I've never seen what Peter Parker sees in MJ. Mind you, the MJ I know is the one from the movies, and I don't really like Kirsten Dunst, or indeed the Spider-Man movies, so that's not a help. But it's even more difficult to understand preferring MJ to Felicia Hardy - I picked up the Spider-Man and the Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do trade paperback a while ago, and absolutely fell in love with Felicia. She's smart, funny, dignified but not above goofing around, strong but not closed off, warm and exciting and sexy and lovable... face it Tiger, she's perfect.
This action figure isn't perfect - let's just say this up front, it's not even very good. For starters, she's in Hasbro's dumb 5-inch Spider-Man scale, which means she can't interact with Marvel Legends figures, or indeed any of the de-facto-standard 6-inch figures from all sorts of lines. She's got a couple of okay touches - the face isn't bad, as a sculpt - but far more drawbacks than benefits, with cheap manufacturing standards across the board sabotaging any good points. That okay facial sculpt, for instance, is undone by cheap-looking unpainted shiny plastic, which doesn't match the painted neck and cleavage on the torso. The rest of the body is gloss black, except for white stripes on her shoulders, wrists and ankles - I guess Hasbro couldn't be bothered sculpting her costume's fur, so they just half-assed it as stripes instead. Her figure is awkward and gangly, thanks to poorly-designed joints interfering with the shape of her limbs, and no effort from the sculpt to adapt to the joints.
Speaking of joints, they're pretty sad too. She's got a ball joint neck which is okay, but for her arms, only shoulder ball joints - no elbows, no wrists. That's just substandard. She has no torso joints, and only ball joint hips and double-peg knees - all in all, there are very few poses she can do, let alone look good in. To top it off, she's got no peg holes in her feet, so you have to pose her to balance on her own - which, with the crappy joints, isn't easy. For accessories she comes with a long whip that's too thick at the handle, and too rigid to look good - and also too heavy for her to hold without falling over, so you have to pose her with the whip resting on the ground so as not to overbalance her.
She also has a truly stupid animal companion, a cougar or something - it looks like it was from some other toyline, and Hasbro just stuck it in with Felicia because they couldn't think of anything better. It's got no articulation - the head is on a ball joint, but it's completely loose and just lolls around - but springs in its hips, so if you push it down, it'll feebly 'spring' when you let it go. It's a piece of junk, which I didn't even think worth taking a photo of.
Bottom line, I bought this because I wanted a Felicia Hardy figure, because I adore her. But this figure is substandard, doesn't look much good on display, and has little play value. There's a Marvel Select Black Cat figure, from a while back, that looks excellent - it's difficult to find at a good price nowadays, but I'd snap that up in a heartbeat if I ever saw it. This one... don't bother. Black Cat deserves better.
