Character variations are a lot of fun. I'm willing to bet that toy designers are so frustrated with the high quotas of top-tier characters required to anchor waves, that when one of those characters makes an appearance in an outlandish but cool costume, they just jump at the chance to spice things up in the sculpting studio. DC Comics' Blackest Night storyline from 2009-2010 provided tons of variations like this. The story was centered on Green Lantern and unveiled the entire spectrum of other Lanterns in the universe (each conforming to an emotion or theme). At one point or another in the storyline, most of the DC heroes we know and love became a lantern (of some color). After Wonder Woman's spooky tryst with the Black Lanterns, she donned a Violet power ring and became the hero we see here. Although "Star Sapphire" historically seemed to be tied to the Green Lantern villain, I suppose it's more of a fluid title or rank to be applied to anyone with a Violet power ring. Let's check out this pink-hued Diana below!
The Karen Palinko sculpt is lovely. Although this costume design doesn't add a lot of room for creativity. The design on the headpiece alone seems like one of the trickiest 2D-to-3D conversions I can think of.
One of the reasons I wanted to do a post on this figure was because I have my fingers crossed that DC Collectibles (née DC Direct) will keep up their penchant for immortalizing story-specific character variations. The recently released Detective Comics #27 introduced Brightbat and Bluebelle and upon seeing them, my first thought was "we need toys!" Hopefully DC Collectibles will deliver!
Wonder Woman comes with a Violet lantern, a gold-string lasso, and a figure stand (with the Violet Lantern logo). You can see this stand in the packaging up above.
Here are some images from the comics.
Time for some comparison pics!
In 2011, Mattel featured a slew of heroes in their Blackest Night spectrum identities for Wave 17 of their popular DC Universe Classics line.
Cheers!
" Although "Star Sapphire" historically seemed to be tied to the Green Lantern villain, I suppose it's more of a fluid title or rank to be applied to anyone with a Violet power ring."
ReplyDeleteYep! The retcon for this was that the original Star Sapphires were empowered with a Star Sapphire gemstone, which is like, made of crystalized Power of Love basically...but because Love is one of the powers at the far end of the extremes of the Emotional Spectrum (and thus, one of the most intense) its influence over the average wielder (victim, more like) was WAY too strong, basically warping their personalities.
tldr: the Zamarons realized it was entrenching itself way too much, and, finding themselves incapable of removing it after it latched onto one of their own, chose to "take a page out of the Book of Oa" as they put it, and create Violet Power Rings to channel the Violet Light of Love instead.
Now most of the Star Sapphires are a little more in control of themselves, and ostensibly more heroic, considering themselves protectors and defenders of Love throughout the universe - though they still conflict sometimes with the Green Lantern Corps due to differing values and methods. Carol Ferris eventually became their leader even, and has been a superheroine instead of a supervillain for several years now :)
Also, I really hope they do a figure some time of the newer "Star Sapphire Wonder Woman" that appeared in this year's Annual (Wonder Woman Annual #2 from DC Rebirth) - it's not a big event like Blackest Night so maybe they won't, but the outfit there was more of a fusion of her current Greco-Roman-armor-inspired outfit with the Star Sapphire theme, and I think it was very cool looking! :)
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