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A lot of current comic creators seem to have grown up with a crush on Kitty Pryde (which, having read back issues, I can totally understand); but me, I was the right age to get a crush on Blink.
Clarice Ferguson uses her mutant ability of teleportation to disappear and reappear in the blink of an eye.
Blink was created to be the sacrificial lamb who would inspire the X-Men's new generation of mutants to come together and be heroes. (Does it still count as "women in refrigerators" if it happens to advance girls' stories as well as boys'? Probably.) But she proved be to be so popular, Marvel brought her back for the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline/event and, when that ended, kept her around by making her the leader of the Exiles, a team of multiveral operatives who found themselves unwittingly unmoored in time; they were told they needed to repair cracks in the fabric of reality if they ever wanted to be returned to their native dimensions - sort of a What If...? intervention squad. Now Clarice and the other Exiles are striving to put right what once went wrong, hoping each time that the next *blink* will be the *blink* home.
There has been a Blink action figure before, but this one is better. Of course it is, the other one came out 21 years ago! Since she'd only appeared in the "AoA" stories by that point, that's the look she was sporting, with the weird Joe Mad anime hair. This time her hair is shorter (and messier), and her orchid-colored skin is a superior shade.
Her costume is based on her time with the Exiles, not AoA - she still wears a green dress slit up the sides, short boots, and unattached long sleeves, but she's added a studded belt, and the large Magneto-inspired collar all the AoA X-Men wore has been changed into a small choker. She's built on a slender body, because she was a teenager when she was introduced and has been consistently portrayed as rather slight. The belt and lower edge of the dress are molded as one, and just hang about the waist. The dress is sculpted to be folded over, like it's being blown by a breeze, and the tops of her boots are separate pieces as well.
The last Blink figure had a quiver with throwing spikes and a giant base meant to represent her teleportation ability (though her articulation meant she couldn't use it very well; in fact, since this one has modern ML joints, she could probably use it better than the figure it was meant for). This one gets some energy darts, because the way her powers are depicted has evolved over the years, and also a simple spiky ring she can stand in. Suck it, Chell! The accessories are molded from a pink plastic that's just slightly translucent - not so much you'd call it clear, but enough that some light can pass through it make it look like energy instead of a solid object.
We'd also like to take a moment to praise the figure's packaging. It's the same box all Marvel Legends come in, so no surprise there;
rather, the noteworthy thing is the way she's packaged. The Deadpool Legends played around with the way the toys were posed in the trays, with things like Casual Deadpool laying back comfortably, or X-Men Deadpool punting Madcap. Blink isn't doing anything that extreme, but she does end up posed with her feet pointed back a bit, sticking through the center of her portal and making it look like she's just blinked in. How fun!
The leg of this series' Caliban Build-A-Figure is beside her in the tray, and it also has to have its foot pointed down in order to fit.
Blink proved popular enough she was not only adapted as a main character for "Age of Apocalypse" and saved from that reality's destruction by being dropped into her own spin-off book, but also the 616 version was eventually brought back to life and became an honorary member of the New Mutants! And now she's got a really excellent Marvel Legends toy, too! Not bad for a character who was only meant to live for about three months.
-- 05/27/19
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