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I once got in a conversation with someone who claimed that pointing out that men are generally stronger than women was sexist. Which is clearly a stupid thing to say: facts can't be sexist, they can only be facts. Now, if you say men are better than women because they're stronger, that's sexism. Or if you want to overthrow the patriarchy and create an all-female society, that's sexism too. Probably on a different level.
Second in command in General Zod's army, Faora is a powerful Kryptonian warrior. Extremely talented with knives and
hand-to-hand combat, she will stop anyone who gets in her way. Fiercely loyal to General Zod and his cause, she is imprisoned with Zod in the Phantom Zone, eventually escaping and traveling to Earth with him where they will encounter a long lost Kryptonian named Kal-El.
Faora was introduced to the comics in the late 1970s as a paper-thin misandrist - basically, a straw feminist in the Valerie Solanas mold. She hated men with no reason, and was put in the Phantom Zone for kidnapping and torturing two dozen male Kryptonians in a secret concentration camp hidden in her home. Yeah. Hang in there, 1977 comicbook writers: in just another 30-some years the internet and Men's Rights Activists will be along to share your deluded opinions!
Faora is played by Antje Traue, who we'd say you might recognize from the sci-fi film Pandorum, but who are we kidding? Nobody saw that movie and remembers it. The likeness is good, comparing the toy to promo shots from Entertainment Weekly, but the head seems slightly too large for the body - an ongoing problem with the MoS toys.
Like Zod, Faora is wearing scary black space armor.
But while his was symmetrical, hers is... less so. Okay, the breastplate, the belt, the boots, those things are all normal - but the arms are different from one another. Her right arm has a large pauldron that raises up to protect her neck. Three pointed pieces of armor cover her right bicep, and she's wearing a large metal gauntlet that draws to a point near the elbow. Her left arm, meanwhile, has a smaller, rounded piece of armor on the shoulder, a single spike on the bicep, a large couter on the elbow, and a smaller glove that only reaches to the middle of her forearm. Befitting her bio's mention of knives, she's wearing one on her left hip. It's non-removable, though.
The sculpt is quite good, but the proportions seem off. Maybe it's just the picture we're using for comparison - maybe it's been retouched to make her look better. But if we take that photo as gospel, then this figure is too wide. It makes her look short and stocky. Short's fine, because
"female" (it's also not sexist to say women are shorter than men - or to say that Frau Traue is 5'6" in real life), but stocky doesn't suit her.
Her articulation is the same as Zod's: hinged ankles, hinged knees (though this time the keepads work the way they should, hiding the joint rather than being broken by it), swivel thighs, H-crotch, swivel waist, swivel wrists, hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, and a balljointed head. As with Zod, the head looks down, but not up. Her shoulderpads attach above the joint, and are soft PVC to flex out of the way. Also, she could really use a chest hinge. It would work perfectly with the design of her armor. The left hip on my figure feels stuck, and I haven't tried throwing her in the freezer yet; packed at one per case, Faora isn't a figure I want to have to replace.
Faora has the same display stand the other figures have,
just painted with her symbol to set it apart. The base is just over 3⅛" wide and 2" long. Or is that 3⅛" long and 2" wide? We'd say deep, but then you'd think it was 2" tall, and it's not. That's just silly. Appropriately enough, Faora's symbol looks like an F - or maybe a 5. The base has the X texture of Superman's movie suit, and the surface is painted with gray paint to create the negative space of the design. She gets no other accessories.
So, Faora. A poorly motivated character and a so-so action figure. She's got a nice sculpt, but poor proportions and no accessories. Get her if you can find her, but don't feel like you need to pay scalper prices to put her in your collection. We hope that's not sexist to say.
-- 06/13/13
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