Well, it took me a couple of weeks of diversions, but I’m finally back to looking at the Hobgoblin Wave of Marvel Legends. I’m just now approaching the halfway mark and as I reach over and pull one off the stack, it just so happens to be Anti-Venom! Ah, but if you read the title, you already knew that…

Not a lot new to say about the packaging, other than it has Spider-Man at the top, signifying the theme of this wave and the character’s name at the bottom. Anti-Venom is a big boy, so he fills out the bubble quite well and there’s just barely enough room to squeeze in that puny little Hobgoblin BAF part off to the side. I’ll admit, since I still haven’t found Toxin or Carnage from the last Spider-Man wave, Anti-Venom feels a bit like a consolation prize. But, hey, a prize is still a prize.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is a reuse of the Toxin body, which is certainly appropriate. Anti-Venom consists of a simple white buck with the black spider emblem painted on. The body has a bit of a chalky look in some areas, but overall it’s solid and the paint is sharp and clean with just one chip on the stripe running down the right side of his abs. Some might consider the deco bland, but I have a thing for monochromatic figures and Legends has brought us more than a couple.

There’s a hunk of symbiot thorns coming out of his back, which pegs into the hole there. It’s a tad loose, and I may just go ahead and glue it into place.

The head sculpt is also a solid effort with a high gloss black paint used for the face and yellow for the eyes and inside the mouth. The seams on the jawline had me hoping for an articulated jaw, but no such luck. Yeah, I know, I was reaching.

The articulation here is everything I could ask for from a modern Legends. 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, double hinged at the knees, and have swivels at both the thighs and lower legs. The ankles are hinged and have some satisfyingly deep lateral rockers.

Anti-Venom was no doubt an easy release for Hasbro, consisting of just a new paint job and a tweaked head. There are no surprises to be had here. That doesn’t make him any less welcome, though. He’s a great looking figure and another significant name to cross off my Legends list. He also seems to be the dud of this wave as he’s readily available at deep discounts from various online retailers. Ah, but if this figure is considered a dud, Legends is doing all right by me!

It finally happened. I walked into an actual brick-and-mortar store and was able to buy an entire wave of Legends figures in one fell swoop. Sure, it’s just the Hobgoblin wave and not Hulkbuster or Rhino, but I’ll take what I can get, even if it is a couple of waves old by now. I mean, this sort of thing just never happens for me because the distribution here is so terrible. And since I recently finished re-watching the spectacular Netflix Daredevil series (with my parents, who loved it!) I thought I’d start out with the devil himself.

It’s getting harder and harder to say anything new about this packaging. It still looks great. It’s nice and efficient. It displays the figure well along with the accessories and BAF parts. That’s it. Now I’m a gonna tear the crap out of it.

After the less than stellar results I had with Giant Man, I was a little worried about how Daredevil was going to turn out, after all, they’re both figures with red costumes and very little fresh sculpting. What if this was another example of shitty red plastic and mis-matched paint? Well, I’m happy to say that this guy turned out absolutely fantastic. The plastic feels great, the coloring is superb, and the jointing is fabulous. Again, there’s not much in the way of unique sculpting here, as Daredevil mostly gets by with his costume painted onto the buck. I can’t place the buck, but it’s got some very well defined muscle sculpting and the dark crimson with the black wash really hits the spot. Throw in the brighter red used for the gloves, boots, belt, holster, and that super crisp “DD” symbol, and you’ve got a figure that just pops beautifully.

The portrait is a solid effort with well defined facial features. I wouldn’t say it’s one of the best we’ve seen in the line, but there’s really nothing wrong with it either. The paint is pretty clean and I do love that they painted in the eyes the lighter red.

Besides the head sculpt, the only really fresh sculpting here is the holster for his batons. It’s sculpted from a separate piece of plastic and slides up onto his thigh. It is a tad big and ungainly, but I’m glad they included it. And hey, if I decide I don’t like it, I can just slide it off.

The articulation here gives me everything I’ve come to expect from the Legends line. The arms feature 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, double hinged at the knees, have hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles, and swivels in the thighs. The torso can swivel at the waist, has an ab crunch hinge and the neck is both hinged and ball jointed. The balance on this figure is poetic and the joints aren’t gummy or soft. He’s just loads of fun to play with.

Obviously, Daredevil’s accessories consist of his trusty batons. We’ve seen these before, most recently with Legends Hellcat, and these are easily my only gripe about the figure. I don’t care for them being molded in white, and the plastic used here is crazy soft and bendy. You can still connect them together via the peg and socket. I wish Hasbro had invested a little more care into the weapons. I may actually be taking Hellcat’s away from her and giving them to Matt here.

Baton quibbles notwithstanding, I couldn’t be happier with the way this figure turned out. The colors are fantastic and I found him really hard to put down once I had him open and on my desk. In fact, he’s still standing there right next to my monitor, begging me to pick him up and turn my desk into the back alley’s of Hell’s Kitchen. The only question I have is whether or not Hasbro will do any action figure tie-ins to the Netflix Series. Seeing as how they’re willing to work the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the mix, I think it would be a real missed opportunity to not see a couple versions of Matt Murdock from the show hit the pegs.

So, because I’m doing a whole theme week thang next week, I decided to bump Marvel Monday up to today. I’ve just got too many Marvel figures lying on my stack and waiting to be looked at that I can’t afford to lose a week. I’ve only got two figures left in this wave before I get to the Ultron BAF and today is all about Eric Williams, aka Grim Reaper!

There’s the obligatory packaged shot and since I have nothing new to say about it, I’ll take the time here to point out that Grim Reaper is another one of those Legends figures that Hasbro has also recently produced in the Universe/Infinite 3 3/4″ scale. Considering that both releases are the same version of the character, I’ll likely be referencing that other figure at least a couple of times. I’ll also point out that I was very happy to see this guy get released in the Legends scale and I really dig how he was handled as a semi-regular baddie in the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon.

Grim Reaper’s costume is comprised mostly from a painted buck and there isn’t a whole lot of paint. You get a very dark blue body, which is missing some of the paint highlights that the smaller version had. The skull and crossbones is printed on his chest and despite a little chip on one of my bones, it looks fine. He has a silver wrist bracer painted on his left arm and the trademark scythe grafted onto his right arm by The Tinkerer.

If you read my look at the smaller version, you may remember my biggest gripe there was the lack of a swivel in the scythe and I’m happy to report that this Legends figure has it. It’s also worth pointing out that the design of the scythe is a little different here. It’s missing the sharp point and looks more utilitarian. You also get a cape that pegs into the back of the figure and is a lot less obtrusive than the wide, billowing plastic garment that came with the smaller version.

The current Legends line have given us some pretty epic maniacal villian portraits. We saw a good one last week with Tiger Shark and who can forget the mug on Constrictor? Well, Grim Reaper follows along in those footsteps with a head sculpt that just oozes personality and batshit craziness. I thought the Universe version was great, but this one definitely ups the ante. I get the feeling that the sculptor really has some fun with these and it is most definitely appreciated.

Articulation here is what I’ve come to expect from the Legends line. The arms feature rotating hinges at the shoulders, double hinges in the elbows and swivels in the biceps. The scythe has the aforementioned swivel at the base and the left hand has a rotating hinge. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, double hinged at the knees, with swivels at the thighs and tops of the boots. The ankles are hinged and have lateral rockers. You also get a swivel at the waist, an ab crunch hinge in the torso and the neck is both ball jointed and hinged. While he’s a lot of fun to play around with, Grim Reaper does suffer from some pretty soft hinges the elbows.

Hasbro has been pretty good about getting us a fair number of villains in their modern Legends line and I say keep them coming! Afterall, what good are superheroes without costumed bastards to fight? And that philosophy makes Grim Reaper a fine pick up for my collection. And yeah, it doesn’t hurt that doing so furnished my BAF Ultron with his left leg. That’s five down and Only one more figure in this wave to go! When Marvel Monday returns the week after next, I’ll check out Giant Man!

It seems like every other Marvel Legends wave has them. That one figure that a lot of people buy just to get the BAF part. This time around, that seems to be poor Tiger Shark’s lot in life. I kind of get it, there are a ton of characters out there more important than Tiger Shark that collectors would like on their shelf, but I for one love these back-bencher releases. Such a huge part of lines like Marvel Legends is about universe building for me and that means that if it’s a good figure and a character I know, I’m happy to get them. If Legends were a more limited line, I might take issue about Todd here taking up one of those precious slots, but Legends seems to be going strong and right now I think there will be plenty of time to get to everyone.

There’s the packaging. You’ll note that this is still a self-proclaimed “Ant-Man” wave, which doesn’t make a lot of sense with some of these releases. I tend to just refer to these waves by whoever the BAF and since I toss the packaging, Hasbro could call it whatever they want. Tiger Shark comes with one of Ultron’s arms and he’s just chomping to get out of there, so let’s rip this open and check him out.

One time Olympic swimmer… now part man, part shark (and with a little bit of Namor’s genes rattling around in there) Tiger Shark looks every bit as ridiculous as his name would suggest and man do I love it. The costume relies entirely on a painted buck, giving Tiger Shark his distinctive orange suit with metallic purple boots, gloves, and a jagged stripe running down his torso. Unfortunately, the paint job on this guy isn’t all it could be. The orange paint on the torso appears to be over some rather dark plastic, which bleeds through, particularly at the seems, and there’s some scrapes and scratches here and there. Also, the orange paint doesn’t match the orange plastic as much as I would like… same goes for the purple.

What Todd lacks in crisp paint and sculpted detail in the body he makes up for with a pretty spectacular head sculpt. His purple mask includes a prominant fin running down the middle of his head like an aquatic mohawk. And those teeth! He’s bearing a full set of vicious, jagged pearly whites that really give him a lot of character. A little mold flashing on the head continues the trend that Tiger Shark’s QC isn’t up to this line’s usual standards.

I can’t place the last time we saw this buck, but it sports some pretty good articulation, as well as a hole in the back, presumeably for a cape worn by its last user. The arms feature rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, swivels in the biceps, and double hinges in the elbows. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have rotating hinges in the ankles, swivels in the thighs and tops of the boots, and double hinges in the knees. He has a swivel in the waist, an ab crunch hinge in the torso, and neck with both hinge and ball joint.

So, Tiger Shark has a few more cosmetic issues then I would have liked, but nothing too terrible. He’s far from an A-lister and as such he may be lost on some collectors who would have rather seen Ultron’s right arm bundled with a more recognizeable or prominent character. To each their own. I’m always happy to add more villains to my Marvel Rogues Gallery and when it comes to crazy cats like Tiger Shark, I say the more the merrier. Now maybe we can get that Namor, Hasbro? Or how about a Baron Mordo to round out The Offenders?