Hallows' Eve

A "retro" figure from 2023. Armed with a bag of super-powered Halloween masks, Janine Godbe is on a mission to evade the police and free her beloved Ben Reilly as Hallows' Eve. So after Scarlet Spider "Chasmed" himself, he got big mad that he was missing all his Peter Parker memories and stole a bunch of tech from his former employers, the Beyond Corporation©, to find a way to get into Limbo, where he hooked up (not like that) with Madelyne Pryor because the two of them could bond over being rejected for being clones when their original templates came back. Janine was upset that she didn't have any way to directly help Ben in his upcoming war, so Goblyn Queen offered to give her powers, if she would ask for them. The girl said yes, Maddy gave her a quick demon-fingering on the balcony, and Hallows' Eve was born. Janine Godbe was introduced in 1995's Spider-Man: the Lost Years #1, a series that showed what the Spider-Clone was doing for all the time between when he was thought dead in the '70s and when he came back to NYC in the '90s. She was a waitress in Salt Lake City, working under an assumed name while on the run from the police. Eventually she was written out of the story, but came back after some time in jail, and now she and Ben are as inseparable as everybody except Marvel's editors want Peter and MJ to be. While Janine was designed by John Romita Jr., Hallows' Eve was designed by Ed McGuinness, with 27 years in between those two creation dates. Her costume is very simple, a black bodysuit with an orange hood that connects to a long, tattered scarf (in the art, at least - on this toy, it's separate). She has orange boots and gloves, which are tall enough to almost reach her torso, and those have large holes near the tops to make them look as raggedy as the ends of the scarf. This is an existing body, even the chest, so there's nothing keeping the scarf in place other than the way her hood rests against it; it really would have been nice, since this is a $25 figure with no BAF, if they'd actually attached those frowning jack o'lantern clasps to her body somehow. (Pro tip: you can tuck the front point of the hood under the scarf, and then the thing won't slide around as much.) That choice becomes even more annoying when you realize how they cut corners. Her costume has no sculpted elements, so below the neck everything is just accomplished with paint, which is fine (though if they had permanently attached her pumpkins, they also could have sculpted the purple straps that are meant to be holding them on). Her skin is white, with a black, bat-shaped mask covering her eyes, and dark red lipstick outlining her smile. While Janine has red hair (what can we say? Even as a clone, Peter Parker has a type!), this toy does not. Instead, her hair is the same orange as her hood, and so doesn't stand out at all. Poor form, Hasbro! Her accessories include a purple bag and two masks: a Devil and a Dracula, the two McGuinness drew on the design sheet. Hallows' Eve's powers allow her to draw any number of masks from her bag, and when she puts them on, she takes on the attributes they imply: like, a Ghost mask makes her intangible, a Witch mask gives her magic, etc. Technically her entire costume changes - so when she puts on the Devil mask, the orange turns red, her feet become hooves, and she grows a tail, and when she puts on the Dracula mask, she grows wings and fangs and her hair turns black. Think Mega Man using Robot Masters' powers. That's way beyond the scope of a normal action figure, so these masks simply haven't been activated yet. She has dozens in the comics, so it's a shame the figure only comes with two. We'd have traded away some of the alternate hands (she has three pairs) if it meant more masks. We will say, though: this is Hasbro, the company that created Zartan; given her hood and the shape of her hair, why can the toy not wear the masks? After her final appearance in 1996, no one gave a single thought to Janine Godbe until she showed up again in 2021. Heck, Ben had at least four love interests after her, and her name never even came up in a thought bubble. But she quickly became a really interesting character after her return, and boosting her up with new powers worked out really well. I only got this action figure because of the whole vague "Hobgoblin" vibe she's got going on, but it turns out she's a creative new... villain... anti-hero... thing. This toy, though, needed some more indivualized attention to really serve her well. -- 06/24/24