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Superman is really Clark Kent - regardless of what planet he was born on, at heart he's the honest, wholesome farmboy from Kansas. Batman is really Bruce Wayne. Spider-Man is really Peter Parker. Princess Diana is really... Princess Diana. There's no regular everyday woman hiding behind the starry panties and gold-adorned bustier, Wonder Woman really is a superhuman noblewoman warrior. So the whole secret identity thing isn't so much a haven from superheroics as a chance to explore how the rest of us live. Assuming the rest of us are superhuman task force secret agents, that is.
While working as an undercover government agent in the Department of Metahuman Affairs, Agent Diana Prince is pulled back into the world of Wonder Woman when she is called upon to save her sister, Donna Troy, who has been kidnapped by the evil Circe.
In spite of what the other character bios in the Wonder Woman series would have you believe, there's no such person as "Diana Prince" - Wonder Woman is Princess Diana, and Diana Prince is just a name she adopted as part of an effort to get in touch with the everyday person by living a regular human life. Unfortunately she outsourced the creation of her new identity to Bruce Wayne, who as we all know is a bit of a head case, so her "regular human life" turned out to consist of... battling supervillains. Nice going Bruce. What next, Superman's secret identity is James Bond? Sheesh.
The storytelling vacuousness of the whole idea notwithstanding,
there's no denying that "Diana Prince" looks pretty sharp, and the action figure is all of that. Diana stands a touch under 7" tall - slightly above the Wonder Woman figure, due to a straighter stance - in a two-tone bodysuit of pearly white and sky blue. It's a costume without much in the way of bold visual elements, but a lot of subtle design, and the sculpt renders it very faithfully to its comic appearance. Smooth and sleek is the rule, with tiny details like crinkles in the bodysuit around the seams and shallow folds in the gloves and boots giving a realistic feel to what is, more or less, a superhero outfit. An array of pouches on a twin belt - a soft plastic piece - tie in to the harness around her shoulders, which in issue #4 of the current series we see is intended for use with a jetpack.
Yup, she can fly, and she's using a jetpack - secret identity again. One point of irritation is her bottom - it's quite shapely, but the inner thigh panels of her costume there are way out of alignment between the leg and hip pieces.
In the usual superhero tradition, Princess Diana's disguise is a pair of glasses and a different hairdo. I know that might work for Clark Kent, but Diana's got the beauty of Aphrodite - no slight to the beauty of women in general, but are there really that many wandering around who are as gorgeous as the goddess of love that no-one notices anything unusual about the DMA's latest super-agent?
(Then again, the rest of the agency's elite consists of a pill-popping alcoholic cyborg and a shape-shifting jerk, so perhaps they're just glad to have someone in the office they're not embarrassed to be seen with.) Her glasses are a separate (non-removable) piece which fit very snugly over her eyes - not quite as low as they're meant to, but the difference is only apparent on very close inspection. As with the Wonder Woman version, Diana is beautiful without trying to be - her expression is rather stern and aloof, with slightly arched eyebrows, and the stylish but professional hairstyle completes a picture of a woman who's all business and no-one you want to mess with.
The paint job is simple, and for the most part elegant. Like the recent SHAZAM! Mary Marvel, Diana is cast in a pearly white plastic which catches the light quite strikingly, adding visual flair to a simple costume. Unfortunately in her case there are some issues with consistency of colour between the pieces, which are exacerbated by the way the material reflects light differently at different angles: her torso, already slightly purer white than her limbs, looks noticeably different when it's reflecting a strong light. The pale blue areas on her costume are almost all painted cleanly and consistently, as are the darker blue soles on her boots, but the smaller details are trouble: the harness is sloppy around her shoulders, and the silver picking out the insignia on her collar was evidently applied by a poorly-trained baboon. There's even a couple of spots of silver on her torso, one on her breast, one down on her waist - very untidy work. Her gloves also don't quite have the coverage they need on their edges -
on any other plastic it'd go largely unnoticed, but the white reflects brightly from the unpainted sculpted edges. Thankfully the most obvious detail paint work on her, the pouch belt, is quite clean.
Diana has about the usual complement of joints, some of which work out well, some not so much. She has a balljointed neck, and thanks to her hairdo she has a terrific range of motion in all directions, so no complaints there. She has balljointed shoulders and peg elbows, but due to the sculpt of her gloves there's no wrist articulation - a shame, but not the end of the world. Her legs are pretty much useless - T-crotch and peg knees, but with no ankle joints she can't vary her stance without looking silly. The blue side panels on her thighs only line up at the furthest back you'd want to lean her, and that's just the side - if you want the back to line up, you need to pose her as if she's getting ready for the Themyscira limbo championships. Luckily the pouch belt covers the side joins, so as long as you don't want to look at her bottom, nothing seems out of place.
Diana comes
with the standard Wonder Woman series base, though due to her solid boots, straight stance, and lack of heavy cloaks or whatnot, she can get by without it if so desired. She also has two batons - clear rods painted silver around the middle - which in the comics she uses as a combination of flashlight and shock stick. Yep, definitely the most efficient way for a woman with an unbreakable lasso and a sword that can cut Superman to fight villains - hit them with a stick with a 9-volt battery attached. Although she has two (and in the comic wields them both at once), her left fist is clenched shut, so if you want to display her with both you'll need to stick the leftover one in her belt.
Regardless of how pointless "Agent Diana Prince" is as a storytelling concept, she looks great, and if not for the spotty fine detail paint work, she'd be a great figure too. Luckily the elegance of the design and the sculpt sees her through, and I imagine even for people not interested in buying the whole series, the temptation to have Wonder Woman in her superhero and "civilian" guises side by side will be strong. It also helps that she recently discovered that when she's out of costume, she really is human. Clark Kent is still invulverable. Bruce Wayne still has a finely honed physique. Peter Parker still sticks to walls. But Wonder Woman goes away, leaving us with the most "human" seceret identity of them all, Agent Diana Prince.
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