It’s another Marvel Monday, and I’m getting more and more comfortable about being back into the swing of things after my hiatus. Do I feel like I’m starting to make any progress at my ridiculous backlog of unopened Marvel Legends? Nah, not a chance. It’s like a digging a hole in the sand! Who knows, maybe I’ll do a few Legends-only weeks to give myself a leg up. In the meantime, and after a slight miscalculation last week, I’m here today with the actual penultimate figure in the Kingpin Wave. For reals this time! It’s Night Thrasher!

Dwayne Taylor showed up in the pages of Marvel comics during the waning days of my career as a teenage comic reader. In 1989, I was getting ready to go to college and trading in my boxes of comics for boxes of textbooks. Not literally, mind you. I just packed them away and put them in the attic. But, needless to say most of my encounters with Night Thrasher have been after the fact, when I got heavy back into comics in my thirties. As a result, Night Thrasher sits right up there with Silver Sable and Puma as one of the figures I was most excited about in this wave.

The design of Night Thrasher’s suit lends itself to a simple figure. The buck is mostly smooth, with chiseled, angular muscles sculpted into the chest, exaggerated elbow and knee pads, heavy treaded boots, and not much else in the way of detail. He does don a wide red belt, sculpted as a separate piece and worn tightly around the waist, and a red sash tied around his right leg, which is held up by friction. I really dig the subtle mix of gloss and matte black on this figure, with matte being used for the upper legs and hands, and the rest gleaming like polished ebony armor. That plus the red accessories make him pop rather nicely.

The head sculpt consists of a tight-fitting red and black helmet and mask with an open visor for his eyes. I don’t have a lot more to say about it, other than it’s pretty intimidating. TMNT’s Casey Jones or DC’s Guardian would certainly give their vigilante stamp of approval to this headgear.

Thrasher has a pair of holes on his back to secure his backpack, which is really just a shield-shaped slab of plastic designed to hold his accessories, the first of which is his pair of batons!

Yup, we’ve seen these before, particularly with Daredevil, Mockingbird. and even Hellcat! These weapons sure do get around! They are cast in black plastic and he can hold one in each hand. They’re not bad, and they definitely suit him, but I would have liked something fresh and new. When not in use, these batons can attach to the clips on either side of the backpack.

And, as always, these batons can peg together to form a longer pole-arm.

The really cool new accessory here is the skateboard. It’s cast all in black plastic with fully sculpted trucks, working wheels, and there’s a crazy amount of weathering in the sculpt. It can be hard to see without the right light, but there’s a ton of scrapes and scratches to show that this board has seen some serious action, was probably used as a shield more than a couple times, and quite probably connected with more than one villains’ jaw over the years. I will concede that it feels a bit small, or perhaps more accurately, he sometimes looks like an adult riding a kids skateboard. Also, there’s no way to attach him to it, so it’ll take a modicum of patience if you want to display him riding it, but it’s certainly not impossible.

The articulation here is pretty standard stuff. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, double-hinges in the knees, and both hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. There is a swivel in the waist, an ab-crunch hinge in the torso, and the neck is hinged and ball jointed. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, swivels in the biceps, and double-hinges in the elbows. His chunky armor does restrict some range of movement, but he’s still a pretty agile fellow.

Night Thrasher may be damn simple, but he’s also loads of fun. And as I’m playing around with him, I can’t help but think that this is sort of what a modern 6-inch GI JOE figure from Hasbro would feel like. Nope, I’m never going to let that dream die! The accessories are cool enough, even if I would have liked some new batons, and you can’t go wrong with a skateboard! It just adds plenty of fun to the mix. Now, can we get some more New Warriors, Hasbro? Please and thank you!