There’s been a lot of activity on the Mythic Legions front lately. I’ve still got two pre-orders in the pipe, All-Stars 4 just got announced, and All-Stars 3 arrived at my door a couple of weeks ago. And since I haven’t visited with this line since all the way back in May of last year, I’m at risk at being even more backlogged then I already am. I may have been a faithful fan when it comes to shelling out money, but not so much when it comes to giving this amazing line the attention that it deserves here. So, let’s get this juggernaut started up again with a review of one of those All-Stars 3 figures. The All-Stars Waves have been mostly populated by reissues based on fan polls, but they’ve also been peppered with some new figures, which are loving homages to Masters of the Universe. I haven’t been picking up too many of these, but I did grab the two that were in this assortment, which included the subject of today’s review: Dorina Onoris, an obvious nod to The Princess of Power herself, She-Ra!

I don’t always bother with packaged shots of Mythic Legions anymore, mainly because TFH have been using the same basic packaging ever since the beginning, with just minor changes to the backs of the cards. Also, I don’t keep these packages, because they’re mainly just generic and serviceable and not terribly flashy. So, sometimes I’ve already deep-sixed them before I get around to the review. One nice thing about the packaging is that you get a little bit of bio text on the insert, and Dorina’s bio hammers home the She-Ra homage by naming her as a legendary freedom fighter who led a rebellion against Lord Draguul, who serves as Mythoss’ version of Hordak. And yes, I’ll be looking at him next. Dorina came packaged with a helmeted head, but let’s start out with the one I’m most excited about.

I must say, TFH did a fine job on this one. While the visual cues are all certainly there, I think Dorina works just fine as an original character as well. Yes, Dorina is cobbled together from from pre-existing parts, but since I have yet to review all the figures that came before her, this is one of those instances where many of these parts are new to me. Indeed, I believe the armor comes from the fan poll figure, Ravaena, which is a figure I haven’t even opened yet. Everything has been given a fresh coat of paint, including the upper arms and upper legs, which have been repainted to look like bare skin. The main body armor consists of a form-fitting one-piece with scalloped breast plates, and hip plates. There’s a scale leather piece that protrudes down the front between her legs, and precious little to guard her mythic tuchus. The armor is mostly white, with some matte gold accents, and blue stones at the front of her belt. For an armor design that was not originally sculpted for this homage, the paint deco really makes it work, and I even if you aren’t in it for the She-Ra reference, I think the colors look fantastic.

Additional armor includes forearm bracers, full plate for her knees down to her feet, and segmented shoulder pieces, which are as always optional. All of these pieces use a satin gold finish, which is quite different from anything I’ve seen in the line before. It doesn’t have the same pop as the traditional gold leaf paint used in the past, but it looks quite nice, and perhaps was chosen to give the figure more of a flat, animated look. As usual, the tiniest details in the sculpt are painted, from the silver on miniscule rivets and buckles, to the brown on the sculpted belts that are meant to be securing her armor.

If you’re going for the armored shoulder look, than you can also make use of the red cloth cape that is included, which requires the shoulders to secure it in place. These are common display options to have with many Mythic Legions figures, although I’m a bit torn here on what I prefer. On the one hand, the bare shoulder look captures the Filmation look of She-Ra really well, even without the cape. On the other hand, I think the figure looks better with the cape and shoulders, and that’s probably the way I’ll display her the most.

As I mentioned earlier, you do get two heads with this figure, although only one of them is targeted at the She-Ra homage. Again, we’re seeing recycled parts, but this is the first appearance of this head in one of my reviews, so it’s new to me. The helmet is part of the head sculpt with the face guard permanently sculpted in the upward position and adorned with some beautiful scrollwork. The wings on the helmet are detachable, but removing them leaves two big empty sockets, so they really need to be swapped out with another pair of parts if you want to take them off. But why would you want to? They look great, even if they do clash with the shoulders sometimes when posing the head. The back of the head sculpt shows Dorina’s blonde hair flowing down her back, including three braids with golden ties. The face sculpt is excellent, and while she does have kind of a blank expression, maybe bordering on perturbed, the paint is applied sharply, and I dig the spray of purple eye makeup.

The other head is a standard helmeted female Elf, painted in mostly the same matte gold, but with some gold leaf added as well, and some long Elf ears are exposed on the sides. I really dig this helmet design and it looks OK on this figure, but it’s hard to imagine that it’s the same person under there with the cascade of hair being gone. I’ll likely repurpose this head elsewhere, as it will not be getting much display time using this body.

Unlike some Mythic Legions figures, you don’t get a whole hell of a lot of extras here, but Dorina does come with a standard issue sword belt as well as a sword and shield. The sword appears to be a repurposed Elf short sword. I’ve reviewed a few of the Elves from Advent of Decay, but I haven’t come across this elegant piece of cutlery yet. It’s an absolutely beautiful sculpt with a silver blade and hilt and a blue stone set in the crossguard to match the ones on Dorina’s belt and arm bracers. It’s also a pretty good stand in for She-Ra’s Power Sword. Hopefully, I’ll be seeing more of this sword as I open more figures, because it’s really damn cool.

Alas, they went with the simple disk shield, while I would have much preferred the more ornate Elf Shield. This one has been painted silver and gold to sort of match her armor, but not really. It’s not a bad shield, but it just feels out of place with this figure.

Ah, but shield notwithstanding, I absolutely love this figure and I’m glad I popped for her, despite not really collecting a lot of the Masters of the Universe homages. This one just works for me, and I think she’ll look great fighting alongside Gwendolyn Heavensbrand or perhaps defending the Honor of Silverhorn. She’s also a bit of a treat since I’m behind on opening the figures that she borrows most of her parts from, making her almost completely new to me. And since I’m going to make a concerted effort to catch up on Mythic Legions, I’ll try to revisit the line again next week with a look at Dorina’s arch nemesis, Lord Draguul.