From Strangers in Paradise - KATCHOO!

Indie Spotlight Series 1 Action Figure from Shocker Toys

If you haven't read Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise, I suggest you run out right now and buy the collected editions.  It's full of great writing, great art, great characters, and great storylines.  The comic series ran 107 issues from 1993 through 2007 and followed the lives of two main characters, Francine Peters and Katina Choovanski (aka Katchoo).  I think everyone was surprised to see Katchoo in the lineup for Shocker Toys first wave of Indie Spotlight characters.  SIP hardly seems like a property likely to be given the action figure treatment, but this figure really works and has become a little gem of my collection (mostly because SIP is one of those books that non-comicbook people have heard about and read, so friends of mine who can't tell Storm from Wonder Woman actually recognize Katchoo).

The action figure is pretty great.  Shocker Toys has a knack for showing very unpolished prototypes at conventions, but the final products always end up looking very nice indeed.  I'm really looking forward to all their Golden Age figures.

Katchoo has articulation unlike anything I've seen before.  Other companies like DC Direct, Hasbro, and Mattel have been honing their articulation for years, but Shocker Toys is a new company that plunged right into the market with modern hyper-articulation.  The knees and elbows are both double-jointed.  The neck, waist, and mid-torso cuts all have ball joints.  But the really interesting new articulaton is the legs/hips and shoulders.  It's kind of a rotating-ball-joint-hinge amalgamation, but it works very well, especially on a character with sculpted clothes. (almost forgot - wrists and ankles are articulated, too!)

Katchoo's only character-specific "accessory" is a gun.  I used quotes because it's molded into her hand so it isn't much of an accessory.  She also came with an Isz (a little demon-like creature from the Maxx comics - the Maxx figure anchored this first wave).

Time for a comparison shot!

Here is Katchoo with the two Strangers in Paradise Mini-busts by Clayburn Moore/Moore Collectibles.

Buy the book!  Learn it, Love it, Live it!

Cheers!