Mattel's Obsidian

We continue our look at the exclusive Ultra Humanite wave from Wal-Mart with Obsidian. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have this figure. This is a figure I thought pretty much would not be made so much so that I made a custom of it that turned out less than great. This figure is a welcome replacement and another top-notch figure from Mattel. They even found a way to tie it in a wave where it makes sense being a companion figure to his father Alan Scott the original Green Lantern. You see Mister Brewer; it’s easy to find a place for a figure on your schedule that makes sense if you actually look for it. This is another figure DC Direct will never make and thank you Mattel for stepping up to the plate and giving us the beginnings of a Modern JSA display. That is enough about that, let’s get to Mattel’s great figure.

Obsidian was introduced by Roy Thomas way back before the original Crisis in the early 1980’s. He and his sister Jade were Alan’s Scott’s children that he never knew he had. It’s a long story that involves Earth 2 and has been interwoven with the Star Heart and a bunch of other nonsense you don’t really need to know. The main thing you need to know is that Obsidian is the original Green Lantern’s son. Mattel capitalizes on this fact to give him to us in the same wave we get his dad Alan Scott. This figure is dead on accurate to the way the character has been drawn in the comics right down to his round collar on his cape. This is a difficult character to pull off due to the color scheme of navy and black but I have to hand it to Mattel the colors separates great. You can definitely see the lines between navy and black clearly. That was the problem I had with my custom of him and the less said about that the better. The white of his eyes and teeth also stand out to give him his shadow like appearance that goes with his power set of being able to turn into a living shadow. Interestingly the figure is referred to as Todd Rice his real name on the packaging instead of his superhero name. Guess there must be some copyright issues but anyway Obsidian comes with a leg of the collect and connect Ultra Humanite. There is not much more to say about this figure except they got the necklace and the belts right on him just as it is in the comics. It’s a pretty simple figure other than that so let’s look at some comparison shots.

Here he is with his dad Alan Scott from the wave and I must say they look great together. No problems here.

Here’s a shot with the previously released Mr. Terrific from Mattel. This shot frustrates me because I still don’t think we have a good Mr. Terrific from either company. DC Direct botched their attempt in their first Modern JSA series and I still think Mattel’s could be better. I just don’t think it captures the kick ass qualities of the character. He’s supposed to be the third smartest man on the planet in the DCU. This just doesn’t pull that off for me. I guess he’s no longer the third smartest man since Marc Guggenheim is doing a Flowers for Algernon with him in the current book. I thought the writing on JSA was going to improve but so far Mr. Terrific is just getting stupid and he’s made Alan Scott a quadriplegic. Get Geoff John’s back on this title, he is the only one who get it. Sorry. End of rant.

While we are looking at JSA let’s take a look at the original Alan Scott figure from DC Direct with the new one. The Green Lantern still holds up as a great figure for my money.

I thought I’d pair him with DC Direct’s Power Girl to give you a look at that. Looks good to me and I prefer this Power Girl to Mattel’s but that is just me.

Finishing up with two pics here. First I had hoped to add this figure to the Alex Ross figure from DC Direct but as you can see the scale is a no go. This was disappointing but not unexpected.

Why don’t I put him with the other JSA Mattel figures? Well I kind of got impatient waiting for DC Direct to do a JSA so I did my own customs of the line-up. I’m pretty happy with the versions I did so I wasn’t too excited when they brought out duplicates of ones I had already made. I decided to pass but since my Obsidian sucked this was a welcome upgrade. I probably would not have brought Alan if not for the C&C piece. I bought Mr. Terrific because I didn’t like DC Directs and then decided after I got Mattel’s I hated it too. Anyway I have two different displays going for my JSA so both Mr. Terrifics have a home. One is with the early team including Jack Knight and the other is with the later teams shown above with the new addition of Obsidian. It’s a crowded shelf and I’m going to have to move it if I add another figure in the future. This is a great addition to anybody’s JSA shelf and I hope that everybody one day has a shelf with all of Mattel’s figures like my custom shelf.