Image: Cabin

Image: Joker Escapes!

Image: In scale

by Chris Marks

"Jingle Bells Batman Smells Robin Laid an Egg The BatMobile lost a wheel And the joker got away!"

The scene: Winter in Gotham, and the Joker has escaped police custody yet again. After a brief battle with Batman and Robin the Clown Prince leads the Dark Knight on a car chase on the snowy streets of Gotham. Just as Batman is closing in there is a loud screech of metal and the BatMobile lurches to one side. Out of control, the caped crusader smashes into a holiday lawn display. Bolting from the vehicle the dynamic duo spring into action, but upon seeing the extent of the damage our hero flings the BatJack to the snow covered ground in disgust and sets out on foot.

This is the Polar Lights BatMobile built fairly straight out of the box with a few minor exceptions. I did not build the engine since the scene called for the hood to be down. I also did not include any of the decals because the control panels were not going to be on and I felt the hood decal looked silly. The model was painted using craft acrylics. The 'BatPhone' was dulled using a flat black acrylic to make it look turned off. I also switched out the fire extinguisher on the middle console for some random looking gadget. The pine tree air freshener hanging from the steering wheel was made by cutting a tree shape out of sheet styrene. Robin's egg is made of Epoxy sculpt then painted with eggshell white and flecked with Robins egg blue.

The base is built up from foam core and covered with decorative snow used for Christmas crafts. The hedge is a fabric plant cut down to size, while the Christmas lights on the hedge are a holiday wine glass decoration (I think you are supposed wrap it around the stem of the glass). The unlucky nutcracker is a wooden Christmas ornament as is the drum. All these were purchased at the Dollar Tree.

The gift boxes are small squares of Styrofoam wrapped in scraps of Christmas wrapping paper. The 'BatJack' was made from a 1/35 scale shovel handle, some bits from my parts bin and the bat from the missing wheel's hubcap. The newspaper was designed using Photoshop then shrunk down to size.