When you become known for certain things, sometimes you have to live up to your reputation.  For example, if you regularly follow this blog, you know that I love orange toys.  The more obnoxious, the better.  You also know that I love Lex Luthor in Power Suit Armor.  I especially love Lex Luthor in Power Suit Armor when he's making a goofy face.

And so this thing existed.

I mean, in one way, I'm kind of meh about it.  I didn't read any Darkest Night or Brightest Day whatever.  I've never read the Sinestro Corps.  I've never read a single Green Lantern book in my life.  I just don't really care about Green Lantern.  I liked John Stewart a lot in Justice League, but that's the extent of my interest in all things Green Lantern.  If I see the Green Lantern film this summer, it will be because I am a bigger fan of Ryan Reynolds.

But... bright translucent Lex Luthor in his Power Suit with a goofy-ass face.

Another wrinkle in my decision was learning that DC Universe Classics is also going to be doing a version of "Orange Lantern Lex Luthor" or whatever.  Mattel's stuff is way more poseable than DC Direct's, so it would be a more fun toy to fiddle with.  But it didn't have the goofy face.  I had to choose between better toy or goofy face.

I guess I chose goofy face.

I'm on a boat right now, safely out of the country during the fallout from that Christmas Eve strip.  I am a shrewd man who values his life.

Last Monday I talked about my Manhunter Robots JLU set and how I was still on the lookout for the counterpart 3-pack that included Despero.  Well, I found him the next day!  And this is me writing about him that night, but in a post scheduled for... the future!!! Technology is grand.

(I always wonder, dude, what if I suddenly die?  How weird will it be for these updates to continue popping up after I'm gone?  Well, just in case, ooooOOOoooOOoooo speaking from beeyoonnd the graaaaveee...)

Anyway, check out this Despero.  Man, he sure is Despero!  Like the Manhunter episode, I didn't particularly care for Despero's episode either.  Which is weird, because the second season of Justice League was pretty great.  But at least Despero sounds like Goliath!  I kept expecting him to tell people about how one thousand years ago, superstition and the sword ruled.

Despero the figure is kind of a disappointment because of his size.  Why did they use the Green Lantern body?  That's the shortest of bodies!  Even Katma Tui casts a shadow over him.

Speaking of Katma Tui, man, what kind of friggin' name is Katma Tui?  It sounds like a Jawa war cry or someone spitting or something.  Anyway, it's nice to have her in her real skin color, rather than that brownish hue her original toy was.  I was also surprised to discover, after putting both Katma Tuis together, that their uniforms are different.  And I did some Internet sleuthing and learned that Brown Katma is based on her brief appearance in a later episode, where she has a more-revealing Green Lantern outfit and appears to have darker skin.  That was nice to learn.  I'd previously worried that Mattel made her black just because John Stewart should only be dating other black chicks.  No, they were just following an errant screenshot.

No screenshot can fix that receding hairline of hers, though.  Yikes.

In conclusion, the spell is broken, and Despero lives again.

I'm gone, but that doesn't mean I can't load up some toy talk into the queue ahead of time!

First of all, let me get out of the way that I didn't realize the Unfortunate Implications of the photograph until, well, whoops.  Anyway.

Check out these "Manhunter Robots"!  This is to distinguish them, I imagine, from the non-robot Martian Manhunter.  Lots of hunting of men in the DC universe.  In theory.  See, it's weird, because I don' t think Martian Manhunter even really ever hunted men.  (He hunted that lost little girl once, I guess?)  The Manhunter Robots, however, seem to better deserve the description.  We've seen them hunt dudes!  It was just John Stewart and it was in a terribly boring episode I never want to see again, but it happened.

Man, I hate that episode.

So, of course, I spent $15.99 plus tax (oh my god how did it come to this) to own characters from an episode I didn't even like.  This is completism, folks.  Don't let this happen to you.  A decade ago I had to work myself up towards even buying a friggin' Batman and maybe a Joker, which took a lot of justifying at the time, and yet here I am now buying Manhunter Robots.  What the fuck.

They come with Green Lantern.  They also come with these little sticks.  I had to look at a screencap or two to find out which end they hold the sticks by.  I'm still not entirely sure.

But at least they're pretty appealing-looking.  Big and angular and glossy.  And new sculpts!  They are very nice toys from an episode I couldn't care less about.

Somewhere out there is the other new 3-pack from this wave which includes Despero and Green Lantern again and that girl Green Lantern he banged who Mattel won't deco as her actual skin color for some reason.   Maybe I've found it by the time this post publishes!  Probably not.