Tag Archives: Hal Jordan

#0148: Green Lantern

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

GREEN LANTERN

DC TOTAL HEROES

 

For someone who tries not to talk about the current state of DC Comics, I sure do seem to review a lot of modern DC lines, don’t I?

I’ve talked before about DC Universe Classics and how much of a success it was, for a while.  Then, for a number of reasons, it was pulled from retail and ultimately died.  Since then, Mattel has been attempting to find a new DC line to succeed with the general public.  Total Heroes is the most recent attempt.

It’s a line of fairly stylized versions of DC’s heavy hitters, in a roughly 6 inch scale.  The line just started hitting stores recently, and being the addict I am, I had to buy the Green Lantern figure.  So, let’s see what I think of the new line.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Green Lantern was released as part of the second assortment of Total Heroes figures as far as I can tell.  They don’t have defined waves anymore, and I know he wasn’t amongst the very first set of figures, so I think he and Sinestro are both later releases.  He’s the Hal Jordan version of the character, and he’s sporting Hal’s New 52 look.  Of all the New 52 redesigns, I find Hal’s redesign least offensive.  Still not my favorite, but it could be worse.  The figure stands about 6 inches tall and features 20 points of articulation.  Most of the articulation is pretty good, but some sort of swivel somewhere on the legs would be appreciated.  As it is, the leg articulation is a bit limited.  The sculpt is done to match the angular style of the rest of the line.  Not having any of the other figures, I’m not sure how much of the figure is reused from others, but I imagine that all of the more generic bits are.  I do really like the ring hand’s slightly angled sculpt.  It allows for some cool poses and really adds a bit of personality to the figure.  I’m iffy on the head sculpt.  It’s certainly not bad, and I really do like the face, but the hair seems off.  They’ve given Hal a very close-cropped cut, which doesn’t really fit the character, who is often depicted with a more loose hair style.  It looks okay, it’s probably just more of a personal preference thing.  The paint work is basic, but pretty good.  There’s a spot or two of misapplied paint, and mine has a black spot on his right glove, but nothing too noticeable.  GL includes one accessory: a clear green axe construct.  It looks fine, though the double blade thing is a bit weird.  I would have preferred if he had something that could clip onto his ring hand.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I found this figure while killing time at a local Toys R Us during my brother’s chorus practice.  I decided to give the line a try.  The figure is a pretty fun figure, but I can’t really say that it’s swayed me on buying any of the other figures in the line.  I think it will continue to be a figure by figure basis with these guys.

#0095: Green Lantern & Sinestro

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , ,

GREEN LANTERN & SINESTRO

SUPER FRIENDS (DC DIRECT)

Today, I’ll be looking at another piece of my extensive Green Lantern collection, though unlike the last time, this is a set I acquired because I actually wanted it, not just because it said “Green Lantern” on the box.  This time around, it’s a 2-pack from DC Direct’s Super Friends line released a while back.  In particular, it’s Green Lantern and his nemesis Sinestro based on their appearance from the 70s TV show Challenge of the Superfriends.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

This pair was released as part of the 3rd wave of 2-packs from DC Direct’s Super Friends line.

GREEN LANTERN

Up first, it’s the hero of the set, Green Lantern.  Unsurprisingly, he’s based on the character’s appearance from the show.  He stands a bit over 6 inches tall and has 9 points of articulation.  The articulation can be a bit tricky, as the ball joints on the arm have a tendency to pop out, leaving poor Hal armless.  The sculpt on the figure is very smooth, and all the lines are very clean, which is appropriate for the design they were trying to capture.  In particular, the head sculpt really got the character design from the show down.  The paint is also clean and basic, but that’s no surprise, given the look they wanted.  The pupils seen through the mask can be a bit unnerving, but that’s in line with his design.  The figure included a lifesize version of his ring from the show, a display stand with the Super Friends logo, and a miniature version of the hall of justice.

SINESTRO

Next, Green Lantern’s arch-nemesis, Sinestro!  Sinestro is, of course, based on his appearance in the show.  He stands just shy of 7 inches tall and has the same 9 points of articulation as his pack mate.  Unlike GL, Sinestro doesn’t seem to be plagued by the arm issue, which makes him a bit easier to pose and such.  Sinestro’s sculpt is a bit more detailed than GL’s, since his character design was a bit more intricate.  A lot of the musculature of the sculpt is very similar, just stretched out to convey Sinestro’s tall, lean build.  Like with GL, the head sculpt is really the shinig point of this figure, giving Sinestro the perfect sinister grin.  Sinestro also includes a lifesize model of his ring from the show and a display stand with the show’s logo.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Green Lantern and Sinestro were a birthday gift from some family friends who were aware of my intense Green Lantern fandom.  I greatly appreciated it, and it was actually my only figure of Sinestro for a good long while.  I still really like this set, as it’s a great representation of a popular take on the characters.  I can’t look at them without the Challenge of the Super Friends theme starting up in my head.

#0091: Hal Jordan

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

HAL JORDAN

GREEN LANTERN (MOVIE)

Having rounded up all of my Christmas gift reviews (barring any late gifts, I suppose), I’ll be moving back to my regularly scheduled programming of random figures from my vast collection.  A large subset of my collection is solely Green Lantern items, due to me being a really big fan of the character.  Being such a fan, sometimes I buy stuff solely because it’s Green Lantern.  That was the case with today’s figure, which hails from Mattel’s toy line to tie in with 2011’s Green Lantern movie.  It’s the basic version of the main character, Hal Jordan.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Hal was released in the first wave of figures from Mattel’s Green Lantern line, which came out a few short weeks before the movie’s release.    He stands about 4 inches tall and has 8 points of articulation.    He’s based on Hal’s fully GL’ed up look from the movie.  The sculpt is passable, though the details are a bit on the soft side. The likeness on the head is pretty good, with a decent representation of Ryan Reynolds from the movie.  The paint is fine, nothing spectacular, but there’s no slop of smudges which is nice, but details like Green Lantern’s power ring are left completely unpainted.  This gives the figure a cheap look, but it’s wasn’t a “cheap” figure to buy.  Hal includes a clear green construct.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Yeah, so this figure is, well he’s not very good.  If he’d been released 10 years earlier, perhaps it’d be okay, but not for a modern day figure.  It’s cheaply made, the paint is as simplistic as possible, and he has practically no articulation, which means he’s not a very entertaining figure.  I have this figure because and only because it’s a Green Lantern action figure.

#0054: Green Lantern – Emerald Shield

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

GREEN LANTERN – EMERALD SHIELD

GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH (DC DIRECT)

So, I’m a big Green Lantern fan, and as such, I have a whole lot of Green Lantern stuff.  Here’s a piece of that collection.  It’s another DC Direct review, this time from one of their many Green Lantern lines.  This line was done to correspond with Green Lantern: Rebirth, the series that brought the long dead Hal Jordan back from the dead.  I’ll be looking at one of the variants of Hal Jordan from that line.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Hal was released as a part of DC Direct’s Green Lantern: Rebirth line.  He was a Toyfare exclusive*.  He was a recast of the regular Green Lantern from the line.   He stands a little over 6 inches and has 13 points of articulation.  Like I said, he shares his sculpt with the basic Hal Jordan from the line, but this is the first of the two I’ll be looking at, so I’ll examine it here.  It’s a nice sculpt, with basic smooth lines.  The details of the costume are etched in.  The musculature of the body is handled pretty well, with no odd proportions.  The head is a decent approximation of Hal, looking somewhat cocky.  With the exception of his logo on his chest, GL  has no paint to speak of, because this particular figure’s gimmick is being molded in translucent green plastic to replicate when GL is all powered up.  GL includes a display stand, a piece that hooks onto the stand to allow GL to hover, and a power batter molded in translucent green.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

This figure, along with the regular version, was a birthday gift from my parents.  It’s great because it combines my love of translucent action figures with my love of Green Lantern!  While the idea has been used several times since, this was really the first time that a GL figure was released in clear green, which made him extra cool at the time!

*ToyFare magazine was a pretty fantastic resource for collectors back in the day, providing not only news on upcoming releases, but also augmenting collectors’ collections with a few exclusive items here and there.

#0036: Green Lantern – Armored

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

GREEN LANTERN – ARMORED

JUSTICE (DC DIRECT)

Today’s review is a piece of my quite large Green Lantern collection.  I’m a huge Green Lantern fan, so I have a tendency to buy figures based solely on the fact that they’re Green Lantern.  That’s kinda the case with today’s figure, based on Green Lantern’s armored appearance in Justice.  For those of you who don’t know, Justice was a 12 issue Maxi-Series released by DC Comics a few years ago.  It featured art by Alex Ross and was effectively a more modern day take on Challenge of the Superfriends.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Armored GL was released in the sixth series of DC Direct’s Justice line.  He stands just shy of 7 inches tall, and has 15 points of articulation.  Like I said above, he’s based on Green Lantern’s armored appearance from towards the end of the series, when the Justice League has their final showdown with the Legion of Doom.  It’s a neat design, and also very unique, which helps to break up some of the monotony of some of the other Green Lanterns.  The figure is an all new sculpt, which isn’t surprising given there was little room for reuse.  The body is pretty well done, though like many other DC Direct figures of the same time period, he has a slight pre-posed nature to him that doesn’t really work too well with the articulation given.  Granted, it’s nowhere near as bad here as it was on some others, so it doesn’t bother me too much.  There aren’t really any facial features to depict, but the faceplate looks cool.  Also, a really cool touch on the head is the face on the back of it.  In the comic, GL’s suit was actually Metal Men member Iron wrapping himself around GL for protection, so Iron’s face is shown in the back.  It’s a cool feature and adds a lot to the figure, almost making it a two-in-one figure!  The paint on the figure is solid, with little slop or bleed over.  GL’s only accessory was a stand, which is somewhere in a large box of stands from other DC Direct figures.  It was identical to the stand that was included with every other figure in the line.  It looked fine if you only had one figure on display, but any more and it just becomes overly large and cumbersome.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I got Armored GL from my local comic store Cosmic Comix during the store’s annual year end sale.  He was one of about 15 DC direct figures that I bought for 45% off of their original price (which brought his price to about $8.50).  I had held off on the figure before, but for that price it was definitely worth it.  He’s a fairly fun figure and I was glad to add him to my collection!