'It's the car, right?'

Last week the Simianmobile had a prang. Well, it got sideswiped by a friendly vehicle, and everything else is in the hands of the insurance company, but it was a week for the cars, seemingly.

Because... we have a new Batmobile. Yay! And wouldn't you know it? A new Batman sulking next to it - very good! Here's the photo that silenced a few thousand Battfleck quips:

Yes, very traditional costume-wise - take your pick as to whether it references Frank Millar's The Dark Knight Returns (most likely) or the Adam West TV series (less likely, but fun to pretend!) While I'm ambivalent to a little perturbed to see theories of TDKR being realised on the big screen edging toward confirmation, this is as nothing to the great relief I've felt over an actual change. No more black rubber - praise the Lord! It's a sign, I hope, of a movie franchise comfortable with pushing the traditional big screen depiction of Batman, and so it should. Nice one, Warners.

And that Batmobile in the background. Verry nice. The first image tweeted by Zach Snyder showed the rear of the vehicle and seemed to indicate a tailfin and big rocket booster, which references a lot of iterations of the car, from the TV series again (I do like that model as well), through to my current favourite, the 1989 Tim Burton model. Since that pic and the above more design shots have emerged which seem to show the new Batmobile as something of a hybrid of the Burton model with the Nolan era 'Tumbler' - big tyres, high wheel base, sorta clunky and not that streamlined (I like the streamlining, me). I'm not a fan of the Tumbler, but could see what it was likely intended to reference; every Batman seemingly has his ideal Batmobile, and the armoured, militaristic Tumbler, an urban assault vehicle for a violent Gotham, works. But let's move on. And this picture seems to be an indication of that, in part.

Speaking of the Burton Batmobile and others, we've recently has Eaglemoss' Batmobilia parts magazine debut down in NZ, and the standard cut-price first couple of issues feature lovely die-cast scale reproductions of the two vehicles I'd be happy to start and finish my collection with - the aforementioned 1989 and 1966 Batmobiles. Done and done, to Jet Jr's interest. Here's hoping they stay out of the way of fellow vehicles for a good while yet!