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So remember: "Viper" is a name, "Madame Hydra" is a position; if Viper resigned and someone else was promoted, she'd still be Viper, and now they would be Madame Hydra. She's just sold under this name because there's already a "Viper" toy out there.
The woman once known as Viper assumes command of Hydra, taking the title of Madame Hydra and turning the organization into her personal army.
As a child, the girl who would become Viper was one of dozens of orphans taken by Hydra. (Her parents had been killed during a revolution in whatever unnamed European country she came from.) The girls were dividied into different training groups and forced to battle each other, their numbers winnowing over the years until only she remained - the most skillful, the most ambitious, and the most ruthless. Appointed to the rank of Madame Hydra, she worked directly alongside Baron Strucker and the other members of the group's upper echelon. Even when she seemed to split from Hydra and work on her own, she was still furthering their goals. She got the name Viper while trying to usurp the Serpent Squad: there was already a "Viper" in the group, so she killed him and claimed the Feds had done it.
Given her sensitive position within Hydra, Viper tended to have a bunch of surgically altered body doubles who could stand in for her - you know, like Doombots, but human. That's a real handy way to explain why the 2012 figure was missing her visual trademark: hair permanently hanging over half her face to hide her hideous scars. This one gets the hair-curtain, but skips the scar tissue; almost assuredly so they can use the mold again in the future.
The hair is long enough to partially hide the large holes in her back. One of them, at least; Madame Hydra uses the same mold as "Age of Apocalypse" Rogue and Binary, which leaves some pretty substantial gaps back there. The last version of the character also had a reused body, but that one at least had some sculpted details - a zipper, straps around the shoulders, flared gloves - while everything here is just painted. It's not really a step up. It's not even like the proportions are significantly better: both this Viper and the older one were fairly skinny, so the mold is, at best, a lateral move.
You'd think, being called "Madame Hydra,"
Hasbro would want the character's colors to, you know, match Hydra's? Nope. It's one thing to keep her in all green, which is typical for Viper, but they couldn't have at least made her darker green the same shade as the boys'? The older toy was definitely better in this regard.
Viper has two guns in a nice little gun belt. That's the same light green as her boots, and both holsters have a gold Hydra logo tampographed on. It's a cool piece, especially since it had to be designed to accommodate the exact same pistol mold we got a full decade ago. Two of it, in fact, but still the same. There are hands with the trigger fingers extended, and alternate fists.
She's got Controller's right leg, the piece of the Build-A-Figure for this series.
Other than the head, the 2012 Madame Hydra was pretty great - better, in fact, than this 2022 one. If it's possible to put this head on that body, you'd have the best of both worlds. It's not that this one is bad, just not as good as it could have been.
-- 11/09/22
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