Star Sapphire

There was a trend in the '90s toward "bad girl" comics - Lady Death, Witchblade, Shi and their ilk. The trend is (mostly) done now, but it looks like DC is trying to bring it back. In love with Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Carol Ferris resisted her violet ring's orders to leave Earth and travel to Zamaron, home of the Star Sapphire Corps. In response, the ring twisted her feelings, causing her to treat him as a enemy. Once she joined the Star Sapphire Corps, Ferris went from villain to hero, eventually fighting alongside her beloved Hal Jordan to stop the cataclysmic crisis known as the ''Blackest Night.'' You've got to hand it to Geoff Johns: for all the stupid, childish story points he comes up with, every so often he comes up with something that's actually quite clever. Star Sapphire has always operated as a solo villain, but she's also always been overseen by a similarly empowered alien race, so turning them into one of the various color-coded corps makes a lot of sense. And if her Corps is all about love, why was she always trying to kill Hal Jordan? Well, because she was disobeying orders and the ring didn't like that, so it figured if Hal were dead, she'd more willingly leave Earth. See? It fits with existing continuity and yet meshes seamlessly with the new ideas. Clever. This is the modern Star Sapphire, which means she's wearing the hideously tacky costume designed by Ivan Reis. Seriously, it looks like something a 13-year-old would design, then stop halfway through to excuse himself to his room for a few minutes. It's so badly designed that you almost wonder if it was badly designed on purpose: it's hard to imagine a professional artist handing this in seriously, and harder to imagine an editor accepting it unless the intent was to poke fun at something. Of course, the longer she wears it, the less likely that seems. While every other Corps wears the same basic costume - their color in the center, with black on the limbs - Carol has a suit that fully covers her back but, other than pointed strips cradling her tits, leaves her front entirely bare. And as if that weren't enough, her Corps symbol is pasted on the front of her muffin, so when she's flying it looks like she's powered by her glowing vagina. Star Sapphire's face is as good as we can reasonably expect it to be - remember, the Four Horsemen can only deal with what the comics give them, so Carol is wearing that truly ridiculous "mask" thing with the headband built in, and her hair poofs up like Flo from Progressive Insurance. She does look slightly crosseyed, but paint can vary from figure to figure. Since all Star Sapphire's costume elements are sculpted, that means she has a new body, and a new body means the opportunity for new articulation. Sadly, it doesn't mean we get double-hinged knees and elbows: for the most part, everything is what you're used to from DCUC, but her waist swivel is now a torso swivel. Well, we assume it's a swivel - normally a joint of this type would be a balljoint (or equivalent), but if this one does anything but swivel, the range is minimal. And we're not about to force it to the point of breaking just to find out different. Green Lantern Classics Series 2 comes in the same oversized blisters as Series 1, but thankfully doesn't have more 3D masks. Less garbage to throw away. All Star Sapphire has in the way of pack-ins is the left arm of the GLC2 BAF, Stel. It sure looks nice, but we couldn't have gotten a Violet Lantern Battery to go with her? Star Sapphire isn't a great figure, but most of her flaws come from the source, not from Mattel. As a toy, she's good; as a character design, she's refuse waiting to be washed down the drain. Maybe the upcoming DC reboot can fix her. -- 06/18/11

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