Medusa

Everybody must get stoned! In ancient Greek mythology, the dreaded Gorgons were a trio of monstrous sisters with snakes for hair and the ability to turn any who looked upon them directly to stone. Daughters of the sea deities Phorcys and Ceto, the oldest of these sisters was Stheno the Strong while the middle child was named Euryale the Far Roaming. It was the youngest of those three sisters, and the only one who was mortal, that was the most famous, however. Her name was Medusa. The bio goes on from there, as it do, but the graphic design is better this time, with fewer words in a larger space and a more legible font size. That's the way! It's great to see feedback get taken in the spirit it was intended. From antiquity, Medusa was shown as a hideous face - in fact, the face probably came first, and then a body and a story were applied to it. In Book XI of The Odyssey, Homer has Odysseus travel to the edge of the underworld, and eventually get scared when ghosts start to swarm him; while modern translations tend to include Medusa's name because the myth is familiar, the original just referred to Odysseus wanting to hurry away because he was afraid he might have to face "the gorgon's" head; so Homer was counting on his audiences getting the reference, to understand what the monster's head could do, but Medusa, as a character, wasn't important enough to name. That is, if Medusa as a character had even been invented yet, and Perseus wasn't just famous for killing some nameless monster, the way you might slay "a" dragon or catch "a" fish. Basically, the evolution would go "soldier paints a scary face on his shield" > "the scary face belonged to a monster" > "a hero slayed that monster" > "that monster had a name and history." But she didn't stay scary forever. As early as the 5th century BC she was starting to be portrayed as beautiful (or at least "not-ugly") in art and poetry, so any modern version that shows her as being pretty is honestly just following tradition. In fact, if the myth is approximately 3,000 years old, and the fandom began simping for her 2,500 years ago, then the vast majority of her existence has been of the attractive variety. The Four Horsemen's version is serpentine, but not hideous, with lumps on her forehead, slit pupils, and sharp fangs in her open mouth: the figure includes two swappable faceplates, one that's hissing angrily and the other more calm, with the mouth closed, but neither of them are too monstrous. The booklet included with the figure name-drops the 1981 Clash of the Titans movie as an iconic representation of Medusa, and that movie has clearly had a heavy influence on this toy. Like, if you look back at classical depictions of Medusa and her sisters, you'll find snakes for hair, yes, but you know what you won't find? A snake body. That didn't exist before 1981. The Gorgons were always shown with normal human bodies, with their only other inhuman feature being not serpentine, but avain: they had wings. They wore snakes around their waist like a belt, but that was it. But the Horsemen introduced a snaky body for Bassylia, and so a snake she is. Her torso is humanoid, with a cloth-bound chest, then an ornate belt hides the transition to snakeiness at the waist. The lower body is a series of segments that plug into each other. They've got small, pointed scales on the back and larger, horizontal ones across the fronts. Bits of leathery armor drape across the back at the bottom of each segment, presumably to hide the joint, though we suspect it would probably look perfectly fine without them. The little black spikes on the front make it look like she has caterpillar feet. The little straps continue all the way down the length of the body, and she seems to have a protective cap on the tip of her tail - at least, it's colored like leather, not like a snake's rattle or anything. The upper body has all the usual modular Legions articulation, because it's a normal human body: head, neck, shoudlers, elbows, wrists, chest, and waist. The snake legs get three barbells between the segments, then one more for the actual tail, which is itself bendy. We get two... well, my brain keeps wanting to call them "waists," because they go right in the middle of the snake section, but she already has a waist. That's where her belt and her belly button live! But it's not really feet or knees, either. Basically, we get our choice of two middle-segments, one of which is sculpted with a 90° bend, while the other is straight, with an extra joint in the middle of it. That allows you to decide whether you want her slithering around, or standing up. The "bent" one is the one she's wearing in the package, and it has a large hole in the bottom to accommodate the included black disc stand, in case you want a little extra stability. Having a full snake body is not the only thing the Four Horsemen have lifted from Clash of the Titans. In her myth, Medusa doesn't do anything: Perseus just sneaks up on her while she's asleep and quietly cuts her head off [our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen! --ed.], but that's kind of boring for a movie, so the film decided she would be an archer. And so that's why this figure includes a bow, an arrow, and a quiver that can clip onto the strap that fits around her chest. Since Maddy's story is "gets her head cut off," you can decapitate the toy in the usual Mythic Legions manner, just popping the head off the balljoint. A few of the hair-snakes on top can act as a handle for other characters to hold, and the set includes a red piece representing the blood dripping from her neck. It's got a balljoint at one end, so it will fit into the head and stay suspended securely even when suspended in mid-air. Gross, but appropriate! We also get some nice scenery for her, beginning with a three-part Doric column covered in a stony texture and cracks, and a separate shattered chunk that can either plug into the top of the column (if you remove the capital) or the base (if you remove everything), allowing you to add variety to your display. There's also a crumbling statue of a Greek soldier, sculpted in the Mythic Legions style, but with no articulation other than the head. Its right arm is stretching out, while the left is broken off at the shoulder, and the entire body ends midway through the chest. there's a little bit of rubble around him, and the underside of the extended arm is flattened to rest against the ground like the rest of the torso's base. The helmet is a separate piece, but it's not meant to be removed - a big square peg on top of the head plugs into it, so he'd look strange without it on. The set also includes a spear and a shield, both done in the same stone gray as the petrified man and the column. The spear is in two pieces, so you can slide it into his hand, but the lack of articulation and the angle at which the hand is sculpted together mean he can't really hold it unless you're going to have it hanging off the edge of your shelf: the outside end will stick down too far. The shield has a Gorgoneion in the center, sculpted rather than just painted, and that makes us realize that with this toy having swappable faceplates, the Horsemen should have included one that looked like those earliest depictions, with wild eyes, fangs, a curved grimace, and the tongue hanging out. That would have been a fun historical Easter egg! The shield also has a handle that can plug into the back, or the set also includes a nifty little stand that allows it to rest at an agle, so it can "lay" on the ground without being perfectly flat, and thus still be seen and appreciated. Neat! Obviously Medusa can use either of these weapons as well, if you want her to. Figura Obscura releases are sold in a stylish window box with a wraparound cover held in place by magnets. The interior of the cover flap shows Medusa's lava-filled lair (because in addition to lifting from the 1981 Clash of the Titans, they also lifted from the 2010 Clash of the Titans), and teh insert behind the figure inside the box shows Charon ready to ferry someone across the river Styx. Both look great behind Medusa, though her tail does mean she'll require a lot of Z-axis space behind her to fit fully. There will, someday, be a GI Joe Classified Golobulus. We don't have any inside info, it's just that you don't release a Nemesis Enforcer and a Cobra-La Guard (and a Pythona, though they desperately need to do a new run of her) if you're not going to do the main guy at some point. Well, between the Four Horsemen and Boss Fight Studio, we're now seen two poential ways they could do his serpentine tail. I've never been a fan of bendies, so there's no mystery about which kind I'd prefer, but the point is, on the day that figure finally happens, Hasbro's really going to have to pull out something impressive in the 6" scale in order to not be overshadowed by this Medusa. So far the Figura Obscura release schedule has had a mythological figure in the spring and a horror one in the fall, but this is the first one we've gotten at all in 2026; good thing she splits the difference between those two categories so handily! -- 11/04/26