It’s Marvel Monday and I’m pressing on with my look at the Crimson Dynamo Wave! After checking out a couple of figures from the Black Widow movie, I thought I’d turn back to another one of the comic book figures in this assortment. Strangely, Bucky hasn’t had much comic book love in the modern Legends line, despite his heavy influences on the MCU. And while I’ll confess I would much rather have had a Bucky Barnes figure by now to hang out with one of my many MANY Caps, I won’t turn my nose up at this new Winter Soldier figure.

And here he is in the package along with a noggin for the Crimson Dynamo BAF! This is probably a pretty modern look for Winter Soldier, as the lines between comic and MCU designs are pretty blurred here. As many of you know I’ve given up on current Marvel comics, but I think I last encountered Bucky in the pages of The Thunderbolts. Indeed, when I found this figure on the pegs, it  actually took me a second to realize this wasn’t MCU Bucky with a bad Sebastian Stan likeness. Nope, he’s straight from the pages of the funny books!

Oh YEAH! Hasbro went off the charts with some of the sculpted detail on this guy, especially where his equipment is concerned. The costume itself is pretty standard stuff, particularly his familiar tunic with the horizontal strips running across his chest. The combat pants have nice texturing and some sculpted pockets, and are tucked into his high-laced military boots. Overall, the colors are pretty dark, but there’s a lighter blue wash to bring out some of the details in his tunic.

The cybernetic arm is sculpted with a ribbed texture and lots of musculature. It’s also got a nice silver-gray sheen to it and a star printed on the shoulder. The hands have sculpted, finger-less gloves, and I dig that they actually sculpted the cybernetic jointing into the fingers on his left hand. You gotta really look to see it, which makes it all the more welcome. Holy crap, he’s even even wearing a watch on his left wrist.

And then we come to tall the extra gear they strapped to him! For starters he’s got a harness with ammo pouches running across his chest. Below that he has a tactical belt with grenades, magazines, and a combat knife and pistol, alas neither of which are removable. Finally, he has two more magazines strapped to his left thigh. Hasbro even popped for some paint operations on the grenades, gun, and magazines. Nice!

The head sculpt is quite good, giving us something of a generic Sebastian Stan, which is pretty much how I remembered him the last time I saw him in a comic panel. He has a domino mask, which is part of the sculpt and neatly painted, and a coif of long hair with strands hanging down on either side of his face.

 

By now y’all should know what to expect from modern Legends articulation, but what the hell, let’s run through it. It pads out my word count. 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 in the thighs. The ankles have both hinges and lateral rockers. There’s a swivel in the waist, an ab-crunch hinge under the chest, and both a hinge and ball joint in the neck. The thick knee joints can look a little strange when flexed all the way, the elbow joints are a tad spongy, but otherwise, he’s a fun figure to play with.

Bucky comes with two weapons, and these are great examples of how to do Marvel Legends weapons the proper way. They’re wonderfully detailed and look like the equivalent of real world weapons and not weird sci-fi shooters, like the red abomination we got with the MCU version of Winter Soldier. The pistol looks like a M1911 with a textured grip and detailed slide. The rifle looks like an AR-15 carbine with (non) telescoping stock, scope, and a grenade launcher slung under the barrel. These are exactly the kinds of weapons I wish Hasbro would have included with their GI JOE Classified figures!

A lot of the comic-based Legends I’ve looked at lately have been of the quick-and-easy painted costume variety. And yeah, that honestly does work fine for a lot of characters, but it also makes me appreciate a figure like this Winter Soldier all the more. Hasbro just poured on the love in every possible way, from the detailed sculpt to the excellent weapons, and the result is a comic-based figure that stands out even among the MCU releases. He’s quite simply fantastic.