THE QUESTION

DC DIRECT

It’s a figure of Question on The Figure in Question! I’ve been waiting for this to happen! I mean, I own like four or five Question figures, so it was bound to happen soon. Here it is! Ha Ha!

Oh, right, actual review stuff. Let’s get to that! So, back in the days of Hasbro holding the DC license, it was a rarity to see anything that wasn’t Superman or Batman related end up as a toy. When DC Direct first started up, they decided to go the other direction. The more obscure, the better the chances of seeing it released! That’s how there was an entire series of figures devoted to the Charlton comics characters before we ever saw a single Batman from DC Direct. For those of you that don’t know, the Charlton characters are a group of characters originally owned by Charlton Comics. Like so many other companies, DC bought out Charlton, and thus gained possession of their characters. Amongst these were fan favorites such as Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, and The Question. They were originally intended to be used as the main characters of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, before DC ultimately decided they wanted to work them into the DC universe proper. The Question’s replacement, Rorschach, went on to gain quite a fan following. The Question himself was a mostly minor character until his appearance on Justice League Unlimited, where his crazy conspiracy theorist characterization made him one of the show’s stand out characters. Let’s look at his first venture into the world of action figures!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Question hails from a time before DC Direct actually had separate lines devoted to different properties. Instead, they would do themed-series. The Question was in the “Charlton Heroes” series. The figure is about 6 inches in height and features 11 points of articulation. He’s based on the character’s original Steve Ditko-designed look, before he gained the now standard trench coat and gloves. The figure features a unique sculpt. It’s not Ditko inspired, as the figure predates DC Direct’s move to specific artist-styled figures. The sculpt is alright, though it’s rather stiff, which was common with the early DC Direct figures. The arms and legs seem too skinny, especially if you’re used to seeing the character in his original Ditko appearances. It’s not bad, but it’s not optimal. He features a removable hat/mask combo. It’s an inspired idea, but it doesn’t work out as well as they wanted, I feel. The hat looks okay from the front, but from any other angle, the shape seems off. The masked look is fine, but the removable feature means the underlying head is a little undersized, and looking upward eternally, for some strange reason. To give DC Direct some credit, the paint work on the Qestion is superb. Everything is clean and bold. There are no issues with slop or bleed over.  The only real issue the figure faces is that his hair is mostly red, as opposed to the proper black. This issue is mostly to do with the removable mask feature, since Vic Sage has red hair when the mask is off.  The question included no accessories.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Though this is the very first figure of The Question, this is actually the last figure of him I’ve gotten. When it was originally released, I didn’t know the character. So, I skipped over it, although I do remember thinking he looked pretty cool. After his appearance on JLU, I developed a real appreciation for the character. Recently, my local comicbook store, Cosmic Comix, got a collection of loose action figures in. The Question was among them, so I went ahead and got him. The figure hasn’t aged too well, and I think he’s been over shadowed by better versions of the character (namely the outstanding DCUC version!), but it’s not a bad figure at all. I’m glad I decided to pick him up!