Sinestro Corps Mongul

Mattel's crappy distribution is nothing new. It's the bane of DC Universe, but it was a giant pain in the ass during DC Superheroes, too. The son of an infamous galactic conqueror, Mongul is driven by a burning desire to surpass his father's murderous achievements. Mongul broke into the Justice League Watchtower only to be turned back. Next, he used the hallucination-inducing Black Mercy plant against Green Lantern, but it could not overcome Green Lantern's indominatble will. After that, Mongul's main enemy became the Green Lantern Corps. Mongul was originally available in DCSH6, though finding him was (predictably) a herculean task. He was later given a re-release with the even harder-to-find Cyborg Superman. Now we've got a third version, but at least this one has been repainted and slightly retooled. The majority of this figure is the same mold as before. It's highly detailed, and since none of the pieces have ever been used for hundreds of other characters, Mongul still looks impressive. The detail is heavy from head to toe - literally, from the metal cap that wraps around his ears to the fine lines on the soles of his boots. The entirety of the arms are new, however: they're bare, so all the costume details have been turned into skin texture; his bracers are a new design, closer to the Sinestro Corps standard, and his hands now have gloves (you can tell because the thumbnails are gone). The paint choices are slightly odd - his "armor" is metallic blue, but it should be darker. His clothes are pink and purple, when they should really be pink and blue. The Yellow Lantern symbol in the center of his chest is just a tiny circle, when it should really extend to the edges of the trapezoid it's in. That's very disappointing. And though it's more of a sculptural issue than a paint one, he's only got one power ring: being a power-hungry sort, he stole rings from other Yellow Lanterns he killed and had one on every finger, so he's five short. There are a few missed opportunities with Mongul. For instance, they could have painted his his left eye black, rather than red: Green Lantern Bzzt (a tiny little fly) saved his compatriots by flying into Mongul's mouth and blowing the eye out from the inside. Also, after getting his arm severed by a different GL, Mongul still used his ring on that arm, letting it fly around on its own, following him like a puppy. A murderous puppy. Admittedly, getting a removable arm may have been asking too much, but maybe they could have made some sort of translucent "glow" effect that fit inside the shoulder joint, to show how he'd reattach it when needed? The figure includes the right arm of this series' Build-A-Figure. Unfortunately, it really demonstrates how out-of-scale the big guy is going to be, since Mongul and Arkillo are meant to be roughly the same size as one another. We listed a lot of complaints with this figure, make no mistake; but really, a lot of them are completely unrealistic. A removable arm that can fly around by itself? Who would actually expect to see that? Lunatics, that's who. Yes, it would be awesome, but there are a lot of things that would awesome and yet way too expensive to even contemplate. Bottom line is, if you never found Mongul before, well hey, here he is! If you did find him before, a lot has been changed, and the two figures won't look identical on your shelf. The recent DC Direct repaint gets right some of the things this one gets wrong (the logo, the rings), but this is still a better toy. -- 12/28/10