Firstly, let me just say that although I'm not much of a bust person, that doesn't apply so much to these kinds of busts that have been cropping up these past couple of years. It's the traditional busts - head and shoulders/chest only - that I'm not really enamoured of, just because the missing parts of the character are so obviously missing. The thighs-up style of bust - which is more a truncated statue, really - suits me better, and ever since I (of course) bought the Willow and Tara 'Once More With Feeling' busts, which were rendered in this manner, I've been more open to the idea of busts in general. The 'Women of the DC Universe' series has been chugging along for a while now, doing quite well through a combination of appealing visual style, sculpting and paint above action figure standards, and a price tag that's not out of most collectors' reach. Still, they're not the kind of thing you'd pick up on a whim, so it took a special name to get me to buy. Zatanna has been a favourite of mine since I read Seven Soldiers of Victory, but she's never been represented in action figure form the way I wanted - the 'Justice' action figure, while very nice in its own right, is very much a different incarnation of Zee, and the older figure with her superhero-spandex outfit... no. This bust, even though it's based on a concept sketch by notable gorgeous-women-sketcher Adam Hughes, not the work of Seven Soldiers: Zatanna artist Ryan Sook, is much closer to the Zatanna I know and adore. The sculpt is exquisite compared to an action figure, and quite passable by the standards of higher-end collectables. Zatanna's adorable expression of concentration is clear and vivid, her proportions are good, the tailoring (so to speak) on her outfit all rings true, and in a very clever move her fishnets are real, fitting perfectly over her sculpted bare legs. As always with fishnets this small (which are becoming the M.O. for characters like Zee and Black Canary in collectable form) the seams are enormous - with action figures they're generally at the back and therefore invisible from the front, but with Zatanna they're cleverly placed so as to minimise their impact no matter what angle you've got them at. The seam on her right leg is at the back - beneath the tail of her coat - and on the left, it's further towards the inside of her thigh, so that from behind the tail hides it, but it's also all but invisible from the side, should you wish to position the bust side-on to have Zatanna showing off her rather nice hip. The design and pose is, I'd say, perfect - the cute way she's biting her tongue in concentration is very much in keeping with her character from Seven Soldiers, where she's a born performer, never taking herself too seriously, and always putting on a good show for her audience, no matter whether she's doing magic tricks or fighting a sorcerous duel with a demon. Her magical nature is very simply and effectively conveyed by her arm vanishing into her top hat - it's not easy to make magic visual in a statue, but this really does the trick. In a neat touch, her base is a travelling case for her magic show; sadly the final product doesn't have the sketch's stickers from the venues she's performed at: the Metropolis Bijou, Gotham Orpheus, Star City Roxy - a fun checklist of some of DC's fictional cities. Speaking of the paint, that's the one area where the bust is let down a bit. Her hair is shiny, whish isn't itself wrong, except that it's sculpted in a comic-like mass, with soft contours rather than the texture of individual strands, the result being that it just doesn't look as real as it should. There's also a minor but consistent problem with the edges - the black of her hair doesn't quite come in close enough to where it joins her face, the division between her lapels and the shirt beneath isn't quite as sharp as it should be, and so on - it's a niggling problem, but nothing that can't be overlooked until you really get up close to her. Aside from that, though, everything is good: her coat is a matte finish, though still as it should be a touch shinier than her skin, and her lapels are high gloss to give a bit of variety, as is the band on her top hat. The white on her shirt and waistcoat is clean and consistent, and the details of her eyes and lips (and tongue) are picked out cleanly, in particular the pupils of her eyes, crucial to capture the theatrical expression she's got. The case serving as a base is flat black, and the metal on its corners and edging the lid is also rather matte, giving it a well-worn appearance. I'd still prefer to have the whole deal, Zatanna from head to toe - but until that happens, this is a very characterful rendition of her, and one I'm happy to add to my collection.