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 I
finally got to see Hellboy 2: The Golden Army on DVD. I
liked it. It really had a better sense of the BPRD
functioning as a coherent group instead of just leash keepers of
Hellboy and Abe. Liz and Hellboy's relationship has
progressed as well. All in all, a great sequel.
Ironically, I finally managed to track down a Liz figure this
week as well. In this film she's more in control of her
gift and not nearly as angst ridden as the first film. To
go with that, she's got a new look. Short hair and a
fairly form fitting outfit.
Liz's gift, by the way is pyrokenisis, ie, she's a firestarter.
In the new film her flames are red and orange, in the first film
they were blue, which I like better (See Bottom pic.) Maybe it
has to do with her character's growth.
 Appearance:
I have to say after reviewing Hellboy and Krauss, I was a bit
let down by Liz. She's got the look and a lot of the
detailing is there. To me though, the overall appearance
of her is more like somewhere between reality and animation.
She's ended up being more of a caricature than a straight up Liz
representation.
There are couple of things that lead to this.
Expertly hidden ankle joints make her feet and boots look a
little oversize. Large hands to grip accessories are there
as well. The last thing is her pose. When view from
behind or to the side her, uh, posterior sticks way too far out
in proportion to the rest of her. Hellboy could rest a can
of his favorite beverage back there.
There are a number of things to like about this figure,
though. The sculpting has all the detail we've seen on the
other figures. Pockets on the jacket, buckles on the boots
and belt, etc... The clothes appear to hang correctly as
well. Her utility belt would make Batman proud.
One small issue there, I believe her holster hangs down from the
belt instead of on it, but that may not be for every scene in
the film.
 One
thing that is nearly perfect, is the way the sculpt and
articulation have been combined. The black on black helps
with that, but all of the materials appear to be the same with
no color difference on the different parts. I will say
that I wasn't even sure how articulated she was as I was.
In that regard, she may even be better than the larger version
of the figure Mezco put out.
There's really two areas this figure fell flat for me.
The first is the face. I don't know what it is about it,
but it's just not right. The hair is right but the face
seems a little too generic for me. The angles seem a
little too hard and subtle detailing seems to be missing.
I don't know if this is a result of the paint or not.
The paint on the face leads me to my next issue. The
paint on her face. There is some missing on the right side
at her hairline. The head is molded in a tannish plastic
that makes this fairly visible. Also, under her chin the
paint stops and the plastic for the head can be seen.
The paint issues continue down from there. Painting
flesh tone on black is trick and rarely looks 100%. I'm
almost thinking her neck might be a separate piece. Above
the cross necklace, it looks great, below, while the lines are
good, it bleeds through badly. The last little bit of
paint problems is her belt buckle, I thought it might be a retro
Thundercats buckle at first. Basically a big black blotch
on a red field. Compared to Red's this one is horrible.
Fun:
 With
Hellboy, every pose I put him in he looked good. Liz, not
so much. While she's articulated well, I couldn't find a
lot of poses I like her in. The holster limits the leg
joint a bit and her center of gravity just doesn't seem that
easy to find. She stands fine on her own, but to get more
extreme poses, you may need the included BPRD base.
Liz has two other accessories. One a modern automatic
handgun. This one seems to be similar to the one she
carries in the film. That is the extent of my hand gun
knowledge. The gun seems to be in good scale with the
figure and even in the holster everything looks to be nearly
right.
The other accessory is an orange flame. As far as flame
effects go, this one is fairly good. I had a hard time
getting her to hold it though. I never did get it to match
the one on the card. While I'm not a huge fan of these in
general, Liz needs this to be a complete representation of her
character.
 Overall:
Liz is definitely not the best figure in this
line so far. That doesn't mean she's a bad figure, though.
She's a small figure, and as such, Liz is going to be one of the
more difficult to pull off. If the head sculpt had been just
a tad closer, I'd have been really satisfied. As it is, I've
got a super articulated female figure that is expertly done, with
just a couple of minor issues. I hope this line will
continue to set the bar for this scale. I was really
expecting to be let down and was really surprised by the things
Mezco managed to get into these figures.
Overall, while not the best of the bunch, Liz is
better than a number of the female figures out there and a much
needed figure for the Hellboy universe.
Engineernerd Score: 87/100
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