Poison Ivy has a surprising amount of new tooling, but her arms and legs are a mish-mash of Star Sapphire & Donna Troy (right down to Donna’s annoying left hip). The re-use is mostly acceptable, but the figure is really hurt by not having unique hands. It just doesn’t seem right that Ivy can’t be posed commanding her plants to attack.
Ivy did get new feet, two torso pieces, and her head sculpt. I’m in-between on the torso. While like what’s there, I really wish the 4H had taken things up a notch. I love the leafy outline and it is relatively comic accurate, but I would’ve loved to see some scroll work throughout the one-piece suit or even more leafy coverage (though that’s more appropriate for her classic look).
Atop all that though is a killer head sculpt, possibly my favorite female head sculpt in the entirety of the line. The face is a classic 4H face, but it looks fantastic here and the hair on the figure is perfect for Ivy. Any problems I have with the body, the under-detailed costume, the fists, are cancelled out by the head sculpt. It’s fantastic.
The paint work on Ivy is relatively straightforward. I got very luck with some great paint on the face, but there were some bad spots on the upper body (it’s molded the color of the suit with a thick coat of light green to match the skintone).
Articulation is standard for the line with the only notable exception being that annoying mid-torso swivel. I’ve come to accept it – its aesthetic value is very high even if it does limit how the figure can move. It’s a begrudging acceptance though. Everything else works as it should with the exception of the left hip. There haven’t been many Ivy reviews, so I’m not sure if it’s mine or widespread, but like Donna it just doesn’t want to stay flush in a vanilla pose.
Ivy included three accessories, all vines. I’m kinda in-between on these. She needs them, the figure looks far too plain without them, but they annoy me when they slide down or slip off altogether. I’ve got it so the ones on her arms stay up easily, but the leg one perplexes me.
Overall, Ivy was long, long overdue in Classics. In a way I wish she had been done sooner. I want to say a better tooling budget would’ve saved this figure, but the biggest visual decision, to keep the costume relatively detail free, was tooling-neutral. Would the 4H have elected to sculpt the vines to her arms where the tooling not a concern? Or would they have mimicked the torso and kept with the less is more aspect? I don’t know. Other than the lack of an open hand, my handful of dislikes really can’t be pinned on tooling alone.
Looking back over the review, this is another one of those “death by a thousand cuts”, but that’s not the whole story. I pick on the costume, but it’s mostly accurate. The head sculpt is killer. Some articulation is gone, but the figure does look better for it. I’ve wanted a Classics Ivy for a long time and this figure feels that void nicely.*
* – Though I still want a classic version, but that seems a likely as getting Ivy’s sidekick Honeysuckle these days…
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The hip on mine is a bit gummy or something too. Doesn’t quite want to go flush, but I can fiddle enough to get it pretty close.
Same here. I think it’s a flaw with the Donna Troy bits – or worse the same problem replicated in the new lower torso.
I was a bit miffed she went so quick, but i got an Elasti Girl therfor very easy. Now seeing her in all plastic – – i can be a bit relieved, not really, that she looks down from her head a bit bland. Anyway that head is looking great (it could use some shadows on the eyelids perhaps)!
I hope i can catch Quicksilver next month in time.
I can’t unsee the lack of eye shadow now. Thanks!! lol
The costume is accurate to some depictions, but I would’ve liked some more detail on it too.
Wow your Harley’s face is really blue, did it turn that color in time or was it like that out the box?
Blue face Harley is the original figure and the one with white face came with Joker in a 2-pack. You can listen to some ranting here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtEqAd6GAM0
Strange, I don’t recall mine from that wave being THAT blue. I’ll have to take her out and have a look one of these days.
Inconsistent quality control on DCUC? Impossible!
Mine may be really blue, I don’t recall. That was a long time ago. I wanted to snag the Harley/Joker 2pk, but it was always gone at my TRU and now I’m overloaded with Shazam 2pks.
I found it, and it’s definitely worth the money. The only problem is, it comes with a black suited joker, and i think that everyone who ordered the 2013 sub and is disappointed with the version of Red Hood they selected ( which is to say, everyone, period) is going to want it to kitbash a classic red hood.
You know, the blue never really bothered me on my Wave 2, but once I bought the Mad Love 2-pack, I was really glad I replaced her. The blue still doesn’t seem like a big deal, but having her in that bright white just does Harley justice.
That’s the best way to sum up.
RE: The Cheetah joke… Rex Mason didn’t get shoes (Plastic Man?… Are those bare feet or what?… That would have to look just waaaaaaay too creepy “in the flesh”, as it were…)
Doh. I remembered Plastic Man, but disregarded him as he’s really just a giant shoe (he’s actually naked all the time too…).
Metamorpho does have a bare sculpted foot on his diamond leg though, you’re right! Well, the proclivity for women to lose their shoes in comics still exists… lol
Well admit those vines I took off and put in the box. Only way I could have Haley gloomp hug her fir finally showing up. Now I need to get a Catwoman that matches the GCS look and that Trio will be complete. Hard time finding and never saw the Arkham City one. Height only thing that would’ve bugged me there and that is minor.
If honeysuckle is a certain plant then yes doubt to see ’em. Almost tempted to have Ivy steal Venus’s plant buddy.
Forgot, yes I wish she had ooen hands too, she has a killer pinkie nail that needs to be out. ( yeah reffing Harley and Ivy) think Rita got Ivy’s hands, they would have worked for Ivy.
Honeysuckle is an exceptionally obscure Poison Ivy sidekick. She’s probably only remembered for being underage and wearing a costume more skimpy than Ivy’s.
Honeysuckle: http://www.the-isb.com/images/Honeysuckle.jpg
Oh and now I wonder how soon till somebody customs a swimsuit shego using this Ivy.
I always wonder if we’ll see less custom work using this since they do become difficult to get. I suppose the aftermarket prices won’t be too out of hand…
Considering how much the DCD Hush Ivy has sold and been decapitated into customs, I won’t be surprised to see this one’s head also turn up in 90% of the female customs out there. (Looks at Ororo and Medusa.)
I’ve yet to read a story featuring this version of Ivy. I would’ve liked a Suicide Squad version of Ivy which would likely be the classic look.
Isn’t this pretty much a Hush figure?
I’d recommend reading Hush if you haven’t. It’s not always great storytelling, but it’s a fun “here’s all the villains” romp.
Still, I’m with you on the classic look. I actually much prefer having the jumpsuit riddler, SA Catwoman, and Joker up front on my shelves – just waiting on that SP Penguin to complete that quartet.
I hear ya! Those four are the definitive versions for me as well. Can’t wait for SP Pengy!
“Hush” is the greatest Batman story of all time… provided you don’t look at the word balloons. Once you do, the whole thing really falls apart.
you know, it’s intriguing, that “letter rating” you mentioned noisy… i’d consider ivy a B lister, but i would present, even if you factor in all of the pluses for ms isley, you run into one inevitability… harley came along and trumped her in almost every way. more media saturation, more recognizable, and certainly utilized in the modern era… and no uma thurman to give her a bad rep.
(as an aside, i swear that one day, the masses will wake up to the thurman conspiracy and realize that they enjoy her movies in spite of her, not because of her… and there was no saving that movie from the craptastic awfulness of thurman, o’donnell, and silverstone, not even the power of positive clooney.)
this is not a bad figure, or so it appears, but it’s not a great fig either. as you point out, it lacks the kind of detailed sculpt work we have come to expect from the house of fur and feathers, and w/ the parts re-use apparently coming down to the same defective sonic welder (bet me that’ll get the blame for the hip… couldn’t possibly be an intrinsic flaw in the mold) hurts it’s qc rating. the goofy vines don’t add much in the way of play either… to in essence, she’s a mid-rate nerd hummel, destined to stand in one awkward pose for the rest of her shelf life. that is why i don’t like blind subscriptions for things like action figures… too much room for items that, had i a choice, i wouldn’t own.
Clooney sucked as Batman. I’m not s huge Clooney fan in general, but even the biggest Clooney fans I know admit that he made a terrible Batman. Clooney himself admits he was a terrible Batman.
He made a Great bruce wayne though!
because George fully admits he played Bruce as “the gay bachelor”. >.>
word. my reference was only to the fact that clooney is the other way around, he finds himself in really awful movies where he is the sole bright spot (intolerable cruelty, leatherheads, michael clayton…) but even he couldn’t save batman from the thurman vortex… amplified as it was by the schumacher paradox (the more movies he makes, the worse they get).
really, chris o’donnell as robin? were they just out of ideas? it was like, “who’s the next guy on the roster, i’m tired of auditioning, so long as the next guy isn’t tom noonan, he’s robin,” and in strolled o’donnell? but even he was better than uma “i never met a role i couldn’t fudge up” thurman. pretty much since showing us the goods in dangerous laisons, she’s been a prick, because she insists on opening her mouth, which always releases a noise i find about as enjoyable as karloff’s frankensteinian wailing whilst the villagers chased him w/ torches. her poison ivy made schwarzeneggar’s one-linapalooza half-note victor fries seem like olivier doing chaucer in the park. i haven’t seen so much wretch out of one person since my last trip to a saturnalia vomitorium.
and thankfully, by the grace of all that’s holy… this figure looks nothing like her. 🙂
You know Christian Bale was up for the role of Robin. Imagine if that had worked out… and the Chris O’Donnell was in Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
Yeah, chew on that mental image for a while.
hey now! What did Grampa Geoff and cousin Ollie ever do to you to get dragged into this?
I agree that Harley took Ivy down a rung in terms of stature, but when they were paired up in the cartoon Ivy became a way more fun character. The first episode where they meet is my favorite one. When she’s with Harley she gets a much needed second dimension. Otherwise she’s only got plants to talk to.
Also, I love Uma. Ketchup!
I said arguably specifically because of Harley. I tend to discount her a tad and slot her third because I don’t know if folks really credit her separately from the Joker. I love the character, but I view her as a little more derivative than other characters.
Robin always faces in a similar conundrum with being Batman’s sidekick He’s one of the most recognizable and well-known super-heroes, but fans easily slot him behind other members of the JLA when making said lists.
And is Uma Thurman filed under Natalie Portman there? Uma Thurman is usually cited as the only saving grace that movie had…
your point on robin only proves how arbitrary and pointless the “list” aspect of things is… there’s no way, for example, that robin is a B list character and say martian manhunter is A list… hell, robin has more general recognizability than even green arrow. i think it could be argued that behind clark and bruce, robin is THE most recognizable DC character (to the non-comic readers out there) and to me, that’s the only mark of rank that’s worth a crap… how well does johnny nevereadacomic know the character, are they likely to buy into new media and merch for that character. granted, that’s my personal parameter of success, but that’s it. so the general populace know spidey, and many will know venom (A list and B list, respectively) but they don’t know what the hell carnage is (extreme D list.) in the case of killer croc, i’d wager that if you took 5 pics of croc, and 5 pics of marvel’s “lizard” johnny idon’treadthefunnypapers wouldn’t know the difference… there’s your H list.
but back to ivy… harley does co-opt joker’s gimmick, somewhat, but because of that, she’s easy to recognize and she had some GREAT media exposure in her run. ivy was “the green chick,” the show just didn’t do for her what it did for harley, and her look has evolved continuously in a not-always logical way, which makes it hard for johnny rootberfloatesandfreshlyshornscrotes to know who she is… C list, at best. not saying it’s fair, not saying it’s just, not saying it’s something that a really definitive portrayal can’t reverse… just that as of now, she’s lagging in name-face recognition. and it’s worth note that in their most recent widely well released and well received media venture, harley is still passably harley to the average joe… ivy looks almost nothing like this figure. to be sure, harley had a costume on over her outfit (?) but she still looked like harley. don’t ask, just play the games.
“rootberfloatesandfreshlyshornscrotes”
TMI?
LOL ;p
Those fists…
Yep.
Definitely a figure that would have had a variant had it been in the old retail line. Would have been so perfect. Wish she would have made it. I still hold out hope for a classic Pam at some point.
And wow do your pictures make her green less bright. Someone on the Q&A saw a shot of her on eBay and asked Scott if she was glow in the dark because she was so pearly green. Now that I have her in hand, I can’t blame them. She is REALLY day-glo.
I’d like to still see one too. It’s a shame that the retail line is reserved for upper, upper A-list and versions there of, it would’ve been much nicer to see this Ivy at retail and the Classic version in the sub.
And, yeah, Ivy is much brighter in person.
isn’t there a “Batman Unlimited” line coming out next year? I’d place a safe bet the flesh variant makes that list.
See, this has made me start thinking… when and how did she get this particular look? And I don’t mean the “pale green skin” thing, I mean the “only wearing a leafy swimsuit and barefoot” deal.
The transformation of Poison Ivy began with Neil Gaiman’s Black Orchid mini-series. Before that, she had only ever been a gimmick plant-based thief, and never demonstrated any form of superhuman powers. Gaiman connected Ivy to the Floronic Man and ultimately the Green (which also empowers Swamp Thing) and revealed/retconned that her “gimmick plants” were actually created and controlled by her powers.
Then of course, Batman: The Animated Series. Though at first they used a fairly traditional Ivy (except that they made her a redhead instead of the dark brown hair her classic version had) but they added the ecoterrorist angle to her (instead of simple thievery) and also ended up changing her character quite a bit. I’m not sure if B:TAS was the FIRST time Ivy was an ecoterrorist, but it was definitely the instance where she became established as such in the minds of most fans. Later on in the series (after it became Batman and Robin) she got the green skin, abbreviated outfit (reduced down to a swimsuit with boots and gloves) and the friendship with Harley.
Naturally this bled into the comics as well, but as late as the last few years of the 90’s, Ivy was still brown-haired and wore a tights-and-swimsuit costume in the comics, though she had by then adopted her animated counterpart’s goals and superpowers.
The particular look replicated here, though… I’m not sure where it came from, originally. It -might- have been Jim Lee’s redesign for Ivy for “Hush” (which also gave us the god-awful stripper Huntress costume), but I also think it might have appeared in “No Man’s Land” a bit earlier than that. Does anyone have any light to shed on the situation?
(This is of course not even going into the New52 Ivy who somehow manages to have two different sets of personalities -and- costumes at once…)
As usual, good review and great pics.
Those fists!
The first time I remember was when she setup in Robinson Park during No Man’s Land, but I wasn’t exactly reading Batman comics before that. If I recall, she wasn’t consistently portrayed one way or the other.
The real sea change is when Harley makes the jump from animation to comics and gets her title in 2002. With Harley bringing the animation side to comics, the green skin followed suit. Hush comes out not too long after.
And thanks!
Hush is also where we get the new Lizard-looking Croc in comics, but he had already appeared in BTAS as having a green/grey scaly “skin condition”.
I’m hoping they go with the full bodysuit for that unpainted prototype Huntress, as seen in the Kenner Total Justice/JLA line and Morrison’s run on JLA. I can do without that “belly window” Jim Lee “added”. ugh.
and wasn’t Woodrue connected to the Green during Millennium/New Guardians? I do remember he “replaced” the then-deceased Terra on their list (which I always questioned, just not the fact she was still fairly newish and they chose her to begin with!), and then turned down the “power boost” from the Guardians as he already had his plant powers.
I am not a fan of the people turning Croc into a bargain-basement Lizard. He never had a snout or tail, not even in the Dini cartoons. That just reeks of unimaginative redesigning. “So who is this guy?” “I dunno. His name is Croc. I guess he’s a crocodile guy?” “Okay, humanoid crocodile, got it”
I defininitely think Huntress should have the full-body suit in her first Classics incarnation. Yes, I know she had the stripper suit on the JLU cartoon, but man I wish she hadn’t. She was a street-smart gritty vigilante, not a fashion model. She had no business running around in a thong with thigh-highs, especially given her personality. Hell, even the terrible terrible New 52 Huntress (Helena Wayne – UGH) has a full bodysuit costume. I also hope her hand crossbow costs in.
The Woodrue thing actually goes back further than that. Woodrue was in Moore’s classic “Anatomy Lesson” and later faced Swamp Thing in battle as he realized their powers came from the same source. By the time Millennium rolled around he had been tied in with Swampy for years, which is why Englehart used him as an earth-proxy (with the groan-worthy codename “Floro”). He had much the same origins as Poison Ivy otherwise – originally a non-powered Silver Age Atom foe who would go on to turn himself into a plant elemental to gain extra powers. Moore tied him in with Swamp Thing and Gaiman put Poison Ivy into the story as well.
Great review here!
Thanks, Doc!
I was not looking to forward to this figure. I wasnt impressed by any of the pictures (and ANOTHER Bat-villian). But I was immediately sold by the head sculpt when I opened the box. It really is good. I totally agree that the rest of the body is a bit too plain but it took a little while for me to notice. I cant tell though if the vines are a nice add on or point out how much little detail the rest of the body has.
The vines are both! I want to take ’em off, but she really needs ’em.
I avoid the nu52 poison oakey. Honestly saw her in the manswampthing book and looked like a wood outfit.
I like both the classic and the green skin look so, either loom would have been okay. Ivy started growing outfits and that was odd to me, saw in a Harley Quinn ish. I dunno when donned the green look but saw she could change her pigment so could look flesh tonned in a Gotham City Sirens ish. That would have been a need feature in this fig.
In-story, it’s said that she finally absorbed so many plant chemicals, toxins, et cetera that her skin turned green. In years since, she’s been able to control it to have a normal appearance.
I’m so sad that this line seems to be turning out, at best, “pretty good” overall.
I really had high hopes. The only really bad figure is Rocket Red, but the rest really don’t go above “yeah, s/he’s alright”. For an online collector-aimed line, I want more.
I always want more, but I’ll take pretty good in the lean years.
nice!
Vault’s has weird eyes. I kind of hate it. Also, it looks like it was made to be glow in the dark. Such a terrible color choice. Beh…
I got mine, waited a day to open them, took one look and put them back in the box again. Just too stressed with other matters now to really care.
I didn’t even notice the rib-swivel(?) until I saw this review!
The head sculpt IS the best part, and like I said above, I’m pretty sure Bats has his own dedicated line next year, so I expect the “flesh” variant of Ivy to be there, since half the figure is new and they need to recoup her costs more than just from a one-time sale.
I didn’t even think about any other figures sharing her feet until I saw her up there with Cheetah, then had a moment of surprise until I remembered Cheetah had CLAWS on her toes.
ah well…remind me who’s up next month? and is Lead coming in Dec or Jan? Tina/Tin is the same month, right?
Batman had his own dedicated line this year, too =p It’s basically just changing its name from Legacy to Unlimited going forward.
While I would expect them to do a variant in the Batman Unlimited line or a multi-pack, I’ll likely be ticked off when they do considering that you’re paying US$30~ when buying off Matty vs US$15-16 at retail or Amazon (with free shipping).
Wait, did you say retail is A+ only? Then explain why Batman Legacy did Catman who, at best, is a C-list Batman rogue that few people not into comics are aware of. Not to mention the Planet X Batman based on the Batman R.I.P. appearance which, to date, the costume had one comic-only appearance.
Poison Ivy, who is either A or A- (given she’s been in almost all of the cartoons, had a film appearance, and shows in most video games), seems to have been deliberately withheld just to prop up their online club. There’s no reason why she and Black Mask (maybe a B- character) shouldn’t have been in the Batman Legacy line.
Batman Legacy isn’t Batman Unlimited, so Catman is moot. And a multi-colored Batman is always A-list judging by the pegs the last twenty years, this one just happens to have a handful of comic appearances under its belt.
Could they have been at retail? Probably, but the Unlimited rosters are mostly Batman, nU versions, and the Penguin that was done for the cancelled multi-pack. We, as armchair collectors, may know best about what to put at retail, but neither of those two would appear to fit with Mattel’s limited vision of the Unlimited lines. They belong in the sub to me because otherwise we wouldn’t have them.
She’s a lovely figure. The hair sculpt really is next level awesome! But the closed fists give her a PLANT SHE-HULK SMASH quality.