I've made it a New Years resolution to purge my SD camera card and, with a timestamp of 2013, this Ursa was the oldest photoset there. I skipped this figure when she was released back in 2007. I didn't love her design or her pre-posed sculpt. But five years later I found her in a bargain bin and thought what the hell. My original criticisms still hold up, but I think the character has an interesting history so I like that this toy exists. Ursa was first introduced in Superman: The Movie (1978), but this toy represents her first comic appearance from 2007 (a storyline written by Richard Donner himself). I actually dig this costume, but I'm not thrilled with the hair, goggles, neck tattoo, and glum expression. I always expect Ursa to look wicked, cocky, and a little unhinged. This figure doesn't give me any of those qualities. I normally love sculpts by Karen Palinko, and I think she stayed very true to the source material, but the overall translation into plastic is a little lackluster in my opinion. Let's check out Ursa below!
UNITING ALL WOMEN OF PLASTIC
Showing posts with label Karen Palinko. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Karen Palinko. Show all posts
Sunday, January 2, 2022
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Showcase Presents - BATGIRL!
I think it's pretty clear that the days of awesome, classic DC figures are in the past. Sure, there has been a decent looking Batman, Superman, and Nightwing in the McFarlane Multiverse line, but the majority of products are gritty modern interpretations of characters that seem more aligned with video games than comics. This unfortunate trend has caused me to look back to yesteryear... specifically to a year which stands out as one that seemed personally catered to me, 2008. DC Universe Classics was launched, Marvel Legends had seriously improved their female buck (Shanna and Savage She-Hulk), and DC Direct was in its heyday. The DC Direct releases were the most impressive to me, there was a great mix of classic and modern figures with an attention to detail that I've only ever seen with this company. The standout to me was this Showcase Batgirl figure. She was perfectly sculpted by Karen Palinko in the classic style of Carmine Infantino. It's one of my absolute favorites. Let's check her out below!
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
First Appearance - WONDER WOMAN!
First Appearance figures are my favorite theme of superhero toys. For a long time I had a display with a first appearance figure next to my favorite modern interpretation of that character. Both Marvel and DC figures were intermixed and it was a great collection. This Wonder Woman would have been the only female on that shelf, but I sneered at making the purchase back then because of her soft good culottes. A few years ago one of my very favorite relatives surprised me with a giant bag full of her Wonder Woman collection. I somehow never realized that she was a fan, and likewise she had only recently discovered my hobbies. She was gifting me her collection and sadly she passed away shortly after in 2019. I only recently started going through that bag and incorporating the contents into my collection. I was very happy (and sad) to find this First Appearance Wonder Woman. And like a true Gift of the Magi, I had just sold all my (male) First Appearance figure earlier this year to fund some new purchases.
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Kingdom Come - NIGHTSTAR!
One of my favorite things about 1996's epic Kingdom Come comic, beyond the groundbreaking realistic painted art by Alex Ross, was seeing all the cool background characters. You knew at a glance that these weren't random fillers. Rather, you could literally interpret their story from their design. Nightstar first appeared on the 11th page of the first volume on a splash page. She was immediately recognizable as a relative of Starfire. Her skin color, green eyes, purple outfit, and trailing hair were a dead giveaway. Then when you think of who Koriand'r would likely have a child with in the not-so-distant future of Kingdom Come, and quickly conclude that Nightwing is her true paramour. I honestly don't remember if she had a speaking role in the series, but she was definitely memorable. Mar'i Grayson had follow-up appearances in The Kingdom where her story was fleshed out, but I never would have pegged her for merchandising. The Alex Ross DC Direct lines were extensive, but Nightstar was still a welcome surprise.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
DC Direct Green Lantern ARISIA!
With the new DC Multiverse Jessica Cruz figure in my sights, I really wanted to finally review this older Green Lantern Corps member that I've had in storage forever. The Blackest Night and Green Lantern waves from DC Direct released dozens of Lantern characters in only a few short years (The Blackest Night line alone had eight waves and over 37 figures!) I wish there was a bat-family line with that kind of dedication (Hush was the biggest with 16). Over the course of the Green Lantern boom we got a lot of classic characters in plastic for the first time. Arisia was a Corps member first introduced in 1981. She is from Graxos IV where the inhabitants have golden-orange skin and elf-like ears. She's run the gamut of predictable storylines for a supporting female characters: death, resurrection, love interest for the title character, etc. I avoided this figure for a long time because I thought she looked like a scantily clad blonde meant for more titillation than substance, but she's grown on me. Let's check her out below!
Friday, June 17, 2016
Character Spotlight - DOVE!
As enjoyable as it is to bask in all the Liefeld vitriol on the internet, I never take it too seriously. I'm secretly a fan. That's because in the late eighties I was obsessed with Rob Liefeld and his first Hawk & Dove miniseries. Those five issues are some of the most nostalgic pieces in my unwieldy comic collection. Traditionally Hawk & Dove was composed of the brother duo Hank and Don Hall as the avatars of war and peace. Shortly before the 1988 miniseries, Don was killed and a new female Dove named Dawn (a rather confusing homonym) took his place. I was pretty young and such a self-explanatory yin/yang type dynamic for a comic series was perfect for me. Add in the bird theme and I was hooked. I followed the subsequent Hawk & Dove ongoing series for years, got ecstatic when they briefly joined the Birds of Prey, and even found the 2011 New 52 reboot very enjoyable. I especially enjoyed those couple issues of Teen Titans that Liefeld drew which featured Dawn with her sister Holly as Hawk.
Monday, June 1, 2015
DC Collectibles - NEW 52 POISON IVY!
Of all the new character redesigns that came about in 2011's New52 reboot, Poison Ivy was the one that I had the most mixed emotions about. At first glance, I absolutely hated it. I thought she looked like a boring spandexed superhero and nothing like the elemental goddess she was. But then I started reading Birds of Prey and I started to really like the new look. I know the previous Jim Lee green-hued Ivy was a fan favorite, but I always thought she looked ridiculous. The one-piece swimsuit design, "sexy" hair, and how she was always standing tiptoed didn't really seem like qualities the detached-from-humanity villainess would care about. So I was definitely open to a change. Her New52 character was really cool. For a while she was the creepy member of Birds of Prey that the rest of the team begrudgingly accepted into the ranks. But it wasn't long before Ivy showed her true colors and betrayed them all. Now she seems more like her old self in the pages of Harley Quinn. Let's check out Ivy below!
Thursday, September 25, 2014
DC Collectibles New 52 - BATGIRL!
Batgirl is the first Superhero I ever became obsessed with as a young comic reader. I used to scavenge for old issues of Batman Family in dollar bins. She didn't have many modern comic appearances in those days so I was revelling in classic reprints. But then suddenly there was a Batgirl Special #1 on the stands in 1988 and I was such an ecstatic little kid about it. Until, of course, I realised that issue was just a preamble to the horrible events in Batman: The Killing Joke which left my Barbara wheelchair bound and out of the bat-suit for 23 years. (Not to diminish her significance in the DCU as Oracle, but I just love a good Bat-Lady). The infamous 2011 DCU New 52 reboot put Barbara Gordon back under the cowl. I had major mixed emotions about this. I liked Oracle, I loved Steph Brown as Batgirl, and I did not like her little girly bat-clasp in the new design. But having Babs back in her original role could be really cool. The underlying excitement for me was honestly the potential for new toys though.
Friday, May 2, 2014
DC Collectibles WONDER GIRL!
Wonder Woman's niece makes her New52 action figure debut in this new figure from DC Collectibles. Cassandra Sandsmark was never related to Wonder Woman until her (and Diana's) history was rewritten in the New52. Before that she was a young girl who found some artifacts that gave her superpowers. In the New52 she was introduced in a very similar way with a pair of powerful bracelets giving her powers. Soon, however, it was revealed that her father was a demigod of Zeus - now officially tying her to Diana. This action figure is pretty great. There is some really creative use of plastics that really makes her pop. Cassandra's torso and legs are cast in a translucent dark red plastic with layers of gold glitter embedded in it. These layers of glitter in the translucent plastic create a very cool effect when you move her around. Her skin is cast in the semi-translucent fleshtone plastic that we saw with the Brightest Day ladies and the Arkham City Catwoman. It looks decent, but somehow creates a blurry effect and makes her features look less defined. Overall though, she's a total catch. Let's check out Cassie Below!
Friday, February 14, 2014
Character Spotlight on STAR SAPPHIRE!
I really tried to get this post completed in time for Valentine's Day but the fates were against me. Star Sapphire is a longtime villain in the DC Universe first appearing in 1947. Originally she was a foe of the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick (although this early character was much different than the scantily-clad pink ladies we see today). The most popular character to hold the mantle was Carol Ferris, the girlfriend and boss of Hal Jordan. Back then, the role of Star Sapphire was granted to women who resembled the Zamaron Queen (the Zamarons are basically an alien race of Amazons). In the mid-2000s, the history of the character was revamped to be a title embraced by an entire corps of Violet Lanterns. Their role in the "emotional spectrum" was love. This led to a notable interlude when Wonder Woman became a Star Sapphire as well. There has been a lot of excellent merchandising of this mantle in recent years. I certainly don't have them all, but the ones I do have are great (of course I stole eBay pics to fill in all the gaps). Let's check them all out below!
Saturday, February 8, 2014
DC All-Stars Jim Lee BATGIRL!
I think one of the hardest aspects to portray in an action figure is youth. It never seems to come across quite right. More often than not these figures feature inaccurately scaled-down adult features. It's not just the toy design either; youthful characters in comics are often cringe-worthy. 2005's All Star Batman and Robin: The Boy Wonder was the long-awaited return of Jim Lee to the Bat Universe since his wildly successful Batman: Hush run in 2002. The new series was written by the infamous Frank Miller. Miller's rather warped sense of these characters became a point of ridicule across the internet; Batman cursing at Robin, Wonder Woman as a man-hating tyrant, and Batgirl as a silly ineffective hero (with lots of vulgarities thrown at her.. so much so that DC officially redacted the words on the pages. Jim Lee actually did a great job portraying this version the character, as did sculptor Karen Palinko, but this version of the character on her own is just underwhelming (In my humble opinion). Let's check her out below!
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Blackest Night's Star Sapphire WONDER WOMAN!
Character variations are a lot of fun. I'm willing to bet that toy designers are so frustrated with the high quotas of top-tier characters required to anchor waves, that when one of those characters makes an appearance in an outlandish but cool costume, they just jump at the chance to spice things up in the sculpting studio. DC Comics' Blackest Night storyline from 2009-2010 provided tons of variations like this. The story was centered on Green Lantern and unveiled the entire spectrum of other Lanterns in the universe (each conforming to an emotion or theme). At one point or another in the storyline, most of the DC heroes we know and love became a lantern (of some color). After Wonder Woman's spooky tryst with the Black Lanterns, she donned a Violet power ring and became the hero we see here. Although "Star Sapphire" historically seemed to be tied to the Green Lantern villain, I suppose it's more of a fluid title or rank to be applied to anyone with a Violet power ring. Let's check out this pink-hued Diana below!
Monday, October 28, 2013
Identity Crisis ZATANNA!
When prepping this review for inclusion in my Halloween lineup, I had it in my head that Zatanna was a witch. But then I realized that witches and magicians are very different things, even though the lines between the two are pretty blurred. Even more interesting was the new tidbit I just learned; that Zatanna isn't necessarily even human, but rather a member of an ancient race called the Homo magi. Zatanna first appeared in the pages of Hawkman in 1964 and has been a regular (and often understated) character ever since. She also maintained a lot of her trademark costume details; the fishnets, jacket, and tophat to name a few. There was however a stretch of time in the early-to-mid eighties when she donned a blue and white getup with a lobster-looking thing perched on her head. It was a very weird look but I kind of loved it. The costume was brought back in the 2004 Identity Crisis miniseries which luckily spawned this cool action figure. Let's check her out below!
Monday, October 14, 2013
Blackest Night WONDER WOMAN!
Blackest Night was a force to be reckoned with in 2009. The Green Lantern-centric storyline dealt with the supervillain Nekron (the embodiment of death) as he reincarnated all the dead heroes in a Black Lantern army to wreak predictable havoc. It was basically a great way for DC to jump on the zombie craze and it was extremely successful. There were eight series of action figures, several coinciding Green Lantern waves, and three waves from the follow-up series, Brightest Day. Wonder Woman briefly became a Black Lantern after she and several other heroes were "killed" by Nekron and instantly turned into lanterns. Her role as a Black Lantern was very short, and since she wasn't dead for more than a split second, she's not one of the rotting gory lanterns, but rather the same old Diana with a creepy color palette. This figure is excellent. The Karen Palinko sculpt is beautiful and this dark version of Wonder Woman is a great addition to your Amazon collection. Let's check her out below!
Saturday, August 3, 2013
DC Direct's Silver Age BATWOMAN (Kathy Kane)!
Predictably following yesterday's review of her niece, Betty, comes Aunt Kathy as Batwoman! I love this character. But that's probably because she's so ridiculous. I mean, she wears the brightest costume I've ever seen on a Bat-Family member, her arsenal consists of weaponized hairnets and lipsticks (in her Utility Purse), her motivation to don the costume was that she was wealthy and bored, and her overall presence was pretty clearly just so Batman could have a love interest (and dispel all the Batman+Robin gay rumors scaring parents in the 1950s). Yet I still think she's amazing. She was the first female hero in the Bat Universe (a genre which just happens to be an obsession of mine). My first exposure to Batwoman was in back issues of Batman Family and Brave and the Bold. In those issues, she was much more serious than her earlier appearances, but the more I backtracked, the campier things got and I was hooked. So glad to have her in plastic. Let's check out this amazing figure below!
Friday, August 2, 2013
DC Direct's Silver Age BAT-GIRL (Betty Kane)!
I love the original Bat-Girl. I first discovered her on a cover of Teen Titans #51 in a back issue bin sometime in the late eighties. One of my favorite comics to read through back issues at the time was Batman Family, which was in the habit of reprinting old stories and bringing back classic characters (like the 1950's Batwoman). Yet somehow the Betty Kane Bat-Girl had eluded me. The origins of Bat-Girl and Batwoman are amazing. In an all-too-brief summary, in the height of 1950's McCarthyism, a scare book called Seduction of the Innocent was published which claimed, among many other things, that Batman and Robin's relationship was turning American children gay. DC's remedy? Girlfriends! Along came Kathy Kane and her niece Betty to don colorful costumes and camp-up Batman comics for a good decade. They were silly, but they paved the way for some of my favorite heroines down the line. Betty Kane eventually morphed into a different character, Bette Kane (aka Flamebird, aka Hawkfire), who happens to be the cousin of Kate Kane the modern Batwoman. Gotta love revamps. Let's check out Bat-Girl below!
Sunday, July 28, 2013
DC Direct Brightest Day MERA!
During all my years as a member on the now-defunct DC Message Boards, Mera was by far the most requested (ie.. begged and pleaded for) figure. I'm actually still not sure if I've ever read a single story starring her character, but somehow I'm a fan. This figure actually may be a large part of my fondness for the character. She looks fantastic - a perfect rendition of the regal Queen of Atlantis and wife of Aquaman. The Brightest Day storyline became an amazing opportunity for DC Direct to release all the heavily-demanded figures during the twilight of the company. They finally created figures of Mera, Jade, Hawk, and Dove and released long overdue updates of Deadman, Hawkgirl, Firestorm, and Aqualad. And none of these figures were last-minute hodgepodge attempts to make their soon-to-be-abandoned fanbase happy. No, these figures were pretty much perfect. I feel like I'm always lamenting the loss of DC Direct, but I think it's undeniable that we'll never see a company producing quality products at this frequency ever again. But alas, DC Collectibles is doing okay so far (if you like video games). Let's check out Mera!
Saturday, June 8, 2013
DC Direct Alex Ross SUPERGIRL!
DC Direct's JUSTICE series is arguably one of their most successful lines. Alex Ross' super-realistic painting style translated very well into action figure form and everyone in the collecting world took notice. Just the fact that this Supergirl figure was released in Series Eight should convey the success of the toys. I especially love this Supergirl costume (often referred to as Hotpants Supergirl) because she is wearing her classic 1970's retro outfit with baggy sleeves, a plunging neckline, and tiny red shorts. It's a very unique look with a very specific era attached to it, but it's still undeniably Supergirl. This figure was pretty consistent demanded on the "wish lists" that fans would perpetually post to the DC Message Boards (when they still existed) and I think the announcement of this figure made a lot of fans very happy indeed. The realistic style also makes her stand out from the other more animated comic-based designs. She's a total catch. Let's check her out below!
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
DC Direct Silver Age LOIS LANE as SUPERWOMAN!
Following up on yesterday's modern Super Lois figure, here is a fantastic representation of an empowered Lois as she appeared several times in the early 1960s. DC Direct produced many great Silver and Golden Age figures during its run, and I think collectors are unfortunately very unlikely to see products like this made again. I love modern styles by all means, but the classics are just timeless. (Excuse me while I mourn). This version of Lois was a pleasant surprise for me. When I heard news of a single-packed wave of SA Superman figures, I assumed any ladies we got would just be redecos of the Deluxe Box Set figures from 5 years prior. But no, instead we got this amazing piece of Superman history. Her colors are bright, her hair is exquisitely dated, and her face looks downright mischievous. Sculptor Karen Palinko did an amazing job capturing that Silver Age style with a lot of personality. Let's check Lois out in detail below!
Monday, April 15, 2013
Stephanie Brown BATGIRL!
Stephanie Brown has had a long history of getting kicked out the DC Universe. She was introduced in 1992 as the daughter of the Batman villain Cluemaster who disapproved of her father's antics and became a vigilante named the Spoiler to thwart ("spoil") his evil deeds. She earned a fan following pretty quickly, but I was definitely not one of them. She maintained a low profile in the Bat-universe but was a consistent b-character nonetheless. At one point, she even became the fourth (and first in-continuity female) Robin. That was right before she was brutally tortured and killed by the Black Mask. Or so we thought. Steph returned as the Spoiler several years later (after much fan controversy surrounding her death. Then a few years later in 2009, the new mysterious Batgirl in the DC Universe (after Cassandra Cain stepped down) is revealed to be Stephanie Brown. This is where I joined the Steph bandwagon. She quickly proved herself to me and much of the fan community (and may actually be my favorite Batgirl ever). I'm so glad we got a figure of her during her brief time in the mantle. Let's check her out below!
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