I’ve been running up to Halloween with some looks at horror figures, but with today being DC Friday, the best I could do was a certain black (suited) cat lady. Also appropriate because yesterday was Black Cat Day. Yeah, I’m going with that…

On the last DC Friday, I took a look at Diamond Select’s Catwoman statue from their DC Animated Series and today I’m going to keep the Selena love going with a look at her second statue from the Cover Girls of the DC Universe. Catwoman was my first foray into this line since it re-launched and with a dozen or so of these statues on my shelf, I’ve now come full circle.

As always, the statue comes in a fully enclosed box with pictures of the piece on the front and side panels. You get an adorable cat head logo on the top and the back panel teases two of the statues that I’ve already looked at: Bleez and Black Canary. Catwoman is packed snugly between two styrofoam bricks and wrapped in plastic. The only assembly required is inserting the metal pegs on her feet into the base.

This new version of Catwoman features a pretty conventional pose for this line. She’s standing with her weight on her left foot and her right leg slightly bent and her heel off the base. She toss her left hip to the side ever so slightly and has her whip seductively coiled around her shoulders and is holding it from each end. It’s not the most original composition out there, but I still like it. It suits the character and it conforms more closely with the direction this line has taken since the release of the original Catwoman statue.

The costume is a very simple black body suit. Apart from some seams on the legs and some more running up the front and back, the only real detail to be found is in the rumples and wrinkles. It’s enough to make the suit look realistic without interrupting the beautiful contours of her body. She also has the ring zipper pull in the middle of her chest so… um… Batman can have easy access? Traditionally, I remember this pull usually being silver, but here it looks more gold. The boots each have three sets of belts securing them and her gauntlets flare out to points as they approach her elbows.

The paint finish on the body suit, gloves, and boots is all done in a satin finish black, which is a pretty stark contrast to the ultra high glossy suit that the first version of Cover Girls Catwoman wore. I kind of dig this change, since there are so many different interpretations of her costume in the comics. Sometimes it looks like a rubber suit, sometimes it looks like cloth. In terms of painted details to the costume, this is probably the simplest deco since Platinum came out and she was literally all one color. I’m not really complaining, the paint on the costume looks great, in fact, it’s practically flawless, but there just isn’t a whole lot of variety to it. Ironically, she tends to be a magnet for cat hair, as you can probably see a stray white kitty hair or two in the pictures.

As great as everything is from the neck down, the portrait is easily my favorite thing about this figure. The tight hood is beautifully executed with the sculpted goggles down over her eyes. The lenses are tinted yellow, very clear, and offer a great view of her perfectly painted eyes, which glance off to her left. She has a slight, mischievous smile and the paint on her lips is just about flawless. In fact, the only complaint I have over the paint on this piece are a few tiny spots on her skin. There’s a little area of bleed on the left edge of the unzipped portion of her suit where it meets her chest. There’s also what looks like a tiny air pocket in the paint in her cleavage. I wasn’t looking, I swear… I just sort of noticed it! Both issues would be so minor they wouldn’t be worth mentioning if they weren’t in such a prominent area. I think they’re mostly annoying because the rest of the paintwork on this piece is just so good.

Last time we saw Cover Girls Catwoman she was on a rather elaborate diorama style base. Here she’s been made to conform to the classic oval style base the line has been using for a while now. It’s painted silver around the edges, with a black cat icon at the cardinal points, and black on the surface. The limitation is hand numbered on the bottom. Mine is #1,918 of 5,200.

So, now that I’ve got two Selenas on my Cover Girls shelf, which one do I like better? Well, from a technical standpoint, I think this new one is more polished. The paint on the costume is flawless, the portrait is pretty, and she’s about as solid a statue as they come in this price range. The original has much more dynamic composition, a lot more personality, and the glossy paint on the suit really catches the eye. On the other hand, the paint on the earlier piece isn’t quite as sharp, the skin tone is rather flat, and the portrait isn’t quite as good. It’s still a solid piece, but I think I’ll be pulling her as well as the first versions of Harley and Poison Ivy to make up their own little display vignette on another shelf and that’ll make room for some more of the oval-based Cover Girls. They just feel more like a unified line.

Originally, I wasn’t going to double dip on Catwoman, at least not until I got caught up on the other characters I needed in this line. As it so happens, someone was offering her for a price I couldn’t refuse and I just had to do it. These ladies retail for $99, and while I think that’s most often a fair price for what you’re getting, the truth is most e-tailers seem to knock twenty to thirty percent off the price to be competitive. I was able to pick up Selina for $63 shipped and I’ve certainly got no regrets at adopting this kitty cat.