is huge of course, like 7.5 inches, but it’s all silver, no shading so it’s kinda bland. It’s still sculpted with detail though, you just can’t see it too well because of the simple paint job. Manta himself is a blank slate like Superman Red and Blue, the differences being Manta has more slender muscles under the arms making him great to make customs of younger, slimmer Leaguers like Kyle Raynor or Flash. I like how Mattel isn’t being so stingy with the paint, even though the figure is all black and could have left it as a shiny black plastic figure, they still painted it! It has a matte finish too so it looks like a more realistic suit. Thousands of custom possibilities with this thing, buy a hundred of them! The only thing that bothers me is that the neck-piece is kind of a hassle to remove it, use heat strategically to take it off.

All basic articulation is there, the head can move in any direction, all joints are smooth and firm.