The battle between the Gorgons and mankind was brutal, and in some cases, eternal. Some mighty warriors on both sides refused to pass on to the underworld and remained trapped in ghostly form. Their sworn oaths keep them locked in an eternal battle until victory is achieved. The idiosyncrasies of their personalities completely lost, they succumb to the last thought they held as they fell in battle. Trapped forever, these lost souls fight for eternity against one another in a battle neither can ever win.
This set is identified as a BossFightShop.com exclusive, but doesn't that describe all the V-HACKS? I mean, if you didn't get them through the Kickstarter, it's not like you can get them at any other stores. It's like when Toys Я Us sells Minimates you can't get anywhere else, but doesn't bother putting the exclusive sticker on them. And it's also not like you couldn't get the set by pledging, so isn't it available every way all the other figures are?
The Afterlife Spartan is pretty much identical to the Cursed Spartan, which makes sense, since they're both Spartans
(three down, 297 to go). Heck, judging by the bio on the back of the box, it's entirely possible that this is the spirit of that Spartan. He got turned to stone, and now his ghost fights on in this pack.
To make this seem more ephemeral, everything is molded in a semi-translucent plastic: the body is yellowy green, while the armor is more of a yellow-orange. The only paint anywhere on the figure are two pools of solid black for the eyes. His weapons are red, making them really stand out from the body - he's armed with two medium-length swords, a pair of bearded axes, and the large Spartan shield. He has a scabbard to sling across his torso, and since it's yellow like the armor, we get a nice orange when the red sword is inside it.
While the Afterlife Spartan was just like the normal figures, the Afterlife Gorgon is different. While all the members of the Gorgon Horde have been snake-ladies, this one has legs instead of a tail.
Do they get their old bodies back when they die? Well, clearly not, because she's still got the open-mouthed hissing head, rather than a humanoid one. She gets more paint than the Spartan did: in addition to the eyes, her mouth is also painted black, and her fangs are white.
Her body is the same yellowy green color as the Spartan, while her armor is light blue. Rather than the armor the other Hordies have worn, she gets the stuff Stheno wore - the breastplate with the pointy shoulders, the snakeskin skirt, and the unique bracers and greaves. Has she been raiding the queen's closet? She does have that cool gorgon helmet, though, so that makes her look like she belongs with the rest of the Horde. Her weapons are a small Gorgoneion shield, a spear, and a curved sword. Those are all done in a darker blue, giving her cool tones to contrast to the Spartan's warm.
Since the figures are based on the male body and the female body, you know they're going to have great articulation, especially by the standards of 4" figures. The Afterlife Gorgon comes apart at the waist very easily, but these are still fantastic toys.
If the yellow-green plastic used for the figures' bodies looks familiar, there's a reason for that: the ghastly gimmick of this ghostly group is that they glow. In the dark. They glow in the dark. The bodies are not only semi-translucent, they're also molded from GitD plastic, for spectral power! The armor glows, as well, though not the weapons.
These figures aren't substantially different from a lot of the other Vitruvian HACKS available, but the choice to make them glow in the dark, rather than just being translucent, was an inspired decision, and makes them more fun than "just" clear ghosts would have been.
-- 08/26/16
|