Ironically, I finally managed to track down a Liz figure this week as well. In this film she’s more in control of her gift and not nearly as angst ridden as the first film. To go with that, she’s got a new look. Short hair and a fairly form fitting outfit.

Liz’s gift, by the way is pyrokenisis, ie, she’s a firestarter. In the new film her flames are red and orange, in the first film they were blue, which I like better (See Bottom pic.) Maybe it has to do with her character’s growth.

Appearance:

I have to say after reviewing Hellboy and Krauss, I was a bit let down by Liz. She’s got the look and a lot of the
detailing is there. To me though, the overall appearance of her is more like somewhere between reality and animation. She’s ended up being more of a caricature than a straight up Liz representation.

There are couple of things that lead to this. Expertly hidden ankle joints make her feet and boots look a little oversize. Large hands to grip accessories are there as well. The last thing is her pose. When view from behind or to the side her, uh, posterior sticks way too far out in proportion to the rest of her. Hellboy could rest a can of his favorite beverage back there.

There are a number of things to like about this figure, though. The sculpting has all the detail we’ve seen on the other figures. Pockets on the jacket, buckles on the boots and belt, etc… The clothes appear to hang correctly as well. Her utility belt would make Batman proud.

One small issue there, I believe her holster hangs down from the belt instead of on it, but that may not be for every scene in the film.

One thing that is nearly perfect, is the way the sculpt and articulation have been combined. The black on black helps with that, but all of the materials appear to be the same with no color difference on the different parts. I will say that I wasn’t even sure how articulated she was. In that regard, she may even be better than the larger version of the figure Mezco put out.

There’s really two areas this figure fell flat for me. The first is the face. I don’t know what it is about it, but it’s just not right. The hair is right but the face seems a little too generic for me. The angles seem a little too hard and subtle detailing seems to be missing. I don’t know if this is a result of the paint or not.

The paint on the face leads me to my next issue. The paint on her face. There is some missing on the right side at her hairline. The head is molded in a tannish plastic that makes this fairly visible. Also, under her chin the paint stops and the plastic for the head can be seen.

The paint issues continue down from there. Painting flesh tone on black is tricky and rarely looks 100%. I’m almost thinking her neck might be a separate piece. Above the cross necklace, it looks great, below, while the lines are good, it bleeds through badly. The last little bit of paint problems is her belt buckle, I thought it might be a retro Thundercats buckle at first. Basically a big black blotch on a red field. Compared to Red’s this one is horrible.

Fun:

With Hellboy, every pose I put him in he looked good. Liz, not so much. While she’s articulated well, I couldn’t find a lot of poses I like her in. The holster limits the leg joint a bit and her center of gravity just doesn’t seem that easy to find. She stands fine on her own, but to get more extreme poses, you may need the included BPRD base.

Liz has two other accessories. One a modern automatic handgun. This one seems to be similar to the one she carries in the film. That is the extent of my hand gun knowledge. The gun seems to be in good scale with the figure and even in the holster everything looks to be nearly right.

The other accessory is an orange flame. As far as flame effects go, this one is fairly good. I had a hard time getting her to hold it though. I never did get it to match the one on the card. While I’m not a huge fan of these in general, Liz needs this to be a complete representation of her character.

Overall:

Liz is definitely not the best figure in this line so far. That doesn’t mean she’s a bad figure, though. She’s a small figure, and as such, Liz is going to be one of the more difficult to pull off. If the head sculpt had been just a tad closer, I’d have been really satisfied. As it is, I’ve got a super articulated female figure that is expertly done, with just a couple of minor issues. I hope this line will continue to set the bar for this scale. I was really expecting to be let down and was really surprised by the things Mezco managed to get into these figures.

Overall, while not the best of the bunch, Liz is better than a number of the female figures out there and a much needed figure for the Hellboy universe.

Engineernerd Score: 87/100

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