DR. SIVANA

DC COMICS MULTIVERSE (MATTEL)

When the Shazam movie was first announced, there was one big name star attached to it: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.  Originally rumored for the Big Red Cheese himself, it was later revealed that he’d actually be filling the role of antagonist as Shazam’s dark reflection, Black Adam.  So, it came as a little bit of a surprise when the movie’s villain was instead revealed to be a different Shazam foe entirely, in the form of Doctor Thaddeus Sivana.  Sivana’s actually a pretty natural choice for the first outing, since he debuted right alongside Captain Marvel in Whiz Comics #2.  Sivana’s origin was changed up for the film, borrowing a decent chunk of Black Adam’s dark reflection gimmick, but I felt Mark Strong’s performance sold Sivana as a character that wasn’t too far removed from his original incarnation (and the end of the film put him firmly on the path to classic Sivana), and I just found him to be an entertaining villain.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Dr. Sivana is one of two DC Comics Multiverse figures offered up for the movie, with the other being the big man himself.  However, unlike Shazam, Dr. Sivana is thus far not available in the basic line (and I’d be genuinely shocked to see him turn up at this point).  Sivana is also the lesser-packed of the two, making him ever so slightly hard to find.  The figure stands 6 1/2 inches tall and he has 29 points of articulation.  Sivana’s an all-new sculpt, as he well should be.  While it’s not quite on par with any of Hasbro’s MCU-based sculpts, it’s certainly an immense improvement over where Mattel’s movie-based figures were a year ago.  The best part of the figure is definitely the head, which is sporting a pretty solid likeness of Strong.  His jacket and arms also sport some pretty nice looking texturing, which is a marked change for these figures.  The under-lying body isn’t quite as strong, with more rudimentary shaping, larger patches of un-detailed plastic, and rather obvious breaks for the articulation.  On the plus side, at least the articulation breaking up the sculpt actually serves a purpose this time, as the joints aren’t nearly as limited on this figure as they had been on previous releases.  It also helps that the worst of the sculpting his hidden under the jacket piece, meaning you don’t have to fixate on the mistakes quite as much.  Sivana’s paintwork is mostly pretty subtle work, with a lot of dark, somber colors, like in the movie.  There’s not a ton of actual paint, but the important details are covered, and the work on the face in particular is quite nice and very lifelike.  Sivana is packed with a second head sporting sunglasses, two sets of hands in fists and open gesture poses, and his 8-ball that is fairly plot-relevant.  The heads are a bit tricky to swap back and forth, but it’s otherwise a pretty nice selection of extras, and I particularly like that 8-ball, because it’s the sort of thing you don’t tend to see.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Since there was no Sivana in the main line, this one was really my only option.  Fortunately, I liked the look of him a lot more than the Shazam that’s meant to go with him.  Despite being slightly on the rarer side, I didn’t have too much trouble finding Sivana, finding him at only my second stop after seeing the movie.  While there are some definite “yep, it’s Mattel” elements to this figure, I was still quite happy with him, and he actually fits in pretty well with the basic line.