Indigo

Indigo is by far my least favorite of the "Color Corps" from Blackest Night. I love teams, I love uniforms, and I love the rings - Indigo lacks two out three of those and indeed the two I enjoy the most from the whole BN saga. As I've written before, I only read comics in trade format, so I've not yet read any of Blackest Night proper so I don't know how the "Compassion" tribe plays into it or pans out. I just know I'm not interested in them, but because they are part of this amazing epic I am stuck with them. The nameless and mysterious Indigo, leader of the Indigo Tribe, is the personification of compassion. She wields a staff-like totem of power in place of a ring, and bears the standard of her Corps on her tattooed form. My least favorite thing about the Indigo "Tribe" is that they lack uniforms and basically look to be just another band of space hippies. Indigo 1 also fulfills a comic tradition that is already familiar to the Green Lantern mythos: that of the requisite "hot chick in skimpy clothes" (hi, Arisia). Like all reclusive, monastic bringers of peace, I-1 dresses in a comfortable manner covering only those bits of anatomy that the Apple of Knowlegde tells us to shame. Barefoot like all noble savages, she at least wears white bandages around her arms for her jazzercise recitals. Complete the look with stylish dreadlocks on an intelligence-crammed oversized but attractive brainpan (take note, Sinestro) and voila, a recipe for blandness. The sculpt of the figure is very smooth, with no texturing or detailing beyond the layering of bandages on the arms. That's fine and accurate to the source, but it just makes for a visually stale figure even though it is otherwise well executed. The head and face in particular, despite my bemoaning the design, work particularly well for me. She's vaguely reminiscent of the Diva Plavalaguna from The Fifth Element. Articulation is simple with only hinged knees, T-crotch, balljointed shoulders and head, and hinged elbows. From right bicep and left forearm dangle lengths of bandages, and surprisingly each are connected via a swivel joint so that they can indeed fall to the necessary angle for many poses. The paint is pretty crisp, but definitely not perfect. Indigo-1 bears the corps logo all over herself (remarkably too, the only corps logo as simple as the Green Lantern one, of which it is clearly reminiscent) which helps break up the monotony. Though I must say the forehard logo on my figure is not perfectly horizontal. Compassion is the opposite of greed, so the Indigo logo is the inverse of the Orange Lanterns', with lines pointing out instead of in. Like the other figures in the Blackest Night line, Indigo comes with generic base, this time cast in translucent purple with the Indigo Corps Logo on it. Unlike many female figures these days, she can stand just fine without it. She also comes with my second least favorite thing about this Corps: her magic staff of not-having-power-rings-or-lantern-batteries. Again I suppose it breaks up the different Corps, but it's just not what I want from the war of colors. The sculpt is fine, erring on the side of simple while maintaining a decent gnarled-ness. It's cast in a dark, semi-translucent purple similar to the base, with the staff painted a purple-tinted gray and the jewel at top unpainted. I definitely wish it were more translucent; the darkness somehow makes it look cheap. Overall this is a fine figure and a good, though unexciting, 3D representation of the character. All design complaints aside, this is effectively a "must have" figure so that all seven (eight? nine? When will Geoff Johns stop adding more!?) Corps are represented. Because she's the most iconic and the leader of the Indigo Tribe she stands a good chance of finding her way into Mattel's DCU, but I imagine it would take awhile to get there (plus I'd rather have Mattel put out more Yellow, Red and Green Lanterns). If you can't wait or don't want to risk it, this figure won't disappoint you - if you aren't already disappointed by the source material. -- 04/21/10

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