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A quasi-human construct made of herbs and blood – for America’s libraries

Your reviewer doesn’t spend much time on message boards; most are, of course, havens for the sort of behavior that aspires dreamily, but vainly, to the dizzying heights of “obnoxiously childish.” And those few that feature people treating one another like human beings are usually damnably insular; fun to read, perhaps, but impossible to get replies to one’s own contributions. One exception to this rule was the Mezco Toyz message boards, where, after the release of Hellboy series one, fans of the line from all over the world came together to discuss its merits and its flaws, and generally have a good old time. Then…then, Mezco announced that series two wouldn’t be out for another year. And some of the regular posters went completely, twenty-speed apeshit. To call their protestations “vocal” would be to call the Star Wars Holiday Special “not very good.” One could not use a word with the letter H in it without their howling, “H stands for Hellboy, and Mezco delayed series two by a year, and this is worse than Dachau! It will destroy the Hellboy line, and the entire Mezco corporation!” Okay, the first line there is an exaggeration; they didn’t say that – but they sure did say the second line, over and over again. They didn’t get around to snowballing it further, to this delay spelling the end of western civilization and macrobiotic life. But then, your reviewer bolted after a few weeks of this behavior, so maybe they eventually did. A great pity. Anyway, all of this has little to do with today’s subject – poor, dead Roger, the homonculous.

Will you quit doing that?!?

Articulation: Not phenomenal, but not too bad, either. The joints tend to be a bit tight, which makes them hard to move, or at least hard to move without worrying about tearing them arms and legs right off. On the other hand, the little porthole in his chest opens, and that’s quality.

Sculpt: As with Johann, a truly remarkable job has been done with recreating Mike Mignola’s artistic style. And the ring on his codpiece is real metal! One could perhaps do without his left hand being permanently fisty, and his right being held open in such a way as to make it impossible for him to carry his main accessory, but so it goes. Also, his facial expression is perhaps a bit much; Roger is certainly a somber sort, but this Roger seems luridly depressed. Still, these are quibbles.

Roger does the robot (dedicated to Mr. Dan Swensen)

Paint: For a guy who is brown, this is a mighty fine paint job. The shading is excellent, there’s no bleed, and the old-metal quality to his chest-port is particularly impressive.

Durability: Well, there’s that smell again, but that could be just his flexible vest. And there were a number of complaints about series one’s breakability, back on the message boards, though a lot of these were along the lines of “I put my Hellboy figure in the heart of an atomic explosion, and it broke!” So we’ll just give this one the benefit of the doubt.

Don’t sweat it, kid. I been dead hundreds of times.

There Comes A Time In Every Man’s Life When He Must Ask Himself, “Does This Action Figure Stand Up Well?”: Stands up fine. He can even do the robot, as we have seen. Ability to do the robot is really a benchmark of action-figure stability.

Accessories: His vest is removable, and that’s aces. He comes with a book, presumably occulty, and that’s an excellent Hellboy prop in general; too bad he can’t really hold it, though. And there’s a new Mignola picture of Roger on the packaging, which, as we mentioned in Johann’s episode, constitutes a depressingly high percentage of Mignola’s published output for 2006.

Overall:

This entry was posted on Monday, January 8th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under Men of Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.