An hour ago, I was excitedly looking for my latest review. Then I spotted Huntress. She was hanging out in her mailer box under my desk, next to the Comedian. I’d forgotten about them. It’s not necessarily their fault, I mean Batros & Sky High kinda stole the show when they arrived. Anyway, I figured I’d better get Huntress on the books before I forgot her again.
I don’t really take that I overlooked Huntress when she arrived as a knock against the figure. In many ways, which I’ll cover throughout the review, she’s might just be the highlight of this year’s Club Infinite Earth’s subscription. I wanted this figure, and in this costume, but I would also prefer to have her in a different costume. That’s a problem when you’re relegated to one figure a month.
Unlike Rocket Red, I’m not going to second guess Mattel’s choice here. The 2002 “Hush” costume is a valid choice. Any of the costume variations since this one have been more or less the Hush costume with slight changes, so this one has legs. And my preferred choice, the No Man’s Land era, 90s, JLA costume would definitely come in behind this one on any poll (though hopefully ahead of some of those bad 80s versions). I do think there is something to be said for her Silver/Bronze Age look too though.
See, when it has come to Batman’s “little” corner of DC Classics, we’ve been treated to an era war. Batman himself is available an assortment of blacks & blues, ovals & no ovals, various belts, etc. His allies have appeared as a mix of eras too. Dick Grayson is available old & young. Tim Drake has also appeared in two looks. Batgirl has also appeared in the line twice as Barbara Gordon and once as Cassie Cain. We’ve been building Silver/Bronze and Modern collections at the same time.
I’ve started to lean towards the older looks of late though. I blame the villains for skewing it – they are mostly “classic” and that has heavily influenced my current display. While I love the newer versions, including Huntress, my shelf is very… “Super Powersy” and, just as Poison Ivy before her, this Huntress is going to have to find a spot apart from the main group. She can hang out with Ivy, Azrael, the Return of the Supermen, etc. She’ll have no Canary or Oracle to pal around with while the Classic Batsquad must forego a Huntress. Sad day, right?
The good news is that mix-n-match, incohesive, modern shelf is getting a pretty decent figure this month. Huntress, one of the most demanded characters, required a lot of tooling to be done correctly: new arms, new boots, a new cape, several new add-on pieces, and of course a new noggin. And, wonderfully, she got all of that stuff. I can only imagine, and be devilishly happy, about what a tooling nightmare she must have been. She feels much more worth it than some of the earlier offerings this year.
And that all starts with the sculpt. The new pieces are everywhere and have a terrific amount of detail seemingly with every strap, buckle, pouch, and padding represented. It kinda harkens back to earlier in the line when older, more detailed DCSH sculpts were trickling into the line. It’s pretty cool.
The paint isn’t doing the head sculpt many favors, but I think there is a solid sculpt underneath. The hair looks great too and is flared out in a way to move over the cape and maintain the neck articulation. The only place where the sculpting seems a little off is the indent running through her belly. A case could be made that it should be there, but it’s very straight, mechanical, and, as such, becomes a small distraction from an otherwise great sculpt.
The paintwork is good considering the amount of detail, but a few things hold it back from being great. The shiny purple paint apps do a good job of highlighting her gear, as does the spot on smaller apps for the buttons and buckles throughout her costume. The white lines are a little fuzzy, but are within reason. No, the real issue with the paint is the fleshtone paint here and there. The arms are molded purple and painted over thickly which has caused a fair amount of slop on my figure’s left bicep. The paint on her exposed stomach is oppositely thin and the darker plastic beneath shows through. Continue to Page 2…
Glad to see someone had some of the same problems I did with the face paint. Well, not GLAD that the problems are there, but everywhere I bring it up, I seem to get rounds of “the paint on mine is fine.”
Also, there have been 3 Barbara Gordon Batgirls: grey/blue/mustard DCSH), black/blue/bright yellow (Batman Legacy), and black/purple/gold (Batman Unlimited).
Still no Stephanie Brown in any form, though.
You’re still counting the New52 ones? That’s precious. 🙂
Since they only managed to eek out a couple of waves before DC/Batman Legacy went belly-up, it’s easy enough to lump them in with the DCUC/DCSH family.
Maybe if I hold my nose. 🙂 Actually, I do include those on the checklist, if only to make a point between those and the Injustice figures. lol
The paint on mine is “fine” in the sense that it’s clean and clear. About the same as Noisy’s, which is as good as it gets in this case. Everyone’s Huntress is a step down from the prototype. I’m just glad mine didn’t tumble down the stairs like some I’ve seen.
Most of my Mattel swag has been in their shipping boxes for the last year or so, going back to the Voltron sub. I’m gonna need an extra room or a bigger house! So don’t fret too much about leaving stuff behind. (This kind of thing never happened to us as kids, though. Can you imagine getting a figure or vehicle and leaving it unopened?)
I agree that this version of Huntress might be the year’s best in terms of sculpting. Personally, I prefer the Helena Wayne version since I wanted to complete the JSA as much as possible through the sub. But there’s a Bronze Age Huntress in DC Direct’s Crisis series out there, so at least she fared better than the Star-Spangled Kid, Mr. Terrific I, or Johnny Thunder and his Thunderbolt. 🙁
I know the packaging used to be in the way!! Now it’s suddenly convenient…
I never had so many toys as a kid, nor got so many in such a short time aside from Christmas and birthdays. I open one, get a box with three more, find one at the store, win a couple on eBay, and oh yeah there’s still the one from months ago I kept putting off for various reasons. Whoops! Time for work again. Maybe tonight… or tomorrow.
My parents had occasion to spoil me rotten on B-days and Xmas, plus they would coordinate with my grandparents. The Super Powers Collection got to me in waves. It was awesome. My parents also used to keep track of favorites that way too – I opened up GA & Dr. Fate right away, but left the New Gods on card for awhile.
As the years go on I’m less and less interested in any Jim Lee designs and wish Huntress wasn’t baring so much skin, but the figure actually looks pretty awesome and I’m glad I picked her up.
I’ve never really been into them. His Kyle Rayner costume was awful!
come now, jim is a great artist! if by “great” you mean “pedestrian” and “entry level.” i look at him as a great 101 course, an intro for new comic readers. his proportions are generally good, his style is consistent as a xerox, and his designs are cool, if you don’t have a vocabulary yet for what makes graphic art in comics cool. he beats the pants off some of the hand-and-eggers working in the industry today, but he’s also not exactly top echelon.
i look at this figure and just see some fails, the face in particular, but the arms too, they ruin the figure for me. i like doohickeys and bric a brac on a fig as much as the next guy, but even her bric a brac is less than stellar. are we sure the horsemen did this figure? given their recent success on female faces, this sloth-like flat dimensionless optical enigma seems really out of place. and yes, her whole lower face looks like the makeup job you see on big women who go mary kay crazy trying to help you forget that they have 4 chins. what an abysmal way to treat anything once protoed by sherri cook. that woman is an artiste. and as noisy points out, those hips are infuriating. i think it’s hilarious that recently, in the customizer world, you’ve seen a huge push in using the WWE aj lee legs, which are athletically muscled but not hugely overblown, and the livewire torso from dc direct, as the bases for some serious exy comic book chics, and the trend is as far away from the DCU base body as they can get. yet, they’re still chosing a mattel body for parts of the anatomy.
maybe we could breathe new life into dcu by handing it over to the WWE team for a year?
it could be worse, esp considering her design: Rob Liefeld.
personally, i loved rob liefeld… as an abstractionist. and by comparison, his knockoff guys (say, marat michaels) made him look like rembrandt.
but yeah, i know what you mean, like i said, jim is a good guy for entry level fans to learn from, to get to know the basics of comic style art. that’s not a dog out though.
I think Jim Lee’s one of the greatest comic artists ever. He should just never be allowed to design anything. He’s the guy who designed Gambit’s costume, for fuck’s sake. If that wasn’t bad enough, he designed most of the New52 costumes.
I think that sums it up. Being good at one thing doesn’t necessarily mean he’s good at something else. Kinda like all the New 52 books written by artists because they could “visualize” it better. Hasn’t really worked out.
Never had a toy unopenned as a kid. Today easy different story, okay been openned carefully so can put back in box.
There is a ton of outfits for Huntress and hard to pick a fav. I did want the fig but man that face app looks like she had a stroke.
Agree about 3 Babs, one Cassie, no Steph (or the first Batgirl, sorry Babs is #2) also no Oracle since that persona she branched out into a great character, showed being handicapped you can still kick butt, and shebgotbaway with a ton. Towel.snapping Dinah’s backside comes to mind.
Okay enough rant, the review was great, always with good funny pics and now on to the next.
I almost did a BoP pic with A confused SA Canary and no Oracle, but it was just repeating the other pics.
Great review. I agree that Huntress is one of the best of the year.
It is too bad that we don’t have complete groups from every era, but I find I don’t mind mixing it up on the shelf. Maybe that’s influenced by Justice League Unlimited, where they seemed to have pretty free reign to pick the characters and costume designs they liked best and put them together on the screen. Also, as a big JLU fan, I’m glad this is the Huntress costume we ended up with.
Thanks! Yeah, JLU helps. I almost put Huntress with Question for a pic or two. I haven’t managed to get DCUC into my limping along ReCollect! Blog, but I gave it three of the twelve cubbies and, to my surprise, it ended up very Bronze age. Huntress is a figure I must have out, so she’s destined for that third cubby that is the non-bronze hodgepodge.
I would have been super excited to get this figure years ago, but I would have wanted the fully clothed version she used after this costume in Birds of Prey. Then we still would have had the wrong Canary to pair her with, and no Oracle in sight. Now I’m glad to be done with this line.
I’ll never be completely done I think. It slays me that it can’t limp along like JLU. I was just thinking of the massive, crushing list of figures I still want the other day…
The problem with this line in comparison to JLU is seen with this Huntress review. Too many different costumes based on different eras with all kinds of representation in this line. JLU only had one design to base each figure on as long as it appeared on the show.
Ironically, I think Huntress actually has two JLU looks (and both got figures?)
I do agree the sculpt looks fantastic on this one, but the paint gets a few demerits. I noticed skin around the armband on p1 fell short and then the headshot on p2…youch. Botox much?
Put me in still wanting the full body black outfit from JLA, as that belly window does nothing but annoy me. Maybe once they figure out how to actually market DC again, we can get that look in a repaint, possibly in the latest Batman sub-line?
I definitely need to track her down (and then get out the black paint). Until then, I still have my DCD BoP boxset trio…currently buried in storage. :/
I wasn’t a fan of the JLA costume. She’s had two costumes since the Ed Benes run that I think have been good: the Cully Hamner costume from her co-starring role in the Question backup features from detective comics, and her New52 costume. Heresy, I know, but the New52 costume actually managed to take the Jim Lee design and make it work by covering the belly and the thighs, but still having enough visual flair to make it interesting. A couple of artists tried that after Benes left BoP, but their costumes didn’t work because they just filled in the areas that were exposed. The New52 design added some striping that made the upper legs not just look like giant chunks of black.
I’m always for her JLA costume. With DCUC DOA, I feel like I need to pull out my TJ/JLA figures just to get Zauriel, Connor Hawke, Black Lightning, Parallax, and that version of Huntress some representations.
That DCD BoP set is still fantastic. I hate that I sold it in leaner times.
Hm. So you were actually able to get her to hold her crossbow? Because this was my biggest problem with the figure. If I get her hand around the handle, it pops off moments after I let go.
My figure holds it, but not particularly well. It stays in well enough for display, but it’s a very tenuous grip.
It’s a bit too big, but I didn’t have any problems getting the picture. I tossed it in the parts bin since though.
Of course there are 3 more figures left, But I agree that Huntress is the best. Followed by Hawkman.And Ocean Master looks to be promising. No other figure of 2013 is really worth mentioning all in all.