After two weeks of Marvel Monday Double-Features, I’m taking it easy today and going back to looking at just one figure. I’m also back to spinning the Wheel of Legends™, which isn’t actually a wheel, it’s just me rolling up my sleeve and plunging my hand into a box of figures and randomly drawing one out. This time I hit on Taskmaster from the Thanos Wave, which also happens to be my first figure from this assortment!

I was lucky enough to come across Taskmaster on the pegs while getting groceries at the local Target. I haven’t been so lucky with some of the other figures in this wave, particularly Iron Spider and Captain America, which have been eluding my toy hunts, and selling for scalper prices at most of the online retailers I visit. This is probably one of those waves that I should have just bought online in one shot, but I didn’t realize that until it was too late.

And here’s Taskmaster out of the box and brimming with all his Classic-styled goodness. Yup, it was only a couple of years ago that we got the previous release of Taskmaster, but that was a more modern appearance and as much as I loved that figure, this is the one I was truly waiting for. Who needs all that tactical armor when you’re this good at what you do? The dark blue body suit features painted orange sleeves, an orange and white area around the neck, and good old fashioned buccaneer boots and gauntlets both in white. Newly sculpted bits include a holster on his right thigh held on by straps, which feature sculpted stitching and gold-painted buckles. He has a single strap around his left thigh, and a waist belt with several pouches and a gold belt-buckle with his emblem on it. From the back, Taskmaster is just a wall of cape, and that’s a good thing, because Taskmaster without a cape never felt right.

Taskmaster’s hooded portrait is absolutely fantastic. The hood is borrowed directly from the previous release and here we get a better look at the sculpted gold cord that holds his cape around his neck. It’s also secured with a peg in his back. And, oh man, that head sculpt! The skull has a great finish that looks like decaying bone with a broad rictus grin and deep set eyes. The hood is not attached to the cape, which means it doesn’t curtail the neck articulation.

And speaking of articulation, here is everything I’ve come to expect in my Legends figures. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, double hinges in the elbows, and swivels in the biceps. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have double hinges in the knees, and swivels at the thighs and tops of the boots. The ankles are both hinged and have lateral rockers. Taskmaster has a swivel in the waist, an ab-crunch hinge below the chest, and the neck is both hinged and ball jointed. All the joints feel great, and Taskmaster even has some strong ratchets going on in those shoulders of his.

Taskmaster comes with both a sword and shield. The sword is a repack of the one included with Baron Zemo way back in the Mandroid Wave. The hilt has been repainted to be a little less yellow and more of a pale gold. My only complaint here is that there isn’t a loop or something for him to wear it. The shield is the same mold used for the previous Taskmaster’s shield, complete with a hinged clip and a peg. It works really well, but I worry that the clip will stress and break over time. He can still wear the shield on his back, but seeing as how I’d have to remove the cape to make that work, it’s not something I’m likely to do a lot.

Taskmaster also comes with a pistol, which happens to be the same mold they used for Paladin’s guns from the Sasquatch Wave. Unfortunately, I somehow managed to lose Taskmaster’s gun after opening the package. I’m sure it’ll turn up, but for the purposes of this review I borrowed one from Paladin. After all, he has two guns and just the one holster so it seemed only fair to have him share. Anyway, the mold is the same, but Taskmaster’s gun is colored to match his sword’s hilt, so it’s more of a pale gold than the one you see here in the pictures.

I didn’t think I could be this happy about getting another release of Taskmaster so soon, and yet here I am absolutely thrilled to have this figure on my shelf. I’ll go out on a limb and say that this is probably the version that most collectors were looking for and I think Hasbro’s intentionally strategic in the way they release these. With no Classic version out, more people were probably going to say, “Well, I’ll get this version in case they never do another.” But with this line, it’s becoming more and more apparent that no character is off the table. Not that I mind, the modern version is certainly no slouch, but this one is a terrific figure and it just scratches a certain itch.