fantastic_four

Here are my top Marvel Legends for 2023 in order of quality. I’ve had all of these on my desk for most of the past month to make sure I felt good about how I was ranking them while also double-checking against the 2023 figures at the LegendsVerse web site to make sure I didn't forget any. As always I make an objective list that ignores my personal preference as much as possible and focuses on the quality of the figures followed by my subjective list of the figures I personally liked the best that is highly driven by my bias towards characters or other design elements I prefer. I started with a list of forty or so figures and narrowed it down to these twenty, so consider numbers 11 through 20 honorable mentions. Black Widow – the best-articulated female Legends figure ever, and one of the best-articulated female figures across all lines. Superior sculpt and accessories, particularly the three great head sculpts. Andrew Garfield Spider-Man – superior articulation, sculpt, and paint. One of Hasbro’s best Spider-Man sculpts ever. Green Goblin (No Way Home) – terrific glider and awesome sculpt and paint details on the figure. The Willem Dafoe head sculpt is spectacular, and the way the hood and goggles work with the head is perfect. Including the masked head sculpt brings him over the top as an awesome release. Spiral – great sculpt for a difficult-to-design character. A near-perfect rendering aside from some engineering issues with gummy plastic on the arms that held it back from Figure of the Year contention. Final Swing Spider-Man – would have virtually tied with the Andrew Garfield figure since it has the same superior sculpt and articulation, but most or all copies of this figure suffer from overly-stiff joints that are a slight challenge to bend without breaking the plastic. If you’re mindful of that he’s completely workable though. Cassie Lang BAF – surprisingly great sculpt with surprisingly great articulation–very surprised this figure had both a diaphragm joint and lower ab crunch, plus the range of motion on the legs is spectacular. Including a masked and unmasked head sculpt with articulated pony tail sends her over the top as a great BAF. Blob – awesome sculpt and decent articulation for such a bulky figure. The screaming head sculpt is pure fire in dynamic displays. Spider-Punk - has some gummy engineering issues due to the thin arms and legs, but the sculpt, paint, and overall aesthetic of this figure are amazing. Ultimate Cap – best Cap figure made to date due to the intricate sculpted details on the costume. Destroyer – I didn’t think Hasbro could improve on the Diamond Select Destroyer, but they managed to do it. Looks just as good as the Diamond figure but with MUCH better articulation. Amazing figure. Tobey Maguire Spider-Man – not quite as good as Andrew Garfield Spidey or Final Swing Spidey due to sculpt and paint issues, but still an exceptional rendering of the character with all of the same great articulation of the other No Way Home Spidey figures. '97 Bishop – surprisingly great update to the previous Bishop figure. Great body sculpt with a terrific head sculpt. '97 Wolverine – in a vacuum this is the figure of the year, but it’s really just an incremental update over previous Wolverine figures that were already great so I can’t give it full credit. Just the fact that they found upgrades to an already-fantastic figure is worthy of note, and the head sculpts, pin-less joints, and overall engineering is impeccable. Pretty Boy – nice all-new sculpt that will likely be used in cyborg and android bodies for years. Clea – extremely attractive figure with one of Hasbro’s best female head sculpts. Iron Man Mark I – simple design implemented extremely well. MCU Wasp – massive sculpt upgrade from the previous MCU Wasp figure with two absolutely great head sculpts. Elektra Daredevil – fun figure with a great sculpt and articulation. Mania – great pin-less upgrade to the Legends teenage female body sculpt with nice symbiote details. Astonishing Cyclops – surprisingly good tweak to the Vulcan mold with terrific sculpted line details. Here's my list of subjective favorites. Several of these aren't at all innovative, but I just love them more for whatever reason. Andrew Garfield Spider-Man Blob Destroyer Clea Black Widow ‘97 Wolverine Tarantula – not an objectively great figure, but the first comic book I collected to completion was Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man, and I vividly recall this guy gracing the first issue cover of that title. A completely sentimental favorite of mine simply due to when I started collecting Marvel comics. Elektra Daredevil Spiral MCU Green Goblin Here's some posing I did of most of the figures from these lists while deciding which were the best.

Even hardcore Spidey fans are mostly like "Madame who?" I'm pretty sure I read ASM #210 in the 1980s but I don't remember much about her. Release date is February 14th. I can't find the review embargo lift date, but I'm guessing Sony would love for it to be at some point after it has departed theaters.

I'm generally enjoying it. I'm not really seeing any of these numerous ties to season 1 of the show while watching other than the spiral, but they all make some sense when I see critics and fans point them out. Can a human really survive being completely frozen for days like the one guy does in this show? He's pretty terrifying, reminds me of the Sloth guy from David Fincher's "Seven" in terms of severe body horror.

Supposedly Issa Lopez had an inspiration for the story--a group of nine hikers in the USSR in 1959 were missing and later found dead under similar mysterious circumstances to the people in this show. The cause of the 1959 deaths was probably an avalanche, and analyzing the seemingly-bizarre evidence with that as a starting point does make almost complete sense. If you think of this show as Lopez's more-interesting explanation of the Dyatlov Pass incident with elements of Carcosa peppered in it does seem to fit pretty well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident

I got mine upon first release, and it's still the best 1:12 scale Batman figure ever made. Or the black version is depending upon your color preference. The only consistent complaint I heard is some people don't like how large the cape is. The cape is almost like a second figure you pose separately from Batman, and if you're not sure what to do with it in a pose then I can see how it would always be in the way. I love the large cape myself because it lends itself to tons of cape-centric poses, but if you don't want a cape-dominant pose you can still fold it away into virtually any other pose, although minimizing it can definitely be a challenge. Here's the black one in a cape-dominant pose:

Finally got Poison Ivy in yesterday. Love her! ALL joints are tight, great QC. The arm and leg ivy slides off a lot less than I thought it would and is pretty manageable. Articulation is great, although like all Mafex females she doesn't have enough elbow and knee range. Luckily it's Ivy so she doesn't need it like Catwoman and Harley did. Definitely one of the most attractive Mafex female figures up there with Hathaway Catwoman 2.0, Psylocke, and Storm. Can't think of anything I'd want them to improve about her. She's great, and I look forward to finding some sensual poses for her on the shelf.

I definitely had that Godzilla, and I definitely don't anymore--THANKS MOM. The plastic decal flame breath you extend back and forth is etched into my brain.

Another shot of Mezco Hela with her horned head on. Love this figure and how much she looks like Cate Blanchett. You can also see some of the finer details on Doom here including the eyes showing through the mask.

Got the Mezco Doctor Doom in yesterday. I'll say more later, but my initial impression is it's one of the most impressive 1:12 scale action figures I've ever seen. The hood is ultra-posable with a wire around the opening, so you can position it in every possible way I've ever seen it sit in the comics--fully up, collapsed down as it is in the pics below, draping halfway over his face, etc. There are some nit-picks, but wow, this thing has new features I've never seen in action figures in several ways I never would have expected until having him in hand. The biggest thing is the weight--he weighs half a pound because parts of the armor are made from hefty metal. The feel of him in hand is like nothing I've felt before. He's REALLY satisfying to pose, although his arm and knee range of motion isn't as great as it could be which isn't completely unexpected since it's a suit of armor. The leather burlap-type material the tunic and cape are made from are just amazing too, and the two big circles on his upper chest gently stay in place with magnets. The face plate comes off, and you can see the eyes from the sculpt below the plate quite clearly through the eye sockets. Spectacular figure with a HUGE array of accessories shown in the third pic below, more than I ever imagined I'd want from a Doom figure--tons of blast and spellcasting effects, multiple thrusters, and even the cosmic power siphon he used to steal Surfer's powers that lights up. Also got the Mezco Hela from Ragnarok in which is 4 years old but I've wanted it all that time and now it's cheap on BBTS. Also got the light-up chamber she's standing in shown to the right of Doom in the pics below.

Got the Mezco Fantastic Four 4-pack in yesterday. I generally don't like cloth goods on figures so I skip most Mezco releases, but wow, Reed, Thing, and HERBIE from this set looked clearly like the best versions of those characters ever created in twelfth scale, and yep, they sure are. I thought I wouldn't enjoy Johnny or Sue, but I really do. Something between the brightly saturated blues and blacks in the costumes tends to minimize the oversized stitching you always see on 1:12 scale soft goods, and they all look great here. The accessories these figures come with are absolutely insane and impeccably done. Just an incredible set. They also just released what looks to be the best 1:12 scale Doctor Doom ever made, and I should have him in within a few weeks. Here are the promo shots Mezco has for the set showing the insane number of accessories:

People often post pages from reprints which sometimes change the colors from the original, so I'd need to see pages that are verified to be from the original comic. However I wouldn't be at all surprised if you're right. If memory serves they were also inconsistent about whether his arms and legs were bare in those issues.

Through three episodes it's a fun watch. Not highly re-watchable like many MCU films from the first three phases, but enjoyable for one watch. Haven't been bored yet, so it's good to hear some of the best episodes are still to come.

Hadn't seen episodes 8 and 9 when I posted above, but episode 8 sounds interesting. I enjoyed those 1602 comics, so I'm all in on an MCU version.

Yep, although I don't think of "more MCU" as pejorative the way you appear to mean it. I've only seen the first episode so far, but the list of episodes doesn't have a single concept that sounds interesting. Even season 1 had more interesting concepts than what's been released so far for season 2. The comic What If was like this as well--some were interesting ideas, most weren't. But with the MCU there isn't NEARLY as much content to draw from, so the story concepts really sound like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel on ideas. Nothing approaching anything close to "What If Wolverine Killed the Hulk" or "What If Spider-Man Jointed the Fantastic Four" in season 2 so far. Having said that I did enjoy episode 1 so I'll keep watching even if looking over the episodes list doesn't make me want to.

Got the S.H. Figuarts Indiana Jones for Christmas. I have the whole Hasbro Indiana Jones Adventure Series line also, but the details on the Figuarts are sublime. Not sure anyone else has captured Harrison Ford's likeness in the 1:12 scale as well as Bandai did with this figure.

FF 49 is the best cover of that run because it's the only one where Surfer was actually still the herald of Galactus. They've done other recreations of that time, but this is the original so it's just great. I almost nabbed a 9.6 copy about 15 years ago but got slightly out-bid at the end by one other person. I think I had bid a bit under $4k. It's not my biggest regret among big fish that got away, but it's clearly one of them given that the copy would be worth $20K or more today, a terrific investment by most measures.

Nate Parker got cancelled in 2016 for a trial that had happened 23 years earlier where he was found not guilty. Doesn't mean Majors won't work, but if Parker is a canary in the coal mine then I wouldn't bet on it.

The dude responsible for the best episode of Disney Plus television is now toast. The MCU is cursed!

I don't either given Trank's meltdown during production. Something between him and Fox, or maybe just with him, "tranked" that film. Totally weird. If Perlmutter was going to the mattresses against Fox you'd think he would have never allowed those to print. But I never understood the strategy much anyway. I TOTALLY got him not allowing authors to create new mutant characters that Fox would get the movie rights to for free, but did shutting down comics really achieve much? FF I got for the reasons you outlined with low sales, but did killing Wolverine really do much? For the most part the comic and film audiences are separate, and I doubt many people skipped Days of Future Past or Logan just because Marvel killed Logan in the comics.

I did, which is why I referred to it multiple times in the two paragraphs you didn't quote.

From the Marvel Shell Game thread: Disney purchased the Spider-Man merchandising rights back in 2011 when Sony was struggling for cash at the time. My understanding of the deals between Marvel and Sony are that Marvel owns everything, but they licensed film rights to Sony. Alternative media like television and video games are also covered somehow, but differently, and I forget the differences. I've always heard that merchandising was never owned by either Sony or Fox. However, that doesn't mean Marvel was ever free to just put out Spider-Man or X-Men toys that looked like the versions of the characters in the films, or that had the actors' likenesses. Those are Sony's (and Fox's) because of the nature of copyright law. That article you linked specifically refers to Marvel buying rights to Amazing Spider-Man. That just seems like a new financial arrangement with the same end result--instead of Sony getting a cut of the toys and Marvel getting a cut of the films, this 2011 deal swapped the cuts so that Marvel got all the toy money and Sony got all the movie money. Either way it's Sony giving their permission for Marvel's contractor Hasbro to create toys. They probably had that same deal for Amazing Spider-Man 2, and it ended once they struck the Homecoming deal. I'm about 99% sure that Marvel would have had Hasbro create toys for the first Venom movie if that same 2011 deal in your article was still in place in 2018 when Venom and Spider-Verse came out, but for whatever reason Hasbro didn't make toys for those films until 2020.

If they cancelled the comics because they were huge sales duds then why did they immediately re-start all of them after they bought Fox? I mean I was PRETTY sure that they were freezing Fox out from 2014 to 2018, but the fact that everything quickly restarted after Disney bought Fox seemed to confirm the hypothesis. Also they did NOT make Wolverine comics from 2014 to 2018. They killed the character off in 2014, then resurrected him right after Disney had the Fox deal in the bag--and I do mean RIGHT after, as in after Fox agreed to the deal but not before it had completely gone through. I agree with Buzzetta that the call to freeze out Fox was almost certainly Ike Perlmutter's idea. I've never seen Kevin Feige do anything quite so cutthroat or devious.

Disney doesn't have any resources to waste for toys because they barely create any. They create a few little kid toys for Marvel, but Marvel and then Disney after they bought them mostly outsource toys to Hasbro from 2007 on. Prior to 2007 Toy Biz did the toys, and that was a separate company owned by Ike Perlmutter and Avi Arad that merged with Marvel in the late 1990s when they were going bankrupt. Toy Biz did movie figures for the Fox and Sony films throughout its existence until it shut down in 2007. After Hasbro got the license in 2007 the Fox toys stopped, although I'm not sure it was immediate; I think Hasbro did create at least a few Fox movie-based action figures. I think every Sony Spider-Man film did have toys released with it up through Amazing Spider-Man 2. The fact that Fox toys stopped but Sony didn't suggests the choice was specific to Fox. Maybe it was Fox who stopped it, maybe it was Marvel. I haven't been able to tell whose fault it was. My guess is Fox just because the attempts to freeze Fox out on the comic side by Perlmutter at Marvel didn't really start until around 2013/2014, so I doubt Marvel would have been strategically preventing Fox movie toys before then.

In the 2000s Toy Biz and Hasbro put out plenty of movie-based action figures from both the Sony and Fox movies. Comic-based figures were never affected and Toy Biz/Hasbro has always put a lot of comic figures out aside from the early 2010s when Hasbro got the license and slowed down on making figures dramatically, but then picked back up around 2014/2015. Neither Sony nor Fox have merchandising rights to go with their film deals, but what they do have is the rights to the specific looks and actor likenesses from their films. But neither company had merchandising rights for the characters so Marvel had to drive the merchandising and all Sony and Fox could do was take a cut to give their approval for the film-based copyright looks. In the early to mid 2000s both Sony and Fox were giving rights for toys to Toy Biz and Hasbro. In the late 2000s and in the 2010s it was more mixed. For the most part Fox stopped giving permission for action figures from the films. Sony mostly still gave them, but I'm guessing their cut was too high because Hasbro didn't make a ton of figures from the movies until the Marvel/Sony movies starting with Homecoming came out. And even while Hasbro was cranking out Tom Holland franchise figures they weren't making figures from the other Sony properties such as Venom and Spider-Verse as much, presumably because the margins were lower, or maybe Hasbro and/or Marvel just thought those movies would be and wouldn't sell toys. I doubt it was the latter because certainly Avi Arad knew that Venom toys sell since that's supposedly the reason he insisted that the character be in Spider-Man 3. In any event in 2020 and 2021 Hasbro started making Venom and Spider-Verse figures well after both films came out, so something must have changed to inspire them to start creating figures for those films. Maybe it was just the big box office totals from both films that inspired it, or maybe they negotiated Sony's cut down a bit, not really sure.

Comcast did delay the deal in 2018, but I don't know of any new measures Marvel took that year that hadn't already been in place for years so it's hard to tie any of the comic moves to Comcast's bid. They didn't delay it by much; I think it was just a few months. The deal was pretty much finalized in mid to late 2018, and it went through completely in early 2019. And in 2018 like clockwork Marvel un-did all of their stuff with the Fox properties right after the Fox deal was in the bag.