Tag Archives: Power Girl

#4109: Power Girl

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

POWER GIRL

SUPER POWERS (McFARLANE)

“Power Girl is the Earth-Two equivalent of Supergirl, native Kryptonian and cousin to Superman”

There was a moment, about a month ago, when I was a little concerned that I might run out of a good stock of DC stuff to review on Tuesdays.  I’m significantly less worried about that these days.  Why’s that?  I’ve got so many new Super Powers to review, that’s why!  Last week, I was marveling at Supergirl, the first new female character added to the line since the vintage run, who actually doubled the number of them in the set.  Well, we’re bringing that count up to three today with Supergirl’s alternate universe equivalent, Power Girl!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Power Girl is the second figure in Wave 13 of McFarlane’s Super Powers continuation line, officially numbered 62 in the line, a number she’s stealing from Cyborg, due to Wave 13 doubling up on the Wave 11 numbers for whatever reason.  In addition to following up on Supergirl’s Super Family theme, Power Girl also joins the rapidly increasing Justice Society line-up that’s been added by the revival, though this time we’re getting a later run addition, though one that’s certainly still within the purview of the vintage line’s run.  The figure stands 4 5/8 inches tall and she has 7 points of articulation.  Structurally, Power Girl is very similar to Supergirl, which makes a degree of sense, especially for this era of the character, before certain assets became quite so prominent in her design.  Speaking of design, she’s more or less using Power Girl’s second costume design, when they removed the boob window in favor of a v-neck collar.  It’s what she was wearing at the time of the original line, so I can’t really fault it, and I think it translates the best to this style of all the available choices.  Like Supergirl, she’s using a modified version of the Wonder Woman body, which has removed all of the Wonder Woman-specific elements.  Power Girl gets a unique set of lower legs, featuring buccaneer boots, as well as a unique head sculpt.  While not quite as strong as the Supergirl head, this one’s still pretty solid, and it’s certainly sharp.  Like Supergirl, she’s got a cloth cape, and it’s still kind of odd sitting, but in Karen’s case, that’s not as much of an issue, since her cape usually hung over her shoulders a bit more, which this one does.  Her color work is generally strong.  It’s bright, eye catching, and fairly cleanly applied.  For whatever reason, she’s got a choker painted onto her neck, which isn’t really a Power Girl thing, at least with this costume, but admittedly I don’t hate it, and it breaks up the neck a bit, so I don’t hate it.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

While I wasn’t exactly bummed about the line having no Power Girl the way I was about Supergirl, I was at the very least a little sad to see the end of more JSA members when all was said and done.  In that regard, I was certainly pleasantly surprised to see her crop up here.  She’s a fun addition, while maybe not quite as polished as Supergirl was, she’s quite nice.

#0141: Power Girl & Doctor Fate

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

POWER GIRL & DOCTOR FATE

DC MINIMATES

So, I know in my review of Thor and Absorbing Man I said that it was the last of my “New” Minimate reviews for a while.  I’m not deviating from this.  However, I have lots of old Minimates.  And I have a randomized list from which I draw the order of my reviews.  And I dare not deviate from the list.  So, I’m gonna be totally up font here:  There’s a lot of Minimate reviews on the horizon.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s jump to what I’m looking at today.  This is my third look at the tragically short DC Minimates.  I was a big fan of these guys, and they are actually the line that officially got me hooked on Minimates in general.  But, they were one of the few Minimates lines to be outsourced, being handled by DC Direct instead of Diamond.  DC decided to pull the plug and then they were gone.  Today’s focus is two of the slightly more obscure characters in the line, though they were both a bit higher profile at the time: Power Girl and Doctor Fate.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

These two figures were part of the 2nd series of DC Minimates.

POWER GIRL

First, it’s a character that was really big for a few years there, but seems to have fallen back into the background, Power Girl.  Power Girl is present here in her look from the early 2000s, when she was a prominent member of the Justice Society and was at the height of her popularity.  She doesn’t look too different from her earliest incarnation, but her costume does noticeably have the seams that were very present at that time.  She’s built on the typical Minimate body, so she stands about 2 ½ inches tall and features 14 points of articulation.  She has 4 sculpted add-ons: hair, gloves, and a torso/cape combo.  All of these were new to the figure, though the gloves were shared with two other figures in the wave.  The hair is well done, and really looks like her hair at the time.  The torso is…odd.  Power Girl is commonly depicted as having large…assets, which is difficult to show on a block figure.  So they gave her a sculpted torso piece, I guess to make her torso larger.  It doesn’t really work the way they were hoping, and she just ends up looking too bulky.  The painted details are all pretty good and everything is cleanly applied.  The figure included no accessories.

DOCTOR FATE

Next, it’s Doctor Fate, who is a guy who does stuff with magic.  And is a doctor, I guess.  Maybe he has a doctorate in magic?  I know the original Fate was a doctor of archeology, but this is the third version of the character, and I don’t believe he had any legit claims to “doctor-hood.”  Anyway, as I mentioned, this is the third version of the character, which is the version that was running around at about the time this figure was released.  The figure is built on the standard body, so he’s got the usual stats.  Fate’s got 4 sculpted add-ons: Helmet, cape, and gloves.  The gloves are shared with Power Girl, but the helmet and cape are unique to this figure.  They both look really cool, and help to make this figure one of my favorites in the line.  The paint detailing is really sharp on this figure, with lots of really bold lines that really help with that “comic book” feel.  Fate includes a spare hairpiece, so he can be displayed without his helmet.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Like with all of the DC Minimates, I picked this set up from my local comic book store when it was released.  This is an interesting set because it includes Power Girl, one of the few DC Minimates I don’t really think is all that, and Doctor Fate, one of my absolute favorites in the line and one of my favorite Minimates in general.  What a dilemma!

*By the way, you’ll notice that this review doesn’t feature separate shots of each minimate with it’s different looks to accomany it’s personal reveiw block like my recent round of Minimates did.  To keep up with the daily posting schedule, most of my shots of figures that I use in reviews were taken months or even a year ago.  Initially, I had planned on shooting all of my Minimates in the sets they were released in, so there were no solo shots.  Recently, given the structure of  my reviews, I’ve found that I actually prefer having the solo shots, so I’ve started taking them.  But, I don’t really have the time to go back and retake all of the Minimates photos, so the older stuff will just have the group photos.  Sorry everybody!