Monthly Archives: February 2019

Feb 6 2019

Mythic Legions (Advent of Decay): Myria Goldenbranch by The Four Horsemen

It’s another Mythic Legions Wednesday and time to turn my attention back to that most noblest of races… The Elves! Today, I’m checking Myria Goldenbranch, who hails from a place in Mythoss known as Whispervale. She’s a special kind of Elf, known as a Whisperling, and imbued with the power to draw magic from the very trees around her!

And here’s a She-Elf that can enchant my forest any time! The bulk of Myria’s armor comes from the standard female knight body that was introduced with Gwen Heavensbrand. This includes the torso, the upper arms and upper legs, and the hip piece. The plate armor is given a little bit of a lighter touch with the elf bracers for the lower arms and the boots, which are sculpted and painted to look like leather with reinforced plates on the knees and around the ankles. Instead of the crotch plates, Myria gets by with the lower tabard piece, which is sculpted in soft plastic. This is the only part of the figure that doesn’t quite work for me. I’m not sure if it’s the color or not, but I would have rather they used the leather scale armor piece here instead. But, because Mythic Legions is totally modular, I could always borrow that piece from another figure and make the change myself!

With nothing fresh in terms of armor pieces, much of Myria’s wow-factor comes in the form of the new deco. Not that the sculpt isn’t fantastic, but we’ve seen it before, and I’ve gushed over it many times. Instead, I’ll just spend some time gushing over the coloring here because I absolutely love it. I wouldn’t have thought to pair the metallic green with electric blue, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look fabulous together, especially when that rich copper coloring is tossed into the mix. The deep brown used for the boots and gauntlets does a great job simulating leather, and I never cease to be impressed at how all the little sculpted straps are painted along with their fixtures. The exposed chain-mail in the joints is painted silver, and there’s some fine gold edging done along the different sculpted plates in the armor.

While the neck down may be a case of been there, done that, Myria does sport a brand new head sculpt and it is very nice, indeed! She has a pale green complexion, which may or may not be the norm for the Whisperlings, with green lips, and pupil-less ebony eyes. The eyes would probably look horrifying on any other figure, but here they just make her look more mysterious and exotic. Myria features a gold tiara sculpted as part of the portrait, as well as long red hair, which falls back down her neck and leaves her long pointed ears exposed. In the back, her hair is sculpted with two sets of braids that join together in a golden clasp, similar to what we saw with the Elf Ranger.

As great looking a figure as she is, Myria comes up really short when it comes to her accessories. For starters, she’s got the usual basic sword and dagger, which we’ve seen too many times to count now. And yes, this is the point where I say that no matter how many times we see these, I still love them. The problem is, these are the only two weapons she comes with, so recycling the most common ones feels like a poor choice. I think she would have been better served getting a repaint of that curved dagger and scabbard we’ve seen a few times already. Or to go one further, since her bio points out that she possesses magic abilities, maybe a staff would have been a good idea. And I’m not even talking about instead of, because by every accounting, Myria’s accessory count is low.

The only other thing included is this shield. It’s definitely one of the less common shields in the Mythic Legions armory, and I think it suits her well, but at the same time, why not give her the Elven shield. We actually haven’t seen it here yet, it’ll be in an upcoming review, but that just goes to show how uncommon in is. Whatever the case, this shield is a great looking piece, with the wood finish painted green and the frame and edges painted copper, and the rivets painted blue.

I know some people who passed on Myria simply because of her low accessory count, and while I can certainly understand that. The pre-orders are a crazy time when you have to really crunch numbers and try to get the most for your money. Still, I’m glad I didn’t count her out. I stand by what I said about her accessories, and I think just one more carefully weighed item like the Elf shield or a magic staff would have gone a long way. But in the end, she’s a beautiful figure and her bio makes her sound like a cool character. In my collection, I’ll probably have her hanging out with the Silverhorn folk more than the Elves, as some sort of Emissary. If anything, she makes me wish I had picked up the Elven Weapons Pack so I could have kitted her out better myself.

Feb 5 2019

Purgatori Sixth-Scale Figure by Phicen/TBLeague

I’m on vacation this week, so I’m going to try to work a few extra reviews into the mix to dig out from how behind I am. One of the things I want to focus on this year is getting out from under my backlog of Sixth-Scale figure reviews, and since the newest offering from TBLeague (formerly Phicen) showed up a couple weeks back, I thought I’d bump her to the head of the line. These guys have been making a nice little niche for themselves combining their amazing seamless Sixth-Scale bodies with various ladies from the indie comic scene. Some of these characters I only know peripherally, like Arhian: Head Huntress and I buy them mainly because I like the figure, but I’m well acquainted with today’s lady in question!

Once we got Chaos! Comics’ Lady Death, I was hoping Brian Pulido’s Purgatori wasn’t far behind, and here she is! She comes in shoebox style packaging, with the lid being gate-folded cardboard that clips onto the sides with magnets. This has become the standard for TBLeague’s figures and I’m happy for it. It looks beautiful, the box itself is sturdy, and overall it just feels suitable for a high end collectible figure. Purgatori comes nestled in a foam tray with her head and extra bits around her. Beneath that there’s another foam tray that houses her two sets of wings. Let’s get her set up and take a look!

If you were expecting a lavishly tailored and complex costume, than you’re probably not familiar with the character. When it comes to clothing, Purgatori firmly believes less is more, and that’s fine because it’s a shame to cover up the seamless beauty of the Phicen body. Indeed, TBLeague’s version adds a little more outfitting for Purg than I’m used to, with the inclusion of the two black sleeves. I realize that she’s sometimes drawn wearing these, but I’m used to seeing her without them. Normally, I’d write these off to being there to hide the seams, but that’s definitely not the case here. Still, I thought I would wind up taking them off, but they’ve grown on me, so I’m leaving them on. The body itself features a beautiful red skin coloring that matches the character art perfectly and makes for a very distinctive looking figure, even when surrounded by TBLeague’s other ladies of horror comics.

As for the rest of the costume, Purgatori features a pair of black high-heeled boots, which look like they may have been re-purposed from Lady Death. They’re pretty non-descript, but they do have a pair of clip-on straps to hold them up. Her bikini bottom is black with gold trim and paired with a belt and a silver horned death’s head buckle. Her wrists feature sculpted bracers with bangles at both ends, all painted in gold, her finger-less gloves are sculpted as part of her hands and also feature some gold painted finery. Next, she sports a hard plastic brassier, black with painted gold edges. And finally, her shoulders are adorned with sculpted skulls, which slide on over her arms and hug her biceps. And while the outfit is indeed fairly simple, it all fits well and looks great.

I wish I could say the same about the wings. Purg comes with two pairs of wings, one closed up and the other extended outward. These are all cast in translucent red plastic and secure into her back via pegs. The sculpting on these is excellent, as they’re textured and even have some holes in the membrane. They also feature a little bit of paint for the bone points. Unfortunately, these are a far cry from what I remember seeing in the prototype images used for the solicitations. Those showed the wing frames painted to make them look more solid, and there was even some paintwork applied to the membrane. The final pieces just look like what they are: Translucent plastic. And so, the final production pieces are definitely lacking, and while they aren’t enough to ruin the figure for me, they are a disappointment.

The open wings are absolutely huge, so much so that I can barely get her into my little studio area with them on. Obviously, that means that they take up a lot of display space on the shelf, so I doubt I’ll be using them as my default. The fact that they can swivel when connected to the body, does at least give some leeway and if you have more vertical space than horizontal, you can angle them all the way up and they hold in place pretty well.

The head sculpt is excellent, although since it isn’t stylized it isn’t going to match a lot of the character art found in the comics. Nonetheless, I do dig it a lot. She’s damn pretty for a demoness, and I’m particularly impressed with the paintwork on her eyes. The black rooted hair trails down her back, and while I tend to use a little styling gel to get the hair tamed on these figures, I think I’m going to leave Purg’s hair a little wild. The twin horns that protrude from her hairline are articulated and they look great. Finally, Purgatori features a tight choker collar, which was probably the hardest thing to put on the figure, and an ankh pendant attached with red string.

The articulation on these figures remains as impressive as ever. I have no idea which Phicen body this is, but the stainless steel skeleton that lurks beneath all that seamless red silicone skin is a thing of wonder. The figure not only has the usual points one would expect from an articulated Sixth-Scale figure, but it also supports all kinds of subtle adjustments that the human body is capable of. This includes throwing the hips to one side or another and even lower neck articulation buried in the upper torso. And the fact that there isn’t much costume here to inhibit poseability, Purg offers a lot more hands-on fun than you’re average Hot Toys or Sideshow figure. Even better, none of the movement feels delicate or scary.

When it comes to accessories, Purgatori does come up pretty short. I attribute that a bit to the wings counting as accessories and using up a lot of plastic, as well as space in the box. It’s probably also due to the fact that the last bunch of TBLeague figures I got were technically considered Deluxe Editions. Whatever the case, in addition to the two sets of wings, and a total of three pairs of hands, Purg only comes with two additional accessories. One is this kris dagger, which features a very sinister looking curvy blade, a brown sculpted grip, and gold painted cross-guard and pommel. I’m really on the fence over this piece, as it’s nicely executed, but the hilt design is really chunky to the point that it looks a little over-sized.

The other accessory is a gold chalice full of hot and bubbly blood and with a bit of the stuff spilling out over the side. The paint applications on this piece are especially nice and pretty damn convincing. I’ll likely be using this for her regular display. Now is as good a time as any to point out the complete lack of a figure stand, which for a Sixth-Scale figure is pretty inexcusable. Who is going to pose a $160 figure without some kind of support and risk it taking a shelf dive? Sure some of my other TBLeague figures came with decorative diorama bases that didn’t work all that well as stands, but I’d happily take one of those over nothing at all. Thankfully, I have a small stockpile of generic Sixth-Scale stands for just such an occasion.

At $160, TBLeague is continuing to keep their releases well under the $200 mark, and that’s no small feat in the Sixth-Scale figure market
these days. I like the figure a lot, but I would have much rather dropped an extra $20 if they had offered a Deluxe Edition that came with a figure stand and extra paint on the wings. Previous TBLeague releases at this price point felt more complete, whereas Purg here feels like they had to make some cuts to keep her at this price point. Either way, I’m glad I got her, and I’ve even pre-ordered the Exclusive Shanghai Comic Con variant that they’re calling Lady Bat.

Feb 4 2019

Marvel Legends (Kingpin Wave): Silver Sable by Hasbro

It’s another Marvel Monday where I’m tossing randomness to the wind and pushing a new arrival to the head of the line. The Kingpin Wave has started showing up online and I grabbed me the two ladies of the wave, along with a certain young vigilante. Silver Sable just happened to be on the top of the stack, so let’s go ahead and have a look at her first. OK, I actually have another reason to look at her first, and I’ll get to that very shortly.

As you can tell from the box, this is going to be another Spider-Man themed wave. This time there are seven figures in the assortment, but only six needed to complete the Wilson Fisk BAF. Most waves have left me content to grab figures at a leisurely pace as I find them, but I’ll tell you right now that I’ll be looking to wrap this one up pretty quickly, because I want me that Kingpin real bad. Like the Kree Sentry Wave, the packaging here still features the change that has the window as a cover for the tray and not part of the box, so I guess this is something that Hasbro is sticking with.

So, my first thoughts are… SILVER SABLE!!! It’s about damn time, right? My second thoughts are… She looks damn great!!! And finally… But wait, why does she look so damn familiar? And the obvious answer is that she’s mostly just a repaint of Lady Deadpool, the figure I just looked at last week. The sculpted gauntlets are new and look nice, but from the neck down the rest is all recycled from Wanda Wilson, including the belt, thigh pouches, and the shoulder rig.

Granted, it all looks great on Ms. Sablinova, but I think the belt is the biggest giveaway, because it’s so damn distinctive looking. Maybe if I wasn’t reviewing these figures in two consecutive weeks it wouldn’t have been so apparent. With that having been said, the coloring on the costume is fantastic. The silver buck with lighter silver paint looks quite striking and the plastic they used for all the added gear matches the lighter silver paint quite nicely. As much as I was a little underwhelmed with Lady-D, I’m properly impressed here. Although, those thigh straps are still a pain in the ass to keep in place when I’m playing around with her.

The head sculpt is also excellent. Sable is sporting an all-business expression, the silver headband looks great, and the hair itself is sculpted so as not to mess with her neck articulation much at all. The paint on the eyes and lips is straight and clean. I think my only nitpick here would be the eyebrows, which kind of look like they were just drawn on with a silver Sharpie. And since I mentioned articulation, I’ll just refer you back to last week’s Lady-D review rather than go through it all again here.

Silver Sable comes with two weapons and since recycling is the word of the day, it’s not too surprising that these guns aren’t new. We last saw these included with Domino and this time they’re recast in black plastic, which I think looks a lot better than the previous blue. I like these designs a lot, although to be honest, I think I would have been happier if we just got two of the same pistol. I’ll also note that I wish we could have had a holster for the pistol. Sable can hold the rifle just fine in either hand, but her grips are a little too wide to get a tight grip on the pistol, leaving it to flop about in her hand a bit.

In the end, I like this figure a lot more than I should. I mean, I kind of want to (metaphorically) piss all over it because of the heavy recycling, but I can’t because I think she looks fabulous, she’s fun to play with, and she’s probably going to be on my desk for a while. And it’s not like Hasbro sent me this figure as a review sample. As always, I paid for it with my own hard-earned dollars, so I’ve got no guilt about saying it. I dig her a lot. And with that having been said, I’ll happily take a more classic version of the character if Hasbro wants to take another crack at her in a future wave.

Feb 1 2019

Predator (Dark Horse Comics): Ultimate Ahab by NECA

It’s been a few weeks since I opened some NECA goodies, so let’s remedy that on this fine Friday by plunging into their Predator pool and pulling out something new! I’ve still got two of the three figures from Series 18 to look at, but I think I’m going to set those aside and instead open up another of their Ultimate Series, and one that’s been sitting around for way too long. Let’s check out Ultimate Ahab!

Pulled from the pages of Dark Horse’s Predator comics, Ahab is an Elder Predator with a bit of an obsession over hunting Engineers (as in Space Jockies not people who drive trains or design bridges!) and oh my, what a great choice he is for the Ultimate Series treatment. As always, the packaging here consists of a window box with a front flap covering the window. It’s got plenty of pictures of the figure as well as some kick-ass artwork, and everything is collector friendly. The fact that these are some of the few action figure packages that I actually keep should speak volumes about how much I dig them, but saving the boxes also comes in handy to keep all those extra goodies! They don’t call these Ultimate for nothing!

After the uniquely crazy look of Broken Tusk, Ahab is kind of a return to basics, or at least a much simpler and streamlined outfit. He’s got the usual net-motif sculpted into his torso and legs, as well as armor on his lower legs, forearms, shoulders, and the upper left part of his chest. The outfit is rounded out with a simple belt, thigh armor, partially covered by sculpted fur, and an alien skull hanging around his neck. He also features a stylish crimson cape, which is made of an exceptionally nice material and hangs down just a bit below his waistline. Obviously, the comics and other associated Predator fiction has given us a wide array of different looking Predator outfits, and while I dig the more distinctive ones, it’s also refreshing to get back to basics.

The paintwork is excellent and the figure exhibits all the usual flourishes I’m used to seeing on these guys. Ahab’s Yautja flesh varies from a sickly pale yellow to orange, and he’s got several natural markings on his skin, particularly at the inner thighs and shoulders. The armor isn’t as heavily weathered on this guy as some of my other Preds, but it has just the right amount to make it look lived in and well used. There’s also a bit of gradient brown on the sculpted fur patches.

The exploits of Ahab’s hunts are written all over his face. His right eye is missing and flesh has grown over the socket. He’s also missing his right upper mandible, and there are some scars interrupting the spotting on the top of his head. But he’s still a handsome devil and I will never stop being impressed by the work NECA puts into the Predator dreadlocks, with each one separately sculpted. And while it’s not actually part of his head, now seems as good a time as any to talk about the hose that connects the shoulder armor to the piece of chest armor. With my past Preds, articulating the arm would cause this to pop out of the hole on the chest armor. That’s fine, because otherwise it would severely limit that limb’s articulation. Unfortunately, this one appears to be glued in, because instead of simply popping out, the tab broke off in the hole. I may glue it, I may leave it out, or I may just snip it off entirely.

Instead of a swappable head, Ahab actually comes with a wearable mask. This is held on mostly by friction, but it fits pretty well and leaves his mandibles exposed. The interior also features some great detail, and I love that NECA bothered to paint the interior of the eyes red.

Ahab’s arm bracers conceal the usual Predator gadgets. The left arm has his flip up computer and his right arm houses his twin extending blades. You can also swap this piece out for one with triple blades, which is a damn cool bonus. And if you don’t want either sets of cutlery getting in the way, you can remove them and attach the bracer piece to have them retracted all the way in.

Ahab also comes with a satisfying number of weapons, the first of which is his shoulder-mounted plasma-caster. If you’re familiar with NECA’s Predator figures, than you’re familiar with this piece. It clips onto the shoulder and features the same level of detail in the sculpt and paint finish as the rest of Ahab’s armor, blending in perfectly. The caster itself is positioned on an articulated arm allowing it to target his pray. I love the look of these as display pieces, but they tend to get in the way of the head articulation, so I tend to use them for regular display, but not when I’m playing around with the figure.

Next up is his spear. It’s got a beautifully sculpted blade with serrated hooks trailing down the top of the shaft. The middle is sculpted with a thick grip and the far end terminates into a sharp point. Ahab comes with a pair of accessory holding hands, which allows him to wield this in one or both hands. Although it should be noted that it’s a delicate piece, and some care should be taken when getting it into his fingers. NECA also included a small clip that can be attached to his back to hold the spear, but I doubt I’ll use it since the cape gets in the way.

The Smart Disc is an accessory we’ve seen before and it’s always a welcome addition. It’s painted gold and features some great sculpted detail, along with finger holes to work with one of the right hands. The only downside here is that he doesn’t have a place to store it when he’s not using it.

And I saved my favorite weapon for last, and that’s the Engineer rifle. The design of this weapon is just so damn cool and it brilliantly reflects the HR Giger techno-organic motif seen in the Engineer’s spaceship. The way it coils around it looks like some kind of worm-like creature is wrapping around Ahab’s arm. I’d love to get another one of these to give to one of my Engineer figures, but I’m sure as hell not going to take this one away from Ahab.

The final accessory is the skull and spinal column of an Engineer. It’s a beautiful, albeit grim, sculpt and features a gray painted finish.

I don’t think I’ll ever grow tired of adding new Predators to my collection, and Ahab here is yet another great example of why. The team at NECA clearly loves these alien hunters so much, and that comes out in all the beautiful details and wonderful craftsmanship and bevy of accessories. It’s hard for me to choose favorites here, but Ahab surely takes a place right beside the Jungle and City Hunters as my top Predators. And best of all, since I never owned the original NECA release of Ahab, I didn’t even have to double-dip to get this Ultimate edition.