DCClassics.Com
Black Hand & Abin Sur Review

NoisyDvL5

The Black Hand. One thing that’s happened here and there in comics the last few years is attempts by now grown-up writers to rewrite lame characters of their youth into badasses. Morrison did a great job with the Key & the General (though shaving the Shaggy Man is sacrilege). Meltzer only managed to make Dr. Light an even crappier character. As it is, Johns’ Black Hand ended up in the middle of the road.

Originally, William Hand was the genius black sheep of a wealthy family. He invented a device that absorbed and redirected GL energy and set off to being a criminal. He wasn’t a terribly remarkable villain (most of Hal’s old foes suffer similarly), but he was what he was. To facilitate Rebirth/Blackest Night, John’s changed him to the black sheep of a coroner’s family that was obsessed with death (he killed & taxidermied the family dog). Atrocitus came looking for him some years back and, while fighting with Hal, dropped the device that William would use to become the Black Hand. That was a weird retcon, but it got weirder.

This Black Hand went on to be the same lame supervillain early on, but ended up getting his right hand amputated by Hal/Spectre in more recent times. After that, he was abducted by gremlins that experimented on him and enhanced his powers (I said it got weirder). Then, he received a vision and a power surge from Nekron, went home to murder his family, and committed suicide.

He’s resurrected as the first Black Lantern, digs up not-Batman’s skull, skulks around, vomits up some stuff, etc., etc. Really, it’s kinda wonky at that point and getting close to spoilers for what’s currently going on for the guy, so I’ll leave it there. Anyway, this figure represents his look during Blackest Night when he was the undead patriarch of the Black Lanterns.

The sculpt is so good that I almost feel it’s wasted on Black Hand. He reuses Dr. Mid-Nite’s heavy cape (which is bothersome in some poses), but the rest of him is brand new. The seams of his uniform, the straps, the buckles, and the raised bands all look great from head to toe. His face and left arm are appropriately undead, but his right arm represents a bit of a problem. His wrist isn’t anywhere near flush with his forearm. The hand and arm are both new and are meant for each other (the veins would line up if the fist was sized correctly), so I’m not sure what went wrong there. The same effect is present on his left arm, but the straps on the costume do a better job of masking it.

I have to wonder if the articulation has something to do with it. Black Hand is all-new and should have the three added articulation areas, but he only has two: the double knees and double elbows. He doesn’t have the ball wrists, so I find myself wondering if there was a miscommunication with the vendor and the change in articulation to his wrists is in some way responsible for the pieces not lining up properly. The rest of the articulation is great. Again, like Amon Sur, it’s great that Black Hand is so articulated, but it makes me long for this articulation on a Batman or a Connor Hawke (hint, hint). These guys are zombies, they shouldn’t have more agile figures than the living.

The paint on Black Hand is pretty decent. The extra detail requires a little more paintwork than usual and it’s solidly done for the most part. Mine is a little fuzzy where his mummified chin meets the cowl, but the rest of the buckles and straps are pretty sharp. The only real issues I had are again with that pesky right arm of his. I would like to see the fade to black handled a little better and I’ve yet to see a Black Hand that has a correctly painted right bicep. I feel really nitpicky for pointing this out but the costume should be painted grey on the inside of the bicep. It hasn’t been in any of the pics I’ve seen so far.

Overall, these are two nice figures of characters that I don’t really care about. They both have great head sculpts – Hand’s grim visage makes him look cooler than any of his comic appearances – and the added articulation makes them standouts in the collection. But being in the middle of this Green Lantern onslaught really has me pining for more traditional DC figures. Another IATer, who shall remain nameless, found this wave at Toys R Us this week and passed on most of them. He has nearly all of them so far, but he left these behind today. I’m not going to get to that point anytime soon – I’ll be publicly slogging through DCUC17 to get that Anti-Monitor, but that gave me pause. Hopefully, I’ll have Bane’s wave in hand soon and that can tide me over until summer.

For more DC reviews, check out our DC Universe Classics Collector’s Guide.

Pages: 1 2

19 thoughts on “DCClassics.Com
Black Hand & Abin Sur Review”

  1. Another set of great reviews, which I’ve been eagerly anticipating. Black Hand looks great, though the missing wrist articulation and that weirdness with the hands not being flush with the forewarms is unforunate. Sculpt looks great! Amon Sur looks ok, just kind of an unusual choice for this line, or at least this wave. It’s very sad that there are only 2 waves scheduled for GLC, because the GL universe can really sustain a dozen or more waves pretty well.

    LOVED the Connor shout-out. Again, another addition to my Morrison JLA display that is sorely needed.

    1. Morrison JLA should be one of these horrid theme waves!

      Connor Hawke
      Huntress
      Business Suit Lex
      Aztek
      Zauriel
      Prometheus

      C&C: Genereal

      LOL.

      Yep, the GLC line could go on for awhile, but with rumors of a different spinoff line coming in the Fall, my wallet won’t miss GLC too much…

      1. Despite the need for a Business Suit Lex (in the Morrison JLA figures and every other portion of DCUC), I’d swap him out for a Queen Bee or The Key and call it a day. Great selection of figures there, though. Hopefully someday…

        Yeah, Batman Classics I imagine, ramping up more excitement for the 3rd Nolan Batflick. We’ll see.

      2. as long as Zauriel is in his FA toga, I’m fine. I never did care for his “god armor” look.

        I’m still waiting on BBTS to process my order from a week before Xma$, but they did post on RTM that they are heavily backlogged, so….?

        I am kinda glad I passed on the DCD Hand(s), so this is the first version of him I’ll be getting with my BBTS order.
        (still no sign of w14 up here, either. :/ )

  3. Haha, great last comic!

    But with the movie coming, doesn’t look like Black Hand will be done anytime soon! 😀

    Also, thanks as usual for the great character summaries/info for those of us who can’t actively follow the comic story lines. 🙂

    1. I know there’s a Hal moving coming and we’re already at 7/10 Hals… I might be sick.

      I’m glad you like the character backstories. Sometimes I feel like my reviews aren’t very reviewy. 😀

  4. I love your reviews as well! I look forward to them so I can see what problems/things are present with these figures and if I’ll want some or all of this guys, so thanks for what you do. It saves me alot of money. I like the Black Hand figure dispite the problems you listed. What the hell is DC’s problem? You’d think they’d have figured out alot of these simple, and easy to fix problems/QC issues. I hope all of this doesn’t mean crappy figures down the line. This is not how you reward loyal consummers guys. Anyways, as soon as I can track down an affordable Black Hand, I will.

    1. Companies don’t have full control over manufacturers. It’s one of those oddities of the toy business. Plus, no company is really willing to scrap something and do it right if something goes wrong.

    1. Mattel missed it to, don’t feel bad. 😉

      I saw you’ve started your GLC reviews too! I’ll be checking them out as they come up!

  6. Two TRU and even a Walmart in my area had the full first wave on their shelves. I really just want Kyle for my ranks, but had to pass. I liked the way the figures looked for the most part, but the preposing in the package looked like it was going to rip Amon’s arm off at the bicep swivel, same with Kyle. The main problem for me is the price. I’ve recently been filling out some G.I. Joe collection with figures on sale for $3 a pop, so after that I just can’t spend the $15 for a nice looking, but still pretty plain Kyle Rayner figure. Black hand and Amon here both looked like the most interesting figures, so I was still interested in them.
    Thanks for the review. This sums up what I was thinking, which is I’m happy that I passed on them, because I get the feeling you should like these guys a lot more than I would, due to fact you’ve actually read Blackest Night, and if you’re a little lukewarm on them then I’m glad I saved my money.

    1. The price… ugh. Most of my stuff comes from online and while I drop $100 or so on ’em for the wave, it spares me from staring at the individual $15 tag.

      I think you hit the nail on the head, they’re just lukewarm as figures go. I do want a full DC Universe, but there’s characters that long time readers are much more invested in and it’s hard to get excited when it’s not those characters. The 4H did great work and made these figures serviceable, but the character/story behind is important too.

      And on that front, the rumor lists make 2011 look like it’s going to be a long year.

  7. What do you mean long year? I feel, for the sake of true diversity, DC starts pumping out figures that finish/round out certain teams/groups that are currently being left out for more “popular” waves like the GLC and Rainbow Lanterns.

    Where’s:

    C&C Elasti-girl for the Doom Patrol(I’d take Mento too)
    The rest of the Metal Men(Lead,Tin,Platinum,Copper)
    GA JSA figures(GA Flash,GA Sandman,GA Johhny Quick,Max Mercury,GA Atom, and Johnny Thunder w/Thunderbolt)
    DC Villains(Chronos, Dr.Destiny, The Key,Prometheus,Vandal Savage, and
    The Rogues(Zoom 1 and 2, Mirror Master, Heatwave, Trickster(SA version) Weather Wizard, Captain Boomerang, The Top, and Dr.Alchemy

    And finally a wave or 2 of GLC figures DC could make that fans really want:

    Evil Star
    Major Disaster
    C&C Hector Hammond
    Goldface
    C&C Paralax-monster entity
    Paralax(hal version)
    Dr.Polaris
    C&C Krona
    a Guardian
    Invisible Destroyer
    Tattoed man(either version)

    Do you think any of these characters will be made?

    1. I think that a lot of those characters could get made, but what I mean by long year is that (other than some promised JSAers) 2011 isn’t going to see any of em.

      We’ve got the Bane wave ready to drop, then Blackest Night, then the Super Friends rumor, the promised JSAers in DCUC19, and it’s likely that Nekron will head up another GL wave in DCUC20. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not expecting to get too many teams completed this year.

    1. I think they all could be made realistically!

      -Mattel is going to find us get loud if they don’t finish Doom Patrol or Metal Men.

      -JSA fans have been promised a bone in Wave DCUC19, we should see that at SDCC.

      -Most of the rest of your list are all villains. I think they’re all doable, but Mattel really hasn’t done a good job with the villains so far. Most of your list requires minimal new tooling, so I’d like to see them all make it into the line. The only ones on your list that would require a lot of new sculpting are Hector & Parallax, and as C&C’s they should get it.

Comments are closed.