It’s time to rev up that Wayback Machine, because for this week’s Marvel Monday, I dipped my grubby mitt into the stack of unopened Marvel Legends shame and came up with Dagger from the SP//dr Wave. Naturally, I had to dive back in to find Cloak because I can’t rightly review one without the other. This was like a lost wave to me. It came and went and I never saw most of it. Luckily I found Cloak and Dagger off of Amazon, and only now am I reminded that I reviewed Elektra from this wave back in 2018. Doc Ock is in my Pile of Shame somewhere, but he didn’t come with a BAF part. That leaves a couple of Spider-Man variants and Shadowland Daredevil, I think? Maybe one day I’ll build that SP//dr BAF but until then, I’m going to open up Cloak and Dagger.

I was about 13 when Ty and Tandy got their first four-issue miniseries but I was too into Spider-Man and Fantastic Four to notice. Actually, I think I fell in love with Dagger, but even my raging hormones and her fine booty didn’t get me too into the comic. It just wasn’t what I was looking for at the time. It wasn’t until a few years later that I found the entire run of their eleven issue series at a used book store downtown where I often trekked to on my bike to hunt comics. Slightly older me was a lot more game. It was dark and gritty shit that taught kids you could get super powers from heroin. Actually, I think that was the opposite of the message they were going for, but hey, it’s up to interpretation. Let’s start out with a look at Cloak!

Before I even had this figure in hand, I predicted it was going to be problematic because of that plastic cloak and I sure was right about it. The plastic cloak tightly encompasses the figure and renders him practically static. I can barely even get his hands to peek out without the clasp on the cloak snapping open. Now, with that having been said, I think the figure looks fantastic. The flowing cloak features a beautiful glossy dark blue finish with some matte black stripes emanating from the sculpted clasp. Beneath that there’s a fully articulated body, but none of that articulation is worth a damn unless you take the cloak off. And that’s no good because the body under it is just a featureless black and purple buck. Besides, what’s Cloak without his Cloak. How many damn times can I say cloak in one paragraph??? CLOAK!!! The only noteworthy thing going on under there is his hands, which are cast in a partially clear plastic and have a cool otherworldly look, if you can actually catch a glimpse of them.

The hood is sculpted separately from the rest of the cloak and attached to the head, so at least the neck articulation is useful. The hood is also partially transparent, similar to the hands, so it casts a cool purplish tint over Ty’s face. And what a great head sculpt this is! Tyrone projects a stoic expression with his perfectly painted goatee and stern, pupil-less eyes. I dig it!

But yeah, here’s a great example of where Hasbro should have introduced some softgoods to this line. I’m not saying it would have looked as good as the plastic cloak, but at least it would have allowed the figure some movement. Maybe some customizers out there have come up with something better, but as is, this figure looks great but is absolutely no fun at all. Let’s move on to Dagger.

Dagger is an extremely simple figure, with absolutely zero original sculpting from the neck down. The almost entirely white buck portrays her costume along with the flesh-painted crucifix that passes as the cut-out on the front. Her hands are also painted with skin-tone and has some white paint on the backs of her hands. This is about as basic as it gets for Marvel Legends, but does it work? Yeah, pretty much. I really don’t have any complaints when it comes to the costume. I do, however, have a couple of other nitpicks. First, I think the figure would have been better served using one of the younger and shorter bucks. Second, it’s my age old gripe over the use of rotating hinges in the elbows as opposed to hinged elbows and swivels in the biceps. Why do the dudes get it, but the gals don’t? There’s also no waist swivel, but Dagger does have a ball joint under her chest. Otherwise, the articulation is business as usual.

Overall, I like the head sculpt well enough, but the eyes do look a little too far apart. The white crescent around her right eye is sharp, as are all the paintwork on her facial features. Her hair is sculpted so as to bunch up around her shoulders, and it isn’t as restrictive of the neck articulation as I thought it might be.

Dagger comes with one accessory and that’s an effect part that clips onto her wrists. It’s supposed to simulate her throwing her light projectiles, but the alignment doesn’t really work for me. There have been a handful of other Legends figures that had similar style effect parts that work a lot better than this one.

Does it sound like I’m really down on this pair? I dunno, maybe. I think they look fantastic together on the shelf, and it’s pretty fun to pose Dagger and put her in front of Cloak, but in the end I guess this pair did fall a bit short of my expectations. I love the characters and I’m happy to have them represented on my Legends shelf, but I don’t think I’ll be taking them down and playing around with them a lot. Cloak feels more like an action-figure-sized accessory for Dagger, and I’m sure that’s not what Hasbro was going for here. And while Dagger gets the job done, there’s nothing about her that’s all that special.