SUPERGIRL

SUPER POWERS (McFARLANE TOYS)

“As the most powerful teenager on the planet, the Girl of Steel possesses all of Superman powers from superhuman strength, speed and invulnerability all the way down to his flight and enhanced senses.”

Somehow Super Powers returned.

No, wait, that’s probably not the vibe, right?  Super Powers being back is a good thing.  Hmmm… “It’s just been revoked?”  No, not it either.  “The reports of Super Powers’ death have been greatly exaggerated.”  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Right, so if you haven’t gathered by now, McFarlane’s Super Powers revival line is not quite as done as it seemed to be when I wrote my review of Cyborg almost a year ago.  It genuinely looked that way at the time, but then Entertainment Earth swooped in and seemingly salvaged the line for at least another four waves.  So, that’s actually pretty cool.  One of my notably complaints about the McFarlane run when I wrapped things up in that Cyborg review was that, despite adding 72 figures to the line, McFarlane hadn’t actually addressed a major issue with the original Kenner run, which was the lack of female characters outside of Wonder Woman.  Now, I’m not going to take *all* the credit here, but we’re literally one figure into the continuation and the count of female characters has already doubled.  Let’s check out Supergirl.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Supergirl is part of Wave 13 of McFarlane’s Super Powers continuation line, officially released under the DC Direct branding.  This is the first of the four Entertainment Earth-exclusive assortments, sold as sets, and it started shipping out right at the end of July.  A bit of curious housekeeping right at the start here: on the backs of the boxes, the figures are all shown on a yellow background, each with a number, mimicking the wave 3 cardbacks from the Kenner run.  Supergirl is figure 61, which is interesting because that spot was previously occupied by Deadman from the Gold Label Wave 11 assortment from last year.  The rest of the single carded figures remain, but all of Wave 11 has been removed, and their numbers re-used for some reason, despite the fact that even the cases of this assortment still number it as “13,” and you can only get to that number if you count the Gold Label assortment.  So, that’s kind of weird.  Doesn’t affect the actual figures, but weird.  Moving on.  The figure stands 4 5/8 inches tall and she has 7 points of articulation.  Structurally, she’s using a variant of the McFarlane Wonder Woman body, which I actually haven’t personally handled.  It’s not too far removed from the original Kenner mold, though, and this likewise feels pretty closely related.  At first glance, I felt like she was too tall, but relative to the other figures in both the McFarlane and Kenner runs, she’s not too far out of place.  Her outfit’s sort of an interesting choice.  Kara was part of both the original Kenner pitch for the line in the early ‘80s and the planned continuation of the line post-Series 3, both times using her design from the 1982 style guide, which is her blouse and hot pants look from the ‘70s.  It’s been theorized that by the time she actually hit the line, they’d have put her in her updated headband-sporting “jazzersize” outfit from 1984, but that’s all rumor.  What we see here is actually something that the mainstream Kara really never wore, since her original look was an all blue dress without the red skirt, her replacement was the blouse and shorts, then there was the headband look, and then she died.  This is ultimately closest to the look sported by the Matrix Supergirl in the ‘90s (though the belt’s not quite right), who wasn’t actually Kara.  In actuality, the design is essentially lifted from some additional style guide work DC hired Jose Garcia-Lopez to do in the ’00s, as part of a more “evergreen” branding for the character.  Given Garcia-Lopez influenced the bulk of the original line, it means she remains consistent.  Moreover, the original Supergirl movie had started with the ’84 redesign, before ditching the headband and red shoulders, resulting in a look that was very close to this, and it’s not too far of a reach for Kenner to have potentially used such a look had they introduced her to the line, so I can’t really complain.  In terms of the actual figure, she gets a new head, which very much dials into the ‘70s/early ‘80s Kara, which I quite like, and she also gets a belt piece, which matches well with her cousin’s usual get-up.  She gets a cloth cape and skirt, which work well enough.  The cape sits a bit odd due to the size of the clip and how the hair interacts with the shoulders, but with a little bit of futzing, it looks okay.  Kara’s color work is bright and colorful, just like it should be.  In contrast to most of the rest of the line, her skin tones, especially on the head, are molded, which is more accurate to the Kenner approach, so I’m definitely a fan.  What I’m not a huge fan of is the removal of the “S” on her cape, which has been on most of the Supermen in the line, so it’s a bummer it’s missing here.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I really thought the line was done, and I was really bummed we never got a Supergirl, who I’d honestly wanted since before the revival even happened.  I was thrilled that there were more figures coming, and even more thrilled that Kara was amongst the first batch of them.  Interesting quirks to her costume aside, she’s really great, and does what this line does best, which is feel like an authentic Kenner product.  I have minor quibbles, but that’s really all they are.  Perhaps the biggest drawback to her is that you have to buy five other figures to get her.  Less an issue for me, but not great for the more casual fan.