Shining Knight

At last, Etrigan can have a friend! The gender-fluid, immortal knight Ystin has also been known as Ystina, Sir Justin, and the Shining Knight, and was present at Merlin’s rebirth in Avalon as Adam One. As one of the Demon Knights - ancestors of Stormwatch - Ystina battled alien and demonic threats. Ystina was granted immortality after a sip from the Holy Grail during the fall of Camelot, but was cursed with an unquenchable desire to drink from the Grail again. Ystin rode the winged horse Vanguard, fighting alongside such Demon Knights as Madame Xanadu and Jason Blood. He also wielded the sword known as Caliburn or Excalibur, marking him a champion of Camelot. Ystina fought with the Demon Knights against the vampire Cain and was bitten, fulfilling his vision of one day becoming undead. So the package identifies this figure as being based on Grant Morrison's 2005 Seven Soldiers crossover, but that bio is all about the New 52 Demon Knights. I like the latter even more than the former, so that's why I wanted his figure, and that's who it's going to represent in my collection. There is a flaw with this figure, and it's apparent even through the window on the packaging. As introduced in Seven Soldiers, Sir Justin was a girl slight enough to merely pose as a "schoolboy" so she could become a knight; in Demon Knights, Paul Cornell purposely wrote Ystin in an ambiguous manner so readers could interpret him however felt right to them, be that intersex or genderfluid or even simply trans. Whatever the case, we do know he preferred male pronouns, though literally every single character who met him took him as female. When the team was taken to Hell and prescribed personalized tortures, what did Ystin get? Everyone demanding to know his gender. The problem is, there's not a thing about this toy that isn't overtly feminine. Even Medieval peasants may have been written to recognize the question of Ystin's birth, but the art showed a non-identifying body that this toy lacks. If this figure's design is based on any actual piece of published art, it's not one I've been able to find. The shape of the helmet is pure Knights, but in neither series did Ystin wear armor that looked specifically like this. Rounded faulds on the hips? A breasty brestplate? Shoulder pads and a cape? None of that is part of the standard Shining Knight kit. Also, Shining Knight does not seem like the type who would wear dark lipstick, but maybe that's just us. Then again, there might be someone who would... The colors of the figure are right in line with the character's lineage. The original Shining Knight appeared in 1941's Adventure Comics #66, wearing golden chainmail under a red tunic with a black symbol of a bird on the chest - all very "Dirk the Daring." Simone Bianchi's Seven Soldiers version changed that to an all-gold suit of armor, losing the tunic entirely, and that's what the New 52 incarnation carried forward. The plate armor on the toy is a brighter shade of gold than the chainmail beneath, and the red of the cape adds some visual flair that would otherwise be lacking. The black on the chest doesn't quite line up with the sculpt fully on the figure I got, but the odds of finding another are low, so I'll just have to deal. The Shining Knight gets a balljointed head, balljoint/hinge shoulders, swivel/hinge elbows, swivel/hinge/swivel wrists, a balljointed chest, balljointed waist, swivel/hinge hips, swivel thighs, double-hinged knees, swivel/hinge/swivel ankles, and hinged toes. The armor over the hips and on the shoulders is flexible, so it won't entirely block the limbs, but the thickness of the cape means it ends up being fairly stiff. If this were a Four Horsemen figure she'd have a softgoods cape with a posing wire in the hem. One of the themes of Sir Ystin's story is that the idea of King Arthur and Camelot being a cyclical story, one that repeats itself throughout human history - his was 10,000 years ago, and he's managed to sleep through several others over the years. So while the sword he carries is Excalibur of its day, it may not be the Excalibur. Fun fact: the sword's name, out here in the real world, was originally Caliburn (as seen in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae), with "Escalibore" being a more French take on the name by way of Chrétien de Troyes. Caliburn or Caliburnus seems to be a Latinized version of the Welsh "Caledfwlch," which, being combined of the words for "hard" and "cut," may just be an archaic term for a sword, not any special one (cf. the magical Irish sword Caladcholg, which shares at least half the same root words in its name). So even if this toy's accessory isn't capiral-C Caledfwlch, it may still undeniably be a caledfwlch. This is a surprisingly long sword, nearly 6" tall on a 7"-scale figure. It's a simple design, a gently tapered silver blade with a golden crossguard that resembled small wings, a brown, leather-wrapped grip, and a circular golden pommel. It's odd that a figure named as though it's from Seven Soldiers and described as if it's from Demon Knights doesn't look like it's from either book, and instead has a new, made-up design that seems to miss the point of the character entirely. Maybe that's why it was chosen to be one of McToys new style of "Platinum Edition" figures: instead of just doing chase variants, like they did before, they're now making unique characters. Consider Scarecrow: there was a Platinum Edition, yes, but there was also a regular edition that was more plentiful; but there is no non-Platinum Shining Knight, no version that's more like the character should actually look. Gotta save room in the cases for three more variations of Batman, after all! I'm glad enough to have gotten this, because I liked Demon Knights and would build the entire team, given the chance, but this could have been a lot better if it were even a little more accurate. -- 01/01/25 Why does he look like this? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.