beware of a handsome stranger

reviews of spawn.com figures previews presents:

Warriors of the Zodiac — hey, baby, what’s your sign?

okay, let’s start with the basics. this line looks incredibly similar to the 7th kingdom line by the four horsemen, who designed most of the best figures out of mcfarlane for several years, then jumped ship to mattel to work on the motu relaunch, the ‘dc but really just batman and superman’ line, and the new dc universe line. (which is still mostly batman and superman…)

the four horsemen helped define the mcfarlane house style, and took it with them when they left, but mcfarlane kept it too, they just stopped doing the wierd and crazy stuff the horsemen worked on. before they left, the average line of spawn figures had maybe one spawn variant, and only rarely directly referenced the comics. afterwards was when the shift to non-posable, hyper-realistic statuary started in earnest, and the comics took over, and frankly i’m amazed the company managed to survive.

end result is that mcfarlane’s zodiac is a preposed and non-articulated line of medieval fantasy animal men in stylized armour and impractically ornate weaponry, while the horsemen’s 7th kingdom is a stiff and moderately posable line of animal men in stylized armour and slightly less impractical ornate weaponry. mcfarlane’s gimmick is that each fighter is themed after a sign and thus animal of the zodiac, while the horsemen’s gimmick is that every figure and most of the accessories and so on are voted on by the fans.

i doubt it’s an ‘a ripped off b’ situation, more just that these are very similar ideas. you can see much the same thing in the narnia line, for that matter.

i suppose i can give the horsemen credit for outsourcing bad idea generation right to the very fans who support the line with their money, but seriously, this stuff is just crap. it’s a bunch of muscular dudes with animal heads, crap vintage mcfarlane overdetail on their armour, and generic looking detail on the armour and weapons, which are vaguely animal themed in matching conceits. so, like the minotaur has horn-shaped bits. great. no elbow or knee joints, but ball jointed shoulders? i hate that.

mcfarlane is just putting their house style on, well, i guess they didn’t have much to work with here, did they? other than centuries of mythology. oh well. let’s apply a wierd and ‘colossal!’ backstory to it, and call it a fantasy epic. both lines just look like a bunch of beastmen gladiators and are 99% uninteresting. i guess i’m not the target market? from what i can gather the online action figure community is all apeshit over the 7th kingdom, and mcfarlane is still in business. so let’s move on.

aries — no, i’m not a minotaur, i’m a ram-man. (no, not that one.)

so at first glance he looks like a minotaur, but he’s really a ram or a goat or what-have you. curved horns, see. okay, i can buy that.

he’s got some kind of spear thing, i’m not sure which end is the business end. the smaller/pointier one is a long barbed multi-directional serrated thing, that i’m not sure how you’d make using standard medieval smithing techniques, overlaid with a wrought-iron-ish curved rams horn flat thing, and two hooks behind that. the other end has what looks like a broadsword stuck into the bottom of skeletor’s rams head staff with a scythe blade sticking out of that. the whole assembly looks like five different broken weapons welded together, and while i wouldn’t want to get hit with it, it looks like it’d fall apart on the backswing.

he’s got big red jewels on his gauntlets, ankle-guards, and belt. always a practical and cost-effective armour solution. maybe if he hadn’t ponied up for the rare gemstones, he’d have had enough gold (or whatever monetary system they use) to pay for a full suit of armour? this gladiator ensemble isn’t really going to protect him from enemy weapons, let along his own jaggy spear thing.

seriously, who wears an ornately carved chestplate that hugs the pecs, with roman-style shoulder guards, but stops at the ribcage, leaving the entire six-pack exposed to nastiness? if the armour is useless against enemy weapons, why bother weighing yourself down with all that metal on the shoulders? and if the armour is useful, why etc…

best not to think about it. the ram horns engraved into the chestplate are more immediately recognizable as such than the ones on his head. speaking of, his head appears to be on fire. balrog-esque horns, fire, but he’s not made of lava. is aries traditionally associated with fire? i would have guessed it to be an aquatic sign. (no, yeah, it’s totally a fire sign.)

his face… well, it looks like he’s got a little mask-thing going on there, but if that face is in proportion to his head, than his head is too small for his body. where his horns stop and his mask starts is where his eyes ought to be.

ramskull for a belt buckle, seems a little morbid for a ram-man to kill his own ancestral kin and wear their remains. wonder where he got the leather for his skirt?

and we’re done. not much to it. i’d say aesthetically he’s not bad until you look at the face, and suddenly i can’t tell what that head is supposed to be. the trouble is that his mask doesn’t have clear facial features, so i can’t identify the underlying ones. and it doesn’t look right.

kind of plain, ultimately. if his spear was on fire or if he was made of magma he’d be more interesting. put a cow-head on him and you’d have a decent minotaur.

taurus — moo.

somebody at mcfarlane needs to study up on their animal species. it looks like they put the head from their minotaur, which got resculpted into aries, on a big armoured pig. i’m serious! he’s pink!

maybe it’s just the lighting? but i can’t get past that now. he’s short and stocky and pink and has a snout and doesn’t really look like much of a cow. or a traditional minotaur. you know, i bet if you put this head onto aries, that’d be the minotaur you want.

the head has horns, so i guess that counts as a minotaur. and he’s got a long lions tail. let’s call him a chimera.

he’s got a big hammer. it’s got spikes on it. i’m not sure why. sure, sure, meat tenderizers have that spikey textured head, but it’s not actually spawn spikes, it’s just those square studs like a hipsters belt. this is more like nails.

he’s got some arrows in his back. guess he’s seen some combat? there’d better be an archer in future waves or i’m going to be left wondering who the hell shot him. did he get shot in a battle years past and just never noticed because he’s a dumb pig? i mean cow? or something.

partially covered in extremely generic plated armour, again not covering much important. if they’d really played up the roman centurion/gladiator theme they could have had something cool and unique here, but this just doesn’t seem very well thought out. there’s no horn imagery on his armour, which just serves to reinforce how un-cow-like he looks overall.

gemini — eww.

wow, just… no thanks. take two of the horrible worm things that ate andy serkis in king kong, and put them together end to end, and give them two arms each, and cover them in stupid armour, and you’re done.

just try not to think about it.

biological troubles. first off, two mouths, if it ever did eat anything, well, let’s stop there. the head-at-each-end thing works in cartoons and mythology, but as an actual thing, which is what you get when it has armour strapped to it, it doesn’t work. things made of teeth eat, things that eat, well, you tell me! does it have an ass in the middle?

not to mention, why the fuck is a monster wearing armour? and armour covered in gigantic spines! i mean, this thing has no eyes! who dressed it? who made it? does it use psychic powers to control an army of subserviant and tasty slaves? did it’s species develop metallurgy and leather-crafting in the dank caves it must live in? it’s a disgusting flukeworm with arms and plate armour. this is the kind of thing a seventh grader sketches in his notebook and thinks is awesome for his d&d campaign.

but okay, let’s accept it as it is. this represents gemini, see, because it has two gaping maws. there’s two of them! (they look more like goatse.cx the more i think about that.) gemini is an air sign, and since the flaming ram says you read up a little on that, tell me how this horrible worm thing represents air.

(and why does it have human arms?!)

or better yet, don’t. please just go home. if this were the real mcfarlane, gemini would have been a pair of half naked twin girls with impossibly ornate swords, maybe conjoined, possibly kissing each other while fighting. i think i’d actually rather have that. (speaking of, where ARE they going to put the exploitative warrior-woman in prostitute armour for this wave?)

cancer — fuck yes.

okay, this makes up for the other three. this figure is completely awesome. it’s like a kaiju monster in a more realistic style. well, as realistic as a crab-man can be, but let’s run with it.

he’s a crab man! that’s just all kinds of awesome. big crab-claw right hand, tentacly beard, it’s like davy jones awesome brother.

first off, he’s made of armour, so he’s actually got a full suit of the stuff. best protected of all the warriors so far, except from rocs. he’s got a natural weapon, and while his other spiky thing doesn’t make sense, at least it looks practical.

the metal plating on the crab claw isn’t necessary, but it’s unique, and looks good, so that makes his design more interesting than the other three, which are just dudes with some armour strapped on seemingly at random.

i’m starting to think that if they’d made this a scifi line instead of fantasy, they could have played with bionic limbs and gun and such and done some more interesting stuff. so far, it’s like battle beasts without any style.

cancer’s got a samurai vibe coming off of him, which contrasts nicely with the crap gladiator vibe on aries and taurus. he’s very colorful, which sets him apart from the other three. he’s just cool looking. i would love some articulation, but i guess i could buy an extra and add some. totally getting this one.