Wave 2 - Gorilla Grodd
Grodd came into the world as your normal, run-of-the-mill African gorilla. But when an alien spaceship crashed into his forest, that all changed. Grodd and his gorilla brethren rapidly evolved as a result of exposure to the alien technology, granting him superintelligence and vast telepathic and psionic abilities.
The alien commander of the crashed spacecraft became leader of the superevolved apes and helped them build the technologically advanced Gorilla City deep within the African jungle. There the alien and the gorillas lived in peaceful isolation until a group of explores discovered the city.
Seeing an opportunity to claim individual power, Grodd forced the explorers to kill the alien leader. He then took over Gorilla City and set his sights on conquering the entire world. One of Grodd's gorilla subordinates sought to stop the megalomaniacal ape by telepathically contacting the superhero The Flash and warning him of Grodd's threat to the Earth.
The Flash was able to defeat Grodd and prevent his conquering of the planet, but the super-smart primate wasn't done yet. Grodd developed scheme after scheme and continually challenged The Flash and the Justice League.
In addition to being a super-human (super-simian?) gorilla with extreme physical attributes, Grodd is capable of a variety of psionic abilities including mind control, telepathy and telekinesis. He is also able to artificially increase the mental capacity of animals in his vicinity. Grodd is super-intelligent and possesses an understanding of advanced alien technology that is far beyond that of human civilization.
And now we’re on to Grodd, the Collect & Connect figure. Grodd is a bit of mixed bag. He’s big - super big - and that’s pretty neat. You definitely feel like this is a figure that warrants BAFdom. And like most other figures in this line, his detail is outstanding. The sculpt of his fur and chest muscles is better than pretty much anything I’ve seen on a mass-market line. He seems like something I should be paying 16 bucks for at my comic shop. But therein lies the problem.
One of the neat things about this line is how nicely all the figures fit together because of the 4H’s sculpting style. Because of his “lifelike” detail, Grodd loses some of that. He just doesn’t match up that well with the other figures in this line. I’d have liked to see him have a blockier chest and more smooth texture on his face and chest. My other gripe is his articulation. He has very little outside of his arms. I realize he’s a big barrel shaped monkey, so I don’t expect 30 POA or anything, but Grodd would have benefited from perhaps a mid-torso style joint (like what Hasbro does with ML now). It could have fit under his chest muscles without breaking up the sculpt and given him some much needed body artic.
Articulation aside, Grodd looks great. And I’m plenty happy to have him up on my shelf. (Now we just need The Flash to torment him!)
