LEGO's 2027 Batman wave finally gives the Penguin a ride

LEGO's first Batman sets of 2027 are up for pre-order, and the wave is two Batmobiles and a Joker portrait that I suspect will start more arguments than both cars combined. LEGO revealed them on Monday and Brickset has the full rundown: 67009 Arkham Batman Batmobile, 67008 Batman Returns Batmobile & Duck, and 67012 The Joker Wall Art Comic Cover, all dated January 1, 2027. I collect LEGO Batmobiles the way some people collect grudges, so let me tell you which one I would actually put money on.

No hands-on here. These are listing reads. Nobody at Dorkify has built any of the three, and LEGO's photos are LEGO's photos.

Start cheap. LEGO's listing for 67009 has the Arkham Batmobile at $29.99 for 317 pieces, ages 9 and up, with working suspension, a cockpit for a caped Batman minifigure, and a back panel that comes off to reveal a storage compartment. It is a little over 6 inches long. Both Batmobile boxes also carry a Golden Red Brick code for LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which tells you exactly whose marketing calendar this is riding on.

As far as I can tell, this is the first LEGO set built around the armored tank from the Arkham games, and at thirty dollars it is an easy yes for anybody who spent 2015 driving it through Gotham. It is also lonely. Batman is the only figure in the box. No Arkham Knight, no Scarecrow, nobody to chase.

The Arkham car comes alone. The 1992 car comes with the Penguin and a duck. That tells you which box was designed for play.

The Batman Returns set is the one I keep going back to. The 67008 listing is $59.99 for 672 pieces, two minifigures (Batman and the Penguin), a Batmobile that transforms into the Batmissile, and the Penguin's Duck vehicle with wing doors that open so he can sit inside. The car is about 7.5 inches long. The Duck is about 4.5. It also supports Build Together in the LEGO Builder app, so two people can split the build, and it comes with a bonus in-game unlock for a gold Batman Returns Batmobile prop.

If that Batmissile sounds familiar, it is because LEGO sold it to adults in September. The 76355 Batman Returns Batmobile is $229.99, 2,269 pieces, 18+, and LEGO calls it the first LEGO Batmobile to incorporate the Batmissile feature. I wrote about that one in our September note on the 1992 car. Four months later the same trick shows up in a $59.99 box with a villain. Here is how the two stack up, straight off LEGO's own listings, with my per-piece math.

For the rest of the wave, the same math: 67009 works out to about 9.5 cents a piece, and 67012 to about 9.2 cents. My read is blunt. If you want a Batman Returns car on a shelf, the big one is still the showpiece. If you want the movie, you want the Duck. A Batmobile with nobody to chase is a paperweight. The 9+ set is the one with a story in the box.

Now the Joker. LEGO's 67012 listing is $169.99 for 1,849 pieces, 18+, about 20 inches tall, 15 wide, and 2 deep, and it recreates the cover of Detective Comics #880 from 2011. The face is built in relief so the eyes and features push off the surface, and LEGO says hidden details sit in the deeper layer: Batarangs, swords, flowers, and the words "Ha, ha, ha, ha." DC's listing for issue #880 credits Jock on pencils and inks for that Scott Snyder story, and that cover is the image a lot of Batman readers see when they close their eyes.

This is the first LEGO DC product in a while that looks designed to make you uncomfortable, and I mean that as praise.

It is also pricey. BrickPrice's rundown points out that it costs more than comparable LEGO Art mosaics with similar piece counts, and notes that these three sets use a new 67xxx number range where DC sets have long been 76xxx. They also report LEGO.com is capping each set at three per customer. I would not pre-order the Joker at full price unless you need it on a wall in January. I would pre-order the Duck.

LEGO has had a busy fall on the collectibles desk, from the Shenron and Goku Icons set to Wallace & Gromit in Ideas. This Batman wave is less grand than either, and a bit stranger. Two of the three boxes are about cars. The one people will remember is a face.

How we made this: researched and drafted with AI assistance. Sources are linked in the piece.