PENANCE

GENERATION X (TOY BIZ)

“The young woman called Penance possesses the mutant ability to internalize negative energy around her, turning her body into a diamond-hard, razor-sharp weapon. Held prisoner by the energy-stealing mutant Empath for an undetermined number of years, she escaped and was transported to the doorstep of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Now, Banshee and Emma Frost face the challenge of reaching out to help a girl who can slice apart anything she touches”

Okay, so there’s this Marvel character named Penance, and their identity is all mysterious, and they’re wrapped up in some sort of weird…bondage related gear, and their gimmick is like, pain, and being literally edgy.  Would you believe that this has happened twice, with two completely unrelated characters?  Because it has.  And one of them is objectively better than the other, but given that one of them was “let’s take Speedball, a fun lovable character and make him angsty and broody and just totally ruin him,” the other one being “better” isn’t exactly high praise, but it’s where we are here.  Introduced in Generation X #1, Penance was a big ol’ mystery character, though she was originally intended to be a random Yugoslavian girl named Yvette.  A creative team change just kind of made things more complicated, as it was revealed that Penance was in fact Monet St Croix, and that her fellow Gen X team-member who was supposedly Monet was actually Monet’s younger twin sisters Nicole and Claudette fused into one being, masquerading as their older sister.  An altercation with Emplate (who was revealed to be the eldest St Croix sibling, Marius) put Monet back in her own body, and the twins into Penance’s body, but then they got removed as well, and the body that was Penance continued on as “the Hollow” for a bit?  Are you confused?  Well, yeah, that tracks.  Me too.  Anyway, here’s this figure of Penance, from when she was secretly Monet St Croix…well, at least in continuity, if perhaps not in reality.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Penance was released in the first series of Toy Biz’s Generation X tie-in line.  She’s the final team member in the set, though I suppose “team member” is at times a loose term with her.  She’s got the uniform, though, is more what I’m getting at.  The figure stands about 5 inches tall and he has 4 points of articulation.  Penance’s sculpt has a lot of similarities to Chamber in its approach, with its even more limited articulation relative to the others in the line, the sort of softer detailing, and the decision to put her in a team uniform she was wearing on the covers, but still not in the book at this point.  The softness is odd, especially for a character like Penance, whose whole gimmick is “real sharp.”  It’s not the worst, overall, and it covers the basic details of her design alright.  I think the head, particularly the hair, seems to miss the mark a bit on how she looked in the comics.  It’s just got too much volume and roundness in its shape.  Penance has a built in slashing action feature; pushing down the lever on her back swings the arms up and down. In terms of coloring, Penance is sort of brighter than she maybe should be, I feel.  She was wearing mostly black in the comics, but here it’s a sort of mid-tone purple.  It seems…off?  I feel like the softness of the sculpt wouldn’t be as obvious if it weren’t as bright.  Penance was packed with four shackle pieces that go on her arms and legs, as well as a display stand.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I don’t really have much of an attachment to Penance as a character, aside from knowing this figure existed, and reading some early issues of the comics back in the day, and she’s not exactly one I really invested myself in after the fact.  She’s…you know…kinda confusing.  The figure isn’t confusing, I suppose, but she’s also not great.  It’s a design that didn’t really translate all that well, and without the attachment to the character like I had with Chamber, it’s hard to feel much about this figure.  It…is?  So, that’s what she’s got going for her.  Existence.  Well, it puts her ahead of some of the other team members.