She's Cover Girl, not Miss Centerfold
You people may have already noticed that the GI Joes have the most entries in the blog in its 11-month existence (6 out 34 to be exact), so it may come as no surprise for you people to expect that I am one of the people drooling for the release of GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. But no- I’m not really fond of live action movie adaptations, and I’ll probably be skipping the theater experience until the eventual DVD release comes a few months later when I can watch it at home in peace and quiet, comfortable toilet breaks, and a nearly unlimited supply of snacks. (Plus there’s no ‘Captain Obvious’ people behind me kibitzing about something every-god-damn-five-seconds!)
Although I really hate the other side-effect of movie releases- the artificial demand of almost everyone who now wants GI Joe (who a few months earlier would skipped the said products without batting an eyelash) and the god-awful markup and hoarding of the hawt items, such is life, and at least they have new stuff for us to collect and here is one of them.
I’ve been waiting for the movie figures for quite a while now, ever since seeing the previews and leaked images from the forums. While it can’t be denied that the new movie look is substantially different from the 25th anniversary style, a GI Joe is still a GI Joe, and I’ll be picking up a few figures to patch up some holes in my 25AC collection. Such, one of the top figures on my list is Courtney Krieger, most commonly known as Cover Girl.
Sisid Marino 
As far as my limited Joe knowledge goes, I’m pretty sure that Cort (pretty hard to type Cover Girl or Courtney every single time, ya know) had red hair and was an Armored Vehicle Expert. That and her original figure came with the Wolverine Missile Tank and she looked goddamn awful back then. So it came as a surprise that she would appear in the movie to be blonde and as a ‘Special Weapons Officer’. Well, given what they did to Cobra Commander, I shouldn’t be suprised. Or maybe they did realize that in Cort’s first cartoon appearance (the MASS Device), she was blonde and had blue eyes. Played by Karolina Kurkova, it is a fun thing to note that a model is playing the role of a model (turned soldier).
Cort’s ROC figure is made in the new 25AC style- the no o-ring, chest instead of waist joint, and is not the 3 3/4′ scale of the older 80’s figs, but rather nearing 4′. So expect the usual 25AC joints in this one- neck joint, mid-torso joint, rotating wrists, soft rubbery hands instead of the oldschool hard plastic C-grips, swiveling elbows, shoulders, same old metal ball joints on the crotch area, double jointed knees, and ankle joints. My sample even has the ‘greasylegs’ feature- the left crotch joint gives in to the slightest pressure of my fingertips- a common thing on a huge amount of Joe figures, but a bit irksome that the leg moves a lot when I’m lifting the figure and I have to reset the position the legs again when I’m putting it down.
Shrinking to 3 3/4 scale makes you look different
The sculpt of the figure all is well done, but there is a glitch in one part- the head. While the Hasbro sculptors have been getting better and better in delivering emotions on faces that would end up a few inches long in the end, they still trip every now and then on trying to completely copy someone’s face. Not that I blame them, because you don’t need a college degree to know that such a thing is feat in itself. So said nameless sculptor tried to get Ms. Kurkova’s likeness to plastic, almost makes it. Almost. To clarify things, it doesn’t look ugly- of the movie versions of Scarlett, Baroness and her, I think she looks the best- but it doesn’t look spot-on like her. Okay, maybe a bit. My brother said so, before he dropped an MOC Hotwheels go-cart on my Joe figures, sending Wild Bill flying without a helicopter. Then I killed him for that. 
And since she has long locks of nice golden hair, you all know what that means- neck articulation generally restricted. She was sculpted with her hair flowing naturally down, a sensible aesthetic choice since windswept hair like the first 25AC Baroness might look a bit silly, but it hampers the head from turning left and right.
Instead of her being in beige digs and having her trademark jacket, Cort is dressed in the generic Delta gray uniform of her team, a pretty tame design since she’s Hawk’s aide-de-camp in this incarnation. Ah, those were the days of pretty lax dress codes… Sharing the look with the other only other female Joe figure in the same get-up in the initial offering, Scarlett, Cort does have some changes on the way she wears her uniform. First of all, she’s looking a bit modest since she has her uniform zipped way higher on the chest, probably to stop those damned onlookers from giving them something to keep them awake at night. On the inverse side though, she has her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, revealing her black wristwatch on her left arm. She also has a different belt than Shana, and has a pocket located on each thigh of her pants. Oh, and she has a wee little id pinned to her chest, with some small silver paint apps depicting the metal clip and some barcodes and the new GI Joe logo on the id’s surface. The thing is attached to the figure via a large peg that buries deep in her chest. So no, even if you do remove the id, there will be a large unsightly recess in its wake. Well, unless you fill it in with putty or something.
Paintapps are pretty much normal, nothing spectacular to mention about. The head and arms are cast in flesh tone plastic, making Cort look shiny. The torso and thighs are cast in the gray tones of the uniform and the lower legs are in black. The camo pattern is probably tampographed or something, the lines are crisp and the pattern is cast into two shades, a darker gray and a muted smokey tone contrasting it. The packaging art showed a more intricate pattern, even showing the word GI JOE in the new fonts as part of it. Sadly, due to the size constraints and the expense of adding such details on a mass market figure, it has been left out. Her hair is painted in yellow, with a small wash of a darker tone filling in the gaps of the sculpt.
Knowing is half the battle, packing enough firepower is one quarter, then using said firepower to kill someone bad is the last part
Cort, as one would expect from GI Joes, comes with lots of equipment for your army building pleasure. Since she has a new specialty now, Cort comes with a silver notebook computer, which while is convincingly sculpted and can even open and close, is void of other details, such as a anything on the screen. Nope, the screen is blank. The only detail is the joe logo cast on the outside.
Ahh, innovation.
Aside from that long-awaited accessory (who doesn’t need computers in Joe Dios?), the rest of her kit are weapons- a bullpup assault rifle that looks a lot like the FAMAS but isn’t, two silver pistols, and the movie requirement of a Big Freaking Gun.
Firepower can sometimes also be measured by the heft of the weapon.
The BFG is a spring loaded weapon that fires a blue missile, and has a flip-down handle so Cort can carry it. People might chuck this away to the parts bin without a single thought, but it does have another possibility as vehicle mounted weapon, if ever such a suitable vehicle comes my way.
Buy or let it die? I bought Cort because she was one of the characters I needed to have in my Joe roster, and since her 25AC version is still not showing up, there was no more question about it. Cort looks pretty much generic- if ever the red-headed and jacketed version shows her plastic face, I’d buy it, and this figure wouldn’t lose its place, but rather be delegated as another character- There are a few blonde joe characters, Bombstrike and Daina for example, which while substantially different from this figure, can serve as a good stand-in for them. And barring those options, she can always serve as a new generic greenshirt character, or some special forces liason from some other service. So the reusability of this figure isn’t much of an issue, even if you are not a customizer. But an issue you could consider is the price. The old 25AC figures were cheaper- a plus factor that got me started collecting it in the first place. The movie figures feature a substantial markup (from 379 to 449 PhP) and most of their figure offerings are doing little to interest me. But since this Cover Girl is the first version for this new figure construction style, it probably wouldn’t hurt to buy it if you ever fancy to.
