The recent releases of Corsair, Ch'od, and Ch'reee in the Marvel Legends line have me very excited for future Starjammers figures. There is something about late 70's and early 80's creations of Dave Cockrum that thrill me. He is most well known for his work on the X-Men, having created Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus. (I'm personally also a big fan of his creator-owned property, The Futurians). But one of his big creations that doesn't often get a chance to shine is The Starjammers, a colorful group of space pirates introduced in X-Men #104 in 1977. And although I love this whole team, the character Hepzibah was always my favorite. Her abilities were a little generic: Superhuman strength, agility, blah blah blah. But her skunk appearance was so unique and cool to me that I was an instant fan. She is from the Mephitisoid race (skunks are from the family Mephitidae). Unfortunately in more modern comics, she has lost the skunk-stripes and instead looks like a white cat, but either way she is awesome.
Hepzibah has maintained a low-key, but consistent, presence in Marvel comics. In the early 2000s she was regularly in the pages of X-Men and X-Force, and those appearances inspired this toy. Marvel SuperHero Squad (2006-2013) was a terrific toy line technically aimed at a preschool audience, but with a prominence and character selection that was catered to adult collectors. At SDCC 2009, they showed off several multipacks that never saw true release. Among these was an X-Force 4-Pack with Wolverine, Cyclops, Warpath, and Hepzibah. They never hit the shelves, but they are almost always available loose on eBay. This is the only Hepzibah merchandise except for a few Heroclix figures. My fingers are crossed that we'll see her in Legends form by this time next year (hopefully in her classic yellow outfit and skunk stripes). But let's check out the OG Hepzibah figure first...
Since this set was never released, there are no images of the packaging. Instead there are only booth images from the 2009 SDCC Hasbro display and a ton of photos of factory samples that hit the secondary market.
Fun fact: I took these photos more than 9 years ago in 2014 but am just posting them now.
This was the second oldest photoset in my ridiculously huge backlog of content.
Time for some Group and Comparison Pics!
Here is Hepzibah with two other Superhero Squad ladies: Enchantress and Marvel Girl. Near the end of the line the scale started to get very inconsistent. You can see that if Hepzibah was standing upright she would be towering over the other two. I remember the later-release Tigra was the same way.
Cheers!
Yeesh. The way they redesigned her in modern times takes away ANYTHING iconic-looking to her original character design.
ReplyDeleteit's true. First time I saw this design I thought it was that Stormwatch character Diva who sang opera. (or any of the billion felinoid character introduced in the 90s). The eventual Legends figure better have major skunky vibes.
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