Just a quick update today, because I was busy seeing Star Trek and working and doing other time devouring stuff. This is the Mary Marvel bust from DC Direct’s Women of the DC Universe series. I took these photos a few years ago after she first came out.
I have a lot of Wonder Woman stuff in my collection, and this is one of my favorites. There’s never been a big budget live action Wonder Woman movie, but in 2009 there was an animated movie with Keri Russell voicing Wonder Woman and co-starring Nathan Fillion and a bunch of other people. I have yet to see the movie, but this maquette was the coolest piece of merchandising released to accompany it. I’m a sucker for animated style statues anyway, and this one is exceptionally well done.
I really loved the first two Mass Effect games and then felt extremely let down by everything other than the surprisingly brilliant multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3. Consequently, the franchise faded off my radar for a while. This week Kotobukiya shipped their newest Mass Effect Bishoujo statue, and it’s so badass that I think I might be able to forgive the game series for some of the trespasses of the third installment. The first thing I really like about this piece is that the box presents her as Commander Shepard. Not as Female Commander Shepard or Femshep or any of the other nonsense people use to qualify the sex of this character. If you chose to play Mass Effect as a female, you didn’t run around space introducing yourself with, “Hi, I’m Femshep.” You were Commander Shepard, just as validly as anybody who played as a male was, and this statue owns that fact in a way that most other releases featuring this character haven’t done.
The second notable thing here is that the statue has a poseable head. Other entries in the Bishoujo line have had interchangeable heads and parts, but as far as I can remember this is the first time one of them has had an honestly poseable feature. It works really well for different display angles, as you can see in the photos below. Further customizing the statue, you can swap out Shepard’s left arm so that she can be holding her gun or an omni-tool, effectively allowing you to make your Shepard a soldier or a biotic. The third swappable bit is that you can switch out plastic inserts in her base to show either the Paragon or Renegade logo, depending on whether your Shepard likes to punch reporters.
Overall, this is one of the best pieces Koto has done in the Bishoujo line. Interestingly, she’s also one of the least sexed-up statues in the series.
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When the Watchmen movie came out, DC Direct released a line of action figures and busts based on the movie costumes of the characters. In a rare occasion when I didn’t feel compelled to collect the whole series of something, I only got the Rorschach figure and bust. The bust has Rorschach with his grapnel gun, and the base shows the countdown clock on one side and Rorschach’s signature on the other.
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This is the first of the three (so far) Batman busts that DC has released in their ongoing Heroes of DC series. The other two are a New 52 version and a Black Lantern version, both of which are sure to show up here with photos eventually. I really like the design of this one a lot, from the gargoyle base to the bat grapnel dangling from a wire cable.
The final release in Eaglemoss’s Classic Marvel Figurine Collection finally has arrived! This is the two hundredth standard figure in the line, Hela. They definitely saved they craziest headpiece for last. Hela is in scale with the other standard-size characters in the series, but because of her giant headpiece and cape she’s a bit larger than most of the others.
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Here’s Wiccan! On weekends he hangs out with Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim. They’ve formed a superhero team called the New Spirituals.
That might be amusing, but no, he’s actually part of the Young Avengers. I just started getting caught up on the newest Young Avengers comic series this week, and it’s surprisingly good stuff–possibly my favorite series that has come out of the whole Marvel Now promotion so far.
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A long while back I posted photos of the Supergirl bust based on Amanda Conner’s designs, and today’s collectible is from the same series but based on what has come to be something of a signature character for her, Power Girl! Power Girl is a character that would be very easy to marginalize with her ultra cheesecakey costume design and overall silliness, but Conner has done some really great stuff to make her relevant in DC and in comics in general. Sometime I’ll post pictures of the other Women of DC Power Girl bust that was designed by Adam Hughes, but this Amanda Conner one handily trumps his.
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“How silly is that one?” you ask me. “A superhero woman dressed up like a bird?” “Oho,” I say, “That’s where you’re wrong! She’s an… alien… who comes from a… race of, um… bird people…” And that’s when you shake your head and walk away.
But hey! At least I’m one figurine closer to completing my Classic Marvel set from Eaglemoss!
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The first thing you should know about today’s collectible is that I didn’t buy it, and it probably never would have been in the collection if I hadn’t received it for free. The second thing you should know is that Play Arts Kai toys are really, really cool. This is the first PAK figure I’ve owned, and even though I’m not crazy about this particular figure, I think it’s made me a fan of the toy line. Play Arts Kai toys are made by Square Enix, and they are deluxe figures with tons of poseability and lots of cool detailing and accessories. They make toys based on every property from Batman and Superman to Mass Effect and Metal Gear Solid. The really neat thing about posing these figures is that the joints click to hold instead of smoothly turning. That lets you pose the figures dynamically without having to worry about the body parts shifting around.
I’m a big fan of the Arkham video games, and this Batman comes from Arkham City. It’s an alternate version of the playable Batman, though, based on the art of Frank Miller from the Dark Knight Returns comic series. If you can’t tell from these photos or from prior knowledge of comic stuff, Frank Miller draws really weird looking superheroes. His style works for stuff like Sin City, but I’ve never liked the way he draws Batman and other mainstream heroes. Just look at those thunder bat thighs. Just look! Still, having this figure gives me a new respect for PAK toys, and now I want to have some more of them!
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