Key Stats:
- Number of missiles attached to shark: 2
- Time spent putting together Black Manta sub: roughly 45 minutes
- Time spent putting together the rest of set: Exactly zero minutes. Still in the box. Apparently it came with scuba gear Robin. Who knew?
- Time spent making sure others don’t mess with it: All the minutes in all the days.
I think I got this thing at a Lego store in Kansas City after a Comic-Con. I already owned an Aquaman minifig (bought from yet another Comic-Con. Aside: Comic-Con is essentially a hybrid Christmas/Festivus/Labor Day/All Day Sauna for nerds.) One of my cats was playing with a piece I had dropped on the floor the other day, thus saving me the pain of stepping on a Lego. Cats are truly man’s best friend.
I love the sleek design of the manta ray sub. I’m not entirely sure that manta rays are evil, but years of Aquaman comics and SpongeBob* cartoons have shaped my impression of the dastardly manta ray. This submarine oozes evil. It’s even got long tubes connecting things that probably don’t need connected just like evil things always do. They mimic the tubes on Black Manta’s helmet, a cool design feature that helps differentiate it from the thousands of other manta ray shaped submarines out there. Black Manta’s minifig looks especially badass, emulating Ethan Van Sciver’s determined and intimidating pirate hate-monger instead of the Super Friend’s ‘why is his helmet shaped like a butt’ version.
I both love and hate the shark with missiles on its head. On the one hand, it’s a shark with missiles on his head, which is always awesome. On the other hand, it seems like that won’t work against Aquaman, a character renowned and renounced for his control over sea life. There is a little decal that shows some circuitry on the shark’s head, so maybe the idea is that Black Manta has overridden its brain, but come on. We’ve read this comic. Aquaman pushes himself to the limit, overcomes the circuitry, and the shark turns and shoots the manta ray sub with a missile. Also, the manta ray sub has missiles, so it seems like a lot of work to also capture, then brain rewire, then mount working missiles on a shark when you could just use your readily available submarine missiles instead.
So here’s my overall rating of this Aquaman / Black Manta / Also Batman (For Some Reason) Lego Set:
Shark With Missiles On Headiness: 8/10 mantas – Awesome yet impractical, but also somehow still impractically awesome.
Minifiguracity: 10/10 mantas – I bought it for Black Manta minifig, now I have Black Manta minifig. The rest of the Legos are superfluous to the minifigs in any given Lego set.
Fall Off The Bookshelfibility: 10/10 mantas – Seriously, give this thing a wide berth (Like that wordplay? Nautical, baby!). Nothing sucks more than Legos shattering all over the floor. And I like to keep it near the edge, too. Legos look best right near the edge of any wobbly surface. That’s science.
Don’t Touch My Stuffitude: 10/10 mantas = HANDS OFF!! – Nothing shows you don’t dust regularly quite like someone touching black Legos. I know you think it’s funny to write your name in it, Andy, but you’ve giving me a lot of grief.
Overall Rating: 9/10 mantas – I would have liked to save some money and just gotten the Black Manta half of this set. Why is Batman there? Why didn’t he bring any scuba gear like Robin? Wasn’t the Bat Boat one of the reasons we hated Batman Forever? What good is jumping action underwater?
*Microsoft Word offers a corrected spelling for ‘SpongeBob’. ‘Aquaman’ is just wrong no matter what. What a world we live in!
