DCeased Red Hood

Time to head back to the grave. Putting Jason Todd in a series called "Unkillables" seems wrong. He's not unkillable - in fact, being killable is the primary thing he's known for. He's killable. Very killable. Extra killable, even! Just becase he happened to come back to life once through a confluence of sheer luck and incredibly unlikely events doesn't mean he could do it again ar will. Deathstroke proves to be unkillable twice in the first issue; Jason could easily get killed again. Since Red Hood is sort of the black sheep of the Wayne/Bat family, he wasn't hanging out at the mansion when the others got infected. He made his way back there after the outbreak started, knowing if anywhere would be safe, it would be the Batcave. (Spoiler: it wasn't.) Finding only the aftermath, he helped himself to some equipment and set out to find anyone else who might be alive. Lacking any kind of healing factor, Jason didn't get infected the way Deathstroke did, so any art depicting him as a zombie comes only from variant covers, not the story. Paul Harding still did a wonderful job creating this toy's new head, though: Red Hood's "hood" is really some kind of balistic helmet, so it's cracked open rather than torn, giving us just a glimpse of the guy inside thanks to the holes over his left eye and that side of his mouth. It has been, for some reason, very difficult to get an adequate Red Hood figure. Mattel made the one nobody wanted, DC Direct made one with non-removable blades on its arms... for some reason, the toy gods seemed opposed to releasing a nice, plain Red Hood in a good scale with a good design. Since this line just reuses bodies, we can assume DC Essentials did the clothes right, at least: a simple body, armored boots, leather jacket, gloves, and pistols holsterd on his belt. As it should be! Since the body is reused, all the injuries must be done solely with paint. So are the studded knuckles on his gloves, because (like all the DCeased figures) he has the "clawing" hands, and putting the actual studs on there would have required new molds.So now we get a little flash of skin on his right thigh, and another few scratches at the top of his bat symbol. There's blood on his hands and the left side of his chest, but that's all. The DCeased figures get good articulation. Of course they would, DC Direct was on its way out the door, why not get up to modern standards at the last possible second? Red Hood has swivel/​hinge/swivel ankles, swivel boots, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, a swivel waist, hinged chest, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, and a barbell-jointed head. He also has something no other figure in this line has had: accessories. For some reason, they've seen fit to give him his pistols, even though his hands aren't shaped to hold them. At least it means the holsters don't hang empty? Jason Todd may have never appeared as a zombie in Unkillables or any other book, but that doesn't make this a bad toy. Heck, the entire DCeased line has been a lot of fun, giving us zombie versions of a dozen DC characters. It's terrific that McFarlane Toys rescued these toys from cancellation, we're just sad that there won't be any more in the future. Just looking at the existing molds, Black Adam, Black Manta, Wonder Woman and Cheetah would all be fine choices. That's enough to fill out an entire fourth series! -- 11/09/22

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