Boris Vallejo's Monica's Axe
Review by starro
Monica’s Axe is the 4th installment of PVC statues made from paintings created by the famous sci-fi artist Boris Vallejo and modeled after Julie Bell.
The statue is an excellent likeness.
But being a statue, it has no other functionality-no cast-off pieces (and no nudity), no posability, no switchable or alternative pieces.
The base requires some assembly, as seen in the pictures, but once assembled the statue is basically two pieces. The base and figure itself.
The statue's attention to detail is outstanding! The likeness with the original art is perfect to a fault. Her face captures the masculinity and the menace.
You can see the muscular veins on Monica’s arm, you can see the fine details on the belt, armor and weapons.
Monica’s finely toned six-pack abs are just awesome.
Monica's ass is also to be admired
The attention to human detail, her feet, the small of her back and her hair are really impressive.
Foot fetishists rejoice!!
There’s negatives to the sculpt that are largely tied to the “mass production” aspect of the sculpt. This is where details look like they are essentially flush or sculpted INTO the flesh of the character instead of like real armor or clothes that are on the surface. The breast plate for example, looks pretty much like it’s a flush part of Monica’s breasts.
Its not a flagrant distraction-but when you compare against the high end Japanese statues, you realize this is a quality one sees on the mass-produced figure lines.
The base is also nicely done. It has a “dead spider” theme with dead legs and what looks like eyes off to the side.
Monica is attached to the base with a groove and only a single sprocket into her foot which doesn’t make it the most secure connection.
Its stable and she stays on the base-but given the weight of the Monica figure, she is prone to falling off the base every so often.Bottom line-the base-figure connection gets a "C-" but it does look nice.One word of warning is that the axe goes into Monica’s hands quite tightly. And you have to be a little careful to get it in the right way. The axe tip, starting along the slender shaft is easily broken off should the statue falls the wrong way, as mine did early on.
Overall? Monica's Axe is a GREAT statue and I'm happy to display it among my "girl figure" collection. I'm a little dissatisfied with some of the minor sculpting issues-and how the lack of solid connection to the base led to the axe breaking off but these are all fixable issues. I look forward to future releases in the Boris Vallejo series!