In case you haven’t been checking in on FFZ Fridays lately, I’m doing this whole DC Comics thing, at least until I can get through my backlog of figures and statues, which at this rate will probably take a couple of months. Today I’m looking at another recent release in DC Collectibles’ Super-Villains line, that vixen of vegetation, Poison Ivy.

The packaging consists of the same old window box with the extended back and J-hook so you can swing it on a peg or stand it on the shelf. The villains series features a black box, as opposed to the usual white boxes and the swipe across the front and band on the back are both green, presumably to satiate Ivy’s thirst for chlorophyll. You do get a shot of the figure on the side panel in case you want to line up these packages on a bookshelf, which is always a plus for me, but with space limitations being what they are, I just throw these boxes out.

Call me sacrilegious, but I’ve been mostly OK with the “New 52” character designs, although that’s not the case with Poison Ivy. I find her black leotard covered with greenery to raise too many questions. Does she put on the bodysuit first and then grow the plants on top of it? Are the plants just artificial and part of the costume? And why black? How does that in any way fit the whole plant motif? It’s just a weird design and I’m not sure where the designers were going with it. Why go with this when you can go with something like this. With that having been said, this figure comes as close as possible to selling it to me and that’s thanks to some really solid sculpting and paintwork.

The figure features Ivy’s shapely bod cast in black plastic and with sculpted vines and leaves scattered about in patches. Because she’s wearing a leotard, the placement of the leaves doesn’t have to be as strategic as past versions of the character, but even still I don’t get why they left one breast uncovered. I love how all the greenery is actually part of the sculpt and the paint on the vines and some of the individual leaves is fairly neatly applied. DCC could have easily done a lot of the vines with just paint, so I applaud them going the extra mile.

DCC has delivered on some rather attractive female portraits in this line and that continues to be the case with Ivy here. She’s not only beautiful, but she’s easily recognizable from the panel art, and that’s something that’s not always easy to do when going from 2D art to a fully realized 3D figure. The paint on her eyes and lips is rather tight, as is are the black vines on her cheeks. Wait, black suit with green vines, but black vines on… nah, nevermind. The sculpted hair is equally impressive. It’s a light brown with an effective wash and bits of leaves scattered throughout.

Ivy has a fair number of articulation points. The arms have rotating hinges at the shoulders and hinges in the elbows, swivels in the biceps, but sadly no swivels in the wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, hinged at the knees and ankles, and have swivels in the thighs. There’s no torso articulation, but her neck is ball jointed. But even with all these strategic points, Ivy isn’t a terribly limber figure. The range of movement in the shoulders and hips is pretty limited and the hair renders the neck joint almost useless. No matter how hard I try, I can’t really get any decent poses out of her and while I haven’t had any problems with her joints, I’m not about to risk stressing them.

While definitely not my preferred look for Poison Ivy, this is still a solidly crafted figure. The only real gripe I have here is with the articulation and again, it’s not because the points aren’t there, but rather few of them have any real range of motion, making Poison Ivy one of those figures that is best just standing on the shelf and looking nice. And of course, people who have been collecting DCC and DC Direct for a while won’t be bothered so much by limitations in the articulation. At the original $20, I’ve had this figure in my hand a couple of times and always put her back, but with so many DCC figures hitting the clearance bins these days, I took a second look and at $13, I found I couldn’t resist.

With Mondays being all about Marvel, it seems only right to be book-ending the weeks with DC Fridays and that’s exactly what I’ll continue to do until my backlog of DC figures and statues dries up. Today I’m checking out another of DCC’s Super-Villains assortment, which happens to be a new version of Harley Quinn. This Harley is ripped straight from the pages of her self-titled comic, which is a book that I am constantly asking myself why I’m reading. It has it’s moments, but all in all I just don’t think it’s very good. Most of the time it just feels like Harley is just screaming, “Look at me, I could be Deadpool, too! I can break the fourth wall and get into wacky adventures!” Sure. OK.

We’ve seen the DCC packaging here at least a dozen times and the only real difference here is they’ve gone with a black box and in this case a read swipe across the front. It’s a lot more exciting than the plain white, so let’s give credit where credit is due. The window gives you a great look at the figure, and in this case all the stuff that comes with her. In her book, Harley inherits a building in NY and takes some jobs to pay expenses. Yeah, this is what they came up with for Harley’s solo comic. One of those jobs is with the Brooklyn Bruisers Roller Derby Team, which sounds like it has promise, but barely gets any panel time.

My reaction to the comic may be tepid, but I know an outstanding figure when I see one, and boy is this it! I’m probably one of the few people out there that digs Harley’s New 52 whorish look and here it’s perfectly adapted to the Roller Derby circuit. Everything is sculpted with such loving detail from the laces and pompoms on her shoes to the knitted texture of her socks and the adorable little bells on her choker collar. Even the laces on the back of her top are individually sculpted. Her belt includes a brace of sculpted bullets and she has a functional holster for her automatic pistol. The paint on the figure has the chops to back up the magnificent sculpt. The high gloss used for her outfit is stunning and contrasts beautifully with her pale white skin. What’s more the paint is just about immaculate. There’s hardly any slop or bleeding to speak of.

As for the portrait, well the art in the book is kind of all over the place. I generally like Chad Hardin’s style, but it tends to run from mature to hyper cutesy and in this case we got the later, while I would have preferred the former. Still, the head sculpt certainly matches that particular aspect of the panel art and in that sense it’s a great sculpt and I’m not going to quibble over what is still a great figure.

In terms of articulation, Harley’s got a lot of points in the right places and fares better than some of the other recent DCC figures I’ve looked at. Her arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders, hinges in the elbows, and swivels in the biceps and wrists. The shoulder armor is hinged to improve the articulation and I don’t have any problems with them popping off like I did with Starfire’s. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, hinged at the knees, and have swivels in the ankles. The hip joints are a little more restrictive than I would like. There’s no articulation in the torso, which I’m actually OK with because it would have probably marred the sculpt, but she does have a ball joint in the neck.

I don’t usually expect a lot of accessories with my DC Collectibles figures, but in this case Harley hit the jackpot. For starters,  you get her giant hammer. In this case it’s painted with a metallic red and it’s light enough to allow Harley to wield it quite well while not losing her balance.

Next up you get her automatic pistol. The sidearm fits into the holster on her belt and she can hold it in her right hand.

Lastly, and certainly not least, she comes with her roller skates. These are wonderful little pieces, which peg into the bottoms of her feet and feature spinning wheels. I’m impressed by how well they work with the figure and they really show off her beautiful balance.

I can’t say enough good things about this new Harley Quinn. Sure, the comic might be a bumpy ride, but I’m so very glad that DCC seized the opportunity to make this figure. She looks amazing and thanks to her awesome roller skates and some superb balance, she’s ridiculously fun to play with. That’s saying a lot for a line that is more aimed at being collectibles rather than toys and meant to be placed on the shelf and admired. Like most DCC figures, Harley retails at around $20 and she’s worth every last penny of that, but I was able to grab her for about $16 and I ain’t complaining.

Those that know me, know that I don’t get really deep into Batman’s comics. I do, however, try to read the collections that revolve around important story arcs. That’s what dragged me into finally reading “Death of the Family” and I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. Conversely, I’ve only really been collecting the DCC figures related to the books I’ve been reading, so naturally The Joker now had to be on that list. This figure has actually been on my want list for a while and when he turned up on clearance at an online retailer, I tossed him in my virtual basket, along with a bunch of other “New 52” figures I was still missing.

The package is the same style window box as we’ve been seeing from DCC all along, complete with extended back and J-hook. In this case, however, they did switch up the deco quite a bit. Instead of the white box with purple swipe down the front, we get black and green. I presume the black is for evil and the green is Joker’s hair? I dig this more than the normal boxes, but I’d still like to see some character art or something more comic-book-y. Everything is collector friendly, but I don’t keep these boxes.

And here he is out of the package and he looks great! If you need any proof as to how unswervingly popular the Joker has been as a character over the decades, you need only look at the ridiculous number of ways he’s been depicted over the years. He’s had so many different looks that it’s hard to keep track of them all and this incarnation, after his face had a run in with The Dollmaker, is one that goes for shock value. To be more specific, this figure is based on Joker after he has returned to Gotham and reclaimed his face and is basically wearing it as a mask. I gotta tell you, I dig this look and DCC did a wonderful job bringing it to life in action figure form.

We might as well start with the portrait, because… damn! All the little staples and hooks holding the face on are realized in the sculpt and neatly painted, while the face itself shows the macabre wrinkles and stretch marks. Around the border you can see the reddish-brown exposed muscle and I love how deep the eyes are set into the sculpt. The detail in the teeth is also impressive and the whole thing is topped off nicely by his tuft of green hair. You could argue that a lot of DCC’s subject matter doesn’t give them the opportunity to strut their stuff as much as this guy does, but they sure stepped up when that opportunity arrived. Bravo!

The outfit consists of mechanic’s overalls from Joe’s Garage, which includes a convincing amount of sculpted rumples and wrinkles. I dig the oversized work gloves and the sculpted laces on the boots. The real star of the outfit, however, is the tool belt, which not only includes a bunch of sculpted tools, but places to store some of his extra accessories. 

The articulation here is very good for a DCC figure. That may sound like a loaded compliment, but it isn’t meant to be. Sure, apart from the waist swivel, there’s no articulation in the torso, but everything else here is plenty serviceable. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders, hinges in the elbows, and swivels in the biceps and wrists. The legs feature a T-crotch at the hips (probably the most disappointing thing about the figure), hinges in the knees, and swivels in the ankles. The head rests on a generous ball joint. All the joints were fine right out of the package, and nothing feels like its in danger of snapping.

DC Collectibles isn’t big on accessories with their figures, but Joker hit the jackpot. He comes with four implements of torture and murder in the form of everyday tools. You get a hammer and a wrench, both of which can be stowed in the loops on his belt. You get a pair of needle nose pliers, identical to the ones sculpted into his back pouch. And finally, you get a nasty looking serrated knife.

This figure is outstanding on just about every level. The sculpt and paint are both top notch and if we’re grading articulation on a curve, even that is better than your average DCC figure. I would have been perfectly happy picking him up at the MSRP of $20, but grabbing him for $13 was all the more sweeter. He is easily my favorite DCC figure standing in my display at the moment, and that’s saying quite a bit because as I said, I’m pretty selective about the Batman books that I read. But hell, I like this figure so much, I’ll probably go scoop up DCC’s Trinity set so I can have a proper DCC “New 52” Batman to go with him. Next Friday I’ll keep this DC Collectibles train rolling along with a look at a brand new Harley Quinn figure.