Justice

"Just ice"? No wonder he dated a girl with fire powers! A mutant with telekinetic powers, Justice fights alongside his heroes as a leader of the New Warriors. The way that's written makes it sound like the New Warriors are his heroes, when what it's trying to say is the New Warriors, as a group, fight alongside teams like the Avengers, who are his heroes. Although this is Justice's first action figure, we've surprisingly had occassion to tell you about him before: Vance's future self, a long-distance astronaut, came back from the future to tell him not to follow that career path, thereby changing history and getting present-day Vance involved in public superheroics much earlier. His original supranym was "Marvel Boy," and his costume was inspired by what Future Astro-Vince wore: large, diamond-shaped blocks in blue and white, with a cowl covering his head. After going to prison for accidentally killing his physically abusive father and serving his time, he stopped wearing the mask, because it was a big public trial and everybody knew who he was anyway, and changed his name to Justice, to reflect his respect for the law. Most of the figure's sculpt comes from the mid-sized super-articulated body, but not all of it: in fact, it doesn't even get the "super-articulated" identifier anymore, because the upper torso has been redone. This version of Vance's costume has the cape joined seamlessly to the chest area, and rather than do a separate cape that just plugs into the toy's back or something, sculptor Dan Mitchell actually did a new chest that has a sunken section the entire cape gets glued into, creating a smooth look. That amount of work is... startling from 2024 Hasbro! It looks great, and makes the toy better than alternate attempts would have, but Hasbro has been striving for "plainly mediocre" for so long now that this genuine effort really stands out. This is the most modern Justice costume, worn not on the team with Speedball, Night Thrasher, Firestar, and Nova, but way, way later when Sam Alexander and Kaine were members. We're not going to pretend this isn't his best costume; it's based on one Janet Van Dyne designed for him when he was an Avenger, but given some tweaks to be cooler; like, that one kept the Marvel Boy diamond shapes, while this one keeps the blue and white colors, but applies them in a more graphic block style. There's a star in the center of his chest, mostly gold (matched by the bands on his boots and gloves), but with two of its arms black to... I don't know what. What design benefit does that add? Articulation is mostly good. Since so much of this body comes from an existing source, you already know how it's going to move: swivel/​hinge ankles, swivel shins, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, swivel waist, hinged chest, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, and swivel/hinge shoulders. We already said the pec hinges were gone, which was probably because the amount the body would need to be dropped down to make room for the cape would have gotten in the way of them. That's fine. What's annoying is they've given him a barbell head instead of a balljoint on a hinge, like you would want. In other words, a flying character who can't look up. Just stick with what works and stop trying to make things worse, Hasbro. Justice doesn't come with any accessories, just an alternate pair of hands, but he does get half of the creepy tick limbs for this series' Build-A-Figure, the Void. If you didn't know who Justice was, he's still a nice, generic superhero. You could probably guess he was from the '90s or later, thanks to his Gambit hair and his head-sock, even if the cape does make him feel a little more retro. You'd probably think he was "Captain Star" or something. But Hasbro did a better job on him than they needed to, even if the head articulation should have been improved. -- 06/10/24

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