Toys / Comics to Toys / DCDirect

Ares

By Hervé St-Louis
January 23, 2011 - 16:19

Ares was released by DCDirect in a series called Wonder Woman Allies and Villains along with Cheetah and Artemis. I've meant to review this action figure for literally a decade now as it was released in March 2001 and that's when I bough mine. Ares, in the early days of the 1980s Wonder Woman rebooted series by George Perez was the main villain and somewhat of a family member to Wonder Woman. In various adaptation of Wonder Woman to animation in the 2000s, Ares was also described as Wonder Woman's father.

Of course the action figure is based on the depiction from George Perez. Perez' Wonder Woman was the most Greek of all previous incarnation. It gave her and her villains and supporting cast more character. It also gave them better visual looks.

Ares here look as menacing as an main villain should be. Here was Wonder Woman's main enemy early in the series. His chest is all chain mail. He sports some kind of Greek armour. He almost doesn't look like a DC Comics' character. I don't have a problem with that.

Like early DCDirect action figures, he is completely posed and not well-designed in terms of articulations. He does have bending knees, bending elbows, but his cape is not made of soft rubber. So it's static and it the way of his neck articulation. You won't be turning Ares' head very often. It's not easy to. Ares has very poor articulations. His knees were weak almost from day one. They are very loose and cannot support his top heavy torso.

A neat feature of Ares is that there is actually a face sculpted and painted completely in black inside the helmet, which is glued on top. You can't quite tell what his exact features are, but his face is there.

Ares came with two weapons, an axe and a sword. Both weapons will fall off his hands easily.

Ares was a great action figure on paper, but in execution he's definitely lacking in the quality of his build.

Finding him is not easy but I don't believe his price has had a massive increase over the years. He's not a very popular character. Often DCDirect sells old stocks of less popular DCDirect action figures to comic book stores at a great discount. Depending on the honesty of the store, you could find the original action figure for less than $10. If anyone tries to sell you this action figure for anything more than $15, look elsewhere.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12