Zach's Figure Reviews: Diana Prince (Wonder Woman)

After the anime-heavy Power Girl last time, I'm ready to move onto something a little more respectable. Here's another entry in the Ame-Comi line, and the last figure in that series I bothered to buy. Diana Price is, as the picture indicates, Wonder Woman. Everybody loves Wonder Woman except DC, who has rebooted her like eight times since she was created. To be fair, Diana has some issues that keep her from being awesome: lame villains, an invisible plane, and a lasso as her primary weapon. Sometimes she can fly, and she's usually super-strong, but there's never been a solid base, here. Of course, we all really fell in love with Linda Carter, not Wonder Woman herself. So there's that.


Wonder Woman is definately one of my favorite figures because the designer took so many great risks with her costume, and I think they all pay off. My biggest beef with Wonder Woman's traditional costume is that it's glaringly patriotic. Diana's from ancient Greece, for pity's sake, not the Midwest. Her costume should reflect her own country, not the one she ends up living in. This figure's costume has red, white, and blue, not in an obnoxious way. This look more like a costume that an Athenian princess might actually wear. I like how relatively spartan it is: the breastplate is held on by straps, and the one spaulder is on the same arm as her shield. She shield is very awesome.


Here's a picture that shows the details of the costume. The breastplate is nicely defined, and the "rim" shows up as a "W". The straps have their own inserts, and there's a belt for holding that ridiculous lasso. The lasso is real string, by way. That's a nice touch. Like I said, I really like Diana's shield. It's layered and looks something like a turtle shell. The spaulder is cool, and a bunch of accessory belts loop around her neck and shoulders. One interesting design desicision was to make Diana's hair long and tentacle-like. You can especially see that in the next picture.


I don't know how much I love the hair-tentacle look, but it's unique, and it frames her upper body pretty well. It also sort of masks the fact that her head is actually very small. I like the little headpiece she has: it's simple but effective. We'll look at her awesome sword in a minute, but I'll also take this opportunity to mention that, compared to Batgirl and Power Girl, Wonder Woman has a pretty conservative bra size. There's not even cleavage coming from the breastplate. Normally I'd find this irritating, but I'm okay with it for this figure. It works.


Here's a picture of her lower half. The thing to take away here is that, like Power Girl, Wonder Woman has very short shins (and feet). The detail on her boots is pretty fantastic, though: there are even little wings on the backs. However, she's wearing heels, and her left heel is a little lengthier than her right one. Thus, she can't stand on her own: she needs the help of a J-hook. If you've never used a J-hook before, join the club! It's basically an L-shaped thing that sticks into the back of Wonder Woman and forces here into a standing position.


Here's the hole in Diana's back. Unfortunately, it doesn't really match the hook's terminal end. You have to really fiddle with the fit to get it right--the correct pose will have the base of the hook basically between Diana's feet, not behind her. I'm not a fan of the J-hook, and the manufacturer assumes that if you're buying this figure, you must have experience with J-hooks, because they didn't include instructions. By the way, I'm glad Ame-Comi downplayed the silly bracelets--she only has one, and it's not all that special. My friend Erik would say that Diana has no ass, which is true. I would counter that a big ass would be difficult to cover with that star-spangled cloth.


Here's the base with the hook attached. The base of the hook securely fits into the round base via peg-and-hole. It can be rotated, but not much. How 'bout that cool sword? I promised we'd take a better look at it!


The sword is huge, and when I first got Diana, I didn't know how to put the sword in her hand. Her fingers don't bend, and the end of the sword's handle was too big to slide into her palm. But wait--the end of the handle actually pops out so that it can be threaded through her palm and recapped on the other side. Poifect! Wonder Woman was the first Ame-Comi figure to cost $60, which I happily paid in this case. There's a second version of her out now, holding a Medusa head, and clearly from the hands of a different sculptor. I don't like it as much as this original one. Ame-Comi is also coming out with a new varient of THIS figure, with a different color scheme. It's not as dynamic as this one. Princess Diana is a hair taller than Batgirl and Power Girl because of her 'do, but it's not really noticeable. She's a fantastic addition to any superheroine colletion, and I can't recommend her enough, if you can still find her.