VIGILANTE

DC MULTIVERSE (McFARLANE)

In addition to launching Superman, unquestionably its biggest star by quite a lot, DC’s Action Comics had a number of running features in the Golden Age, and while a lot of them didn’t really stick, a few did.  Though he’s never been super well-known, the Greg Saunders version of Vigilante is one of the more notable characters to get his own feature there in the Golden Age.  With the success of the Justice Society, DC tried out other groups of super heroes, and Vigilante found himself folded into the Seven Soldiers of Victory, who had a short Golden Age run, and a pretty notable return in Justice League of America #100 in 1972.  In media outside of the comics, perhaps his best known appearances were on Justice League Unlimited, where he was Nathan Fillion’s *first* DC role.  Greg’s been light on the action figure coverage, previously only having a single JLU tie-in figure, but he’s got himself a new figure courtesy of the last days of McFarlane!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Vigilante is figure 56 in the Collector’s Edition sub-line of McFarlane’s DC Multiverse line.  Like Elongated Man, Vigilante is part of a larger than usual drop of figures from the line, as McFarlane presumably aims to get as may out as they can before the license wraps up.  As with the Collector’s Edition figures before him, Vigilante has both a standard release and a one-per-case Platinum Edition.  The standard is based on Vigilante’s original comics colors, while the Platinum (which is the one reviewed here) uses his cartoon color scheme.  The figure stands just shy of 7 1/4 inches tall and he has 35 points of articulation.  His movement is the standard McFarlane scheme, which can be a mixed bag at times, but generally works out okay for Vig.  He’s using a decent number of parts from fellow western hero Jonah Hex, which seems pretty sensible.  He still gets a pretty extensive selection of new parts, notably the head, torso, and lower legs, which make him into a pretty respectable match for Vig as he’s appeared in the comics.  If I have one complaint about the body, it’s that the pelvis feels like it sits a bit too low and is too large for the rest of the body, not really helping with that general “diaper” look that the McFarlane figures unfortunately tend to have.  At least he’s got the gun belt to help hide it a bit.  His head sculpt has the hat permanently attached, but in contrast to the the last time Vig got a figure, his signature red mask isn’t a sculpted element, but rather cloth.  I wasn’t sure how it would look (especially since it’s pulled down off his face in the package, I’d imagine to prevent him from ending up with a red stain on his lower face), but I think it ultimately works pretty well.  It could perhaps be a touch thicker (you can see the buttons on his torso through it), and I’m not a huge fan of how it’s stitched at the back, but it stays in place well, it hangs naturally, and it looks the part.  The underlying face is perfectly fine, if a bit generic, but I can’t say I expect to see it much when I’m displaying him.  The color work on this release is meant to evoke his JLU and other more modern appearances, which means it’s more heavy on contrast, and I think is ultimately a more striking design.  Apart from some slightly inconsistent coverage on his buttons, the application’s pretty clean, and the colors are nicely chosen.  Vigilante is packed with his signature pair of six-shooters, a lasso, a knife, an axe, and a rifle, as well as a display stand and a collector card.  The guns are nice, and I appreciate that the knife has a spot on his belt.  The lasso is kind of lame, since it’s just a length of thread, with no easy way to actually get it to stay on his shoulder, which does slightly hinder his usual look.  In general, he does feel rather light for a Collector’s Edition figure, with no extra head or hands.  An alternate head with the hat removed would have been a nice option, as would some additional hand poses beyond just the gripping.  As it stands, he’s got a notch above bare minimum, which is better than nothing extra at all, so I can still appreciate it to a certain extent.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Most of my love of Vigilante is because of his JLU appearances.  Obviously, I had the JLU figure, but I’d always hoped for a non-animated figure of some sort, especially during the DCUC days (which only gave us the Adrian Chase Vigilante, an odd choice in a pre-Peacemaker world), but never got one.  I knew this figure was coming, but didn’t really pay it much mind, since I didn’t really click with the standard colors.  But, Matty had some birthday money and really wanted to get a Zelda game for the Switch, so we found ourselves at GameStop, and they had one Vigilante figure and it happened to be the Platinum, which made it rather hard for me to say no.  As with so many of these late stage McFarlane DC figures, he’s incredibly nice, and I’m happy I decided to snag him.