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Lots of comicbook characters have histories that are stupid and convoluted, but few of them are as stupid or as convoluted as Shatterstar's.
Armed with superhuman physical and mental abilities, Shatterstar conquers his enemies with strength and certainty.
What? "Certainty"? What the crap are they talking about? Did they get him confused with Gladiator, whose powers run on confidence? Anyway, Shatterstar: his real name is "Gaveedra Seven" (or maybe "Benjamin Russell") and he comes from Mojoverse, the same place as Longshot. Although he comes from 100 years further in the future, he is, thanks to some time-travel shenannigans, both the son of Longshot and Dazzler and Longshot's father. Yes, just as with Phillip J. Fry, he's his own grandpa.
Like Doctor Strange, Shatterstar mixes
the small body legs with a torso sculpted to look like a shirt. His arms are new, with baggier sleeves and their own gloves. His boots have high sides, presumably to help him pull them on, and because he was created in the '90s, there's a strap of pouches around his right thigh. The reused chest means we don't get the three big clasps that held his shirt closed, but Hasbro did spring for a combination demi-cape/shoulder pad, because there was no way to make Shatterstar without those.
As previously mentioned, Shatterstar cuts his hair like a Padawan: short on top, ponytail in the back, braids on the side. Apparently George Lucas was a fan of Rob Liefeld? That makes sense. Shatterstar is wearing his padded headgear, and on my sample, at least, his normal eye doesn't line up with the sculpt correctly, giving him a touch of the ol' "wide-eye."
His costume is mainly white, with gray for the cape and gloves, grey for the boots and thigh pouches, and then a dirty brown leather look on the pads and belt. His symbol, a black starburst, is printed on his chest and outlined in silver, but its placement
and the placement of the shoulder pad mean that it's half-concealed at all times. There are black panels running down the outside of his legs, which makes his lower body look comically skinny next to his upper body. The black is just painted on the surface, which means the underlying white shows through at the joints - except for the pins in the knees, which ae molded in black, and therefore are themselves highly visible against the white. Some day some company will come up with an economical way to make two-colored pegs, and characters like Spider-Man will never have this issue again.
Shatterstar's powers are something to do with creating vibratory shockwaves he channels through his swords, as well as opening dimensional portals; despite that, he prefers to rely on his natural speed, strength, and agilty in combat, so he can have a
greater challenge. The figure comes armed with his swords, as he should: one has a single blade, while the other has two next to each other. Both have three large spikes on the handguards. The swords are forged in a mixture of science and magic, which might explain several things: first, how Shatterstar was capable of penetrating Juggernaut's mystical force field; and secondly, why the swords would sometimes change number of blades, or even which direction the blades were facing on the sword (other than, y'know, "Rob Liefeld can't be bothered to pay attention to his drawings"). The toy has no sheaths or anything, so he'll be permanently holding his weapons, ready for a fight.
We also get the right arm of this series' Warlock Build-A-Figure.
If you're not planning to build the whole thing, this could easily be a piece of some mindless drone that Shatterstar hacked off during one of X-Force's Danger Room training sessions.
Shatterstar is a very '90s character, getting a very 2010s action figure. It's great that he can hang out with Cable, Cannonball and Domino, but it again makes us sad that the Warpath variant was just a palette swap.
-- 06/05/17
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