Dove

Characters you own have gotten stale and boring? There's one easy path to reinvigorating them: turn one into a girl! Dawn Granger was given powers by the Lords of Order, effectively stripping them from Don Hall (the original Dove). Needing the "Hawk" to balance her new role as "Dove," Granger joined forces with Hank Hall. Lured to Druspa Tau, they were forced to battle each other in a war between the Lords of Chaos and the Lords of Order and their devotees. At the conclusion, Hawk and Dove absorbed the powers of their creators; leaving Dove waith a new ability: flight. Yes, nothing says "constant, predictable Order" like gaining random new powers through contact. Order is doing the same thing over and over, so to really play that up, Dawn using the powers of Dove should really have ended up with the same body as Don using the powers of Dove. Kind of a "Shazam body-swapping" thing, but with gender instead of age. And by the same token, Hawk should have gotten a different set of powers every time he changed. But no, the only differences between the agent of Chaos and the agent of Order were the color costumes they wore. Whereas the original (male) Dove costume included a full-head cowl, the new (female) version only gets a large domino mask. Very large. Like, "Spider-Man eyes" large. That would definitely do a better job of concealing her identity than the little masks most superheroes wear. Of course, having bright white hair might defeat that. Dove uses the second female body, so at least she doesn't have one giant uni-boob. On the plus side, her shawl/cape thing is a separate piece, not just a painted element - a mistake Mattel made before, so we're really glad to see it not repeated here. It has a sculpted hem at the collar, and a single blue... button? Jewel? Whatever. One blue dot on her throat, just like the comics. The cape comes down nearly to her waist in the back, which is almost as far as her ponytail goes. Throwing the drape onto her torso is a small, small change to the standard body, but since most of the women just get paint apps to set them apart, this makes Dove look pretty good. Speaking of the paint apps, Dove's are fairly simple: just a powder blue suit with white gloves, boots and trunks. Or maybe we should call them white panties, just to bring in (and subsequently disappoint) more confused websurfers. Like Hawk, her "white" is actually a pale gray, and like Hawk, that looks a lot better than the way ToyBiz used to handle white costumes. She gets the usual complement of DCU Classics articulation, with nothing extra - not even a swivel joint for her ponytail! It's just a PVC mold that's glued into place at the base of her skull. Well, the base of her hair, anyway. It doesn't turn, is the point. Dawny gets no accessories, just a piece of the Series 20 BAF, Nekron. She gets the groin, which for once isn't paired with the head. Why? Because Nekron wears a long robe, and in addition to the actual bit of his body, there's also a soft PVC skirt that's long enough to reach what will eventually be his ankles. With that taking up a portion of the budget, the head had to go elsewhere. Dove isn't a remarkably wonderful figure, but then, she's not a remarkably wonderful character, either: there's a reason she was scheduled for Series 20, not Series 1. Or 2. Or 5. Or 17. She and Hawk are C-listers, easy (and it would probably be "D-listers" if not for Gail Simone putting them on the Birds of Prey team, briefly). But just because the characters are minor it doesn't mean they can't be good toys. So Dove may not be great, but she's better than mediocre. The most important thing, though, is that she and Hawk look good together - it's always nice when you can complete a team. -- 03/08/12

Tweet