Hey hey, it’s another Marvel Monday and I’m happy to say this week I’ll be wrapping up another wave of Hasbro’s ridiculously prolific Marvel Legends series. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to say that, and I’m beginning to think that Random Mode has been holding me back, and maybe I’m better off going back to tackling these figures one wave at a time. Or perhaps an even mix of the two is in order. We’ll see. In any event, today I’m opening the last figure in the Caliban wave and I’ve saved one of my more anticipated figures in the assortment for last.

Weapon X Wolverine! This one had me excited because somehow I’ve never owned a figure of this version of Wolverine before! That’s even including the old Toybiz X-Men figures and I must have had nearly all of them! So why not? Well, to be honest this version has always creeped me the hell out. Because who doesn’t want a figure based on one of their heroes suffering horrific surgeries, mental conditioning, and general all around excruciating pain and suffering. Kids comics, folks! Yeah, this version pretty much defines the character, but it’s not something that I like to be constantly reminded of. I guess it falls into the same argument that I don’t really need a Steve Rogers (After getting the shit beaten out of him in an ally before the Super Soldier Serum) figure either.

But holy shit is this figure iconic. I can’t argue with that. Straightaway, I’ll toss out there how much I hope this is as close Hasbro ever comes to releasing a completely naked action figure. I think this one even gives Namor a run for his money. Habro invested a lot of great sculpting into this buck, providing Logan with lots of muscle tone and even painting in his patches of body hair. And they went so far as to use the extra articulated body with the shoulder crunches, which is always a welcome treat. Mercifully, there is a pair of skimpy black underwear painted onto his groinular region to leave something to the imagination. And it’s no mistake that this design leaves Logan sans clothes. It’s a vulnerable look that really helps to communicates the horrible and invasive shit that they did to him.

Everything else is Logan is wearing is actually sculpted as separate pieces and attached to the figure. The gear consists of a chest harness, which is cast in brown plastic and features silver paint on the buckles, a belt with some of the Weapon X devices attached, and two brown wrist cuffs. There are tubes that connect from the boxes on his belt to the wrist cuffs and these are cast in translucent plastic, which makes them look like they’re conveying blood. Personally, this adds a lot to the creep factor, because I can watch the most horrible gore in horror movies, but I still get squeamish around IV tubes and seeing blood being drawn. Go figure. The tubes are made of super bendy plastic and have enough slack to them that they don’t impede the articulation.

The control boxes on his belt are big and bulky and something that I always thought looked weird about the design here. They seem like they would have been more appropriately placed on some kind of master control box in a backpack. But I guess the design they went with looks more experimental and kind of thrown-together. Either way, these boxes have some sculpted details as well as some paint applications for the instruments and they look pretty good.

Logan comes with two heads, the first of which features the helmet, which encompasses the top half of his head and has a tube running down to one of the boxes on his belt. The helmet looks great, with some panel lines and extra bits and bobs and a single red bar that makes up a visor. The way the helmet is sculpted with the hair spilling out the bottom makes it almost look as if it’s removable. But instead of going that route, Hasbro just gave us a second head without all the Weapon X gear.

The second head gives me some mixed feelings. First of all, it was ridiculously hard to get onto the ball joint. I had to use a crazy amount of force to finally get it to pop. The portrait is supposed to reflect Logan in a state of unbridled rage, and I guess it does that, but there’s something about it that just doesn’t sit right. There’s nothing wrong with the quality of sculpt or detail, and even the paint is pretty solid. Maybe it looks a little too cartoony compared to some of the other Legends portraits? I honestly can’t put my finger on what it is, but I don’t think I’m going to be using this head for display a lot.

Considering the myriad versions and variants of Wolverine that we’ve seen so far, it’s amazing to me that it took this long for Hasbro to give Logan the Weapon X treatment. But we’re finally there and I think they did a pretty fine job with the figure. But it’s still not going to be a favorite of mine. Indeed, in the fight for precious space on my Legends shelves, I’m not sure Weapon X Logan will find a permanent spot for display. Or if he does, it may just be in the back corner of one of the X-men shelves. He is, however, a pretty cool figure and I’m happy to finally have him in the collection. And with all the figures from this wave in the bag, I’m going to come back tomorrow and wrap things up with a look at the Caliban Build-A-Figure!