So, a couple of weeks back that new Spider-Man movie came out. I am wholly unmoved by the Garfield reboot so l figured I’d catch it on Blu-Ray at some point. Then some friends were going to see it and I allowed myself to be dragged along. I thought it was pretty terrible, but that’s a discussion for another time and place. I was similarly unmoved by the wave of Marvel Legends figures that preceeded the movie, however, I did pick up the Superior Spider-Man and Amazing Spider-Man and liked them a lot. But wait, wasn’t there one more figure that I wanted out of that wave? Oh yeah, it was the impossible to find Black Cat. I broke down and paid a bit of a premium for her last month and she’s been sitting on my stack of unopened figures ever since. Time to remedy that, eh?

We’ve seen the new Legends Infinite packaging around these parts plenty of times so I won’t bother going on about it. I like it a lot, and because Black Cat comes with the Ultimate Goblin’s torso, there’s certainly a lot of plastic crammed onto that tray. Black Cat comes a little pre-posed with her whip flourishing over her head, but not to worry, it didn’t seem to warp any joints or anything. You may also notice that Black Cat’s name doesn’t appear anywhere on the package. Instead, it reads Skyline Sirens as she shares this slot with Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman. I’ve waited a while to get this figure, so let’s free her from her package prison and check her out…

Yowsa! Dat ass! Black Cat reuses parts from the modern female buck that we saw in the SDCC Thunderbolts boxed set, and she does it well. Besides being a nice and shapely body, there’s enough resculpting here to make it work for me. The boots and gloves have the additional sculpted fur fringe and the upper torso is completely new with the fur fringe on her plunging neckline and enough cleavage to embarrass parents walking through the toy aisle with their kids. Her hands are sculpted so as the right can hold her accessory and the left is showing her claws. My only complaint here is that the high heeled boots are so tiny, she is one difficult figure to stand. I’d make the comment that it’s because she’s top heavy, but in fairness her derriere helps to balance things out.

The portrait here is quite good. Obviously, Hasbro has been upping their game on the female head sculpts as of late. Felicia is certainly a pretty lady and the paintwork on her lips, eyes, and mask are all quite immaculate. That’s not something I’m used to seeing in a lot of mass release figures these days. The sculpted hair looks great, but as suspected it does impede the neck articulation quite a bit.

Speaking of articulation, Black Cat has some serviceable points. The arms are ball jointed at the shoulders and elbows and swivel at the wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have double-hinged knees, swivels in the thighs, and swivels and hinges in the ankles. There’s a ball joint in the torso and again at the neck. The bicep swivels that have been seen in this body before have been removed, and that’s rather disappointing. I also would have liked the elbows to have a wider range of motion. Still, what’s here is pretty good.

Felicia comes with her whip-slash-climbing claw. It’s a simple, but welcome accessory that she can hold pretty well in her right hand. It’s rather pre-posed but it’s soft pliable plastic so you can do a few different things with it.

The last Black Cat figure I owned was the less than stellar 90’s Toy Biz effort from their Spider-Man line. Suffice it to say that it’s nice to get a nicer version of the character in scale with my Legends collection. Of course, the problem is that Black Cat, like Black Widow in the Captain America wave, is short packed and damn hard to find at the retail price. I finally broke down and got her for $35 shipped, which is quite a premium, but considering I spend that each month on Masters of the Universe Classics figures, I decided it was worthwhile to get her and be done with it. Ultimately, I’m glad I did. She’s a great looking figure and she also adds the torso to my Ultimate Goblin BAF parts. I doubt I’ll ever get the other figures to finish it, but maybe if they turn up cheap enough I’ll bite.

I’m continuing to cherry-pick this wave of Spider-Man figures, and while I started out a week ago by looking at the Amazing Spider-Man 2 figure, Superior Spider-Man was the figure I wanted the most. Dan Slott got me back into reading the Amazing Spider-Man on a regular basis. It wasn’t always my favorite comic, but it kept me coming back and I was glad it did, because it would eventually set up the events that lead to what has been one of my favorite comics in recent years: Superior Spider-Man. With a decidedly groan-worthy and clichéd premise of body swapping, in this case between Doc Ock and Peter Parker, Superior Spider-Man is wonderfully written and takes the premise in directions that make it feel like a totally original idea. It’s also one of the only comics I’m reading right now, where I couldn’t wait for the trade releases so I’ve been reading them digitally as they come out and getting the trades later for my bookshelf. And that brings us to today’s figure!

There’s the new Marvel Legends Infinite packaging and I’m still digging it quite a bit. It’s technically a window box so it’s totally collector friendly, but it’s compact enough to hang easily on a peg like the old Legends packages while still taking up less room. Spider-Man is positioned in his tray beside the BAF part and his extra pair of hands.

When Doc Ock took over as Spider-Man in Peter’s body, the suit was redesigned to reflect the new mind at the helm. Spidey’s new suit deco went from blue and red to black and red and with an emphasis on the black over the web pattern. The chest emblem also got a lot bigger and more intimidating. Hasbro’s new figure recreates the overall new deco pretty well. Unlike the Amazing Spider-Man figure from this wave, this figure doesn’t suffer from unpainted joint syndrome. It also doesn’t make any use of texturing either, giving the figure a cleaner look. The buck used here is very similar to the one used for the Amazing Spider-Man figure. He’s maybe a bit more muscular, but the height is about the same, and he scales much better with my other Marvel Legends than the Big Time Spidey, Future Foundation Spidey, or Scarlet Spider figures.

That having been said, the figure stumbles on a few little points. The head sculpt looks good, although the paint for the eyes is a strange choice. It’s either dark brown or dingy copper when it really should just be white or maybe pearlescent. The other missed opportunity is in the feet. In the comics, the Superior Spidey costume features Japanese style tabi boots, whereas the figure’s feet are just flat and don’t feature the split in the toes. Neither of these points ruins the figure for me, but they still seem like obvious details that shouldn’t have been missed.

As with the last Spidey figure I looked at from this wave, Superior Spidey includes an extra pair of thwipping hands. Oddly enough, the figure comes with a pair of griping hands that look like they were designed to hold weapons. I presume these were reused from another figure, but I would have much preferred fists and I doubt I’ll ever display the figure with this set of mitts. The thwipping hands even feature tiny barbs sculpted into the extended figures.

If you read my piece on the Amazing Spider-Man figure, than you’ll already be familiar with the articulation here as the two figures feature identical points. The shoulders feature ball joints as well as hinged crunches. The arms have swivels in the biceps, double-hinged elbows, and hinges and swivels in the wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, double-hinged knees, and both hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. Spidey can swivel at the waist, has a hinged ab crunch, and both a ball joint and hinge in the neck.

As much as I love the Superior Spider-Man comic, this isn’t my favorite Spidey Suit design, but it certainly fits the change in direction of the comic. It’s more sinister, but not overtly so. A major force in the comic is the ambiguity of Ock’s role as Spidey and the suit properly reflects that. That having been said, it’s always a beautiful thing when we can get a figure based on the character as he is currently appearing in the comics. It’s doubly sweet when it’s a comic as good as Superior Spider-Man. Oddly enough, this figure seems to be one of the more common and less desirable figures in the wave so he’s readily available at a lot of online retailers below the usual $20 that these figures have been commanding on the  pegs. I’ve got one more figure in this wave that I’m actively gunning for and that’s Black Cat and I’m going to wind up paying through the nose for her, but I guess the money I save not buying the rest of this wave will help defray the costs.

Last time I had to deal with Scarlet Spider, it was his Marvel Universe release. I seem to recall describing the Clone Saga as being akin to having a dead rat in the middle of the living room… love it, hate it… you just can’t ignore it. Far be it from me to argue with myself, but I’ve managed to bury it away most of the time quite nicely until something like this comes up. This was not a figure I wanted in my collection, but I picked up a complete set of this wave online to build Rocket Raccoon. Little did I know at the time that he doesn’t even contain a BAF part. D’oh!!!

There’s the Marvel Legends packaging and I’m still loving it. Best of all, if you’re buying these in a store you can clearly see the lack of raccoon parts and decide for yourself whether you need this guy in your collection. I’ll give kudos to Hasbro, this is the one figure in the wave that I thought for sure would have a BAF part in order to force people to buy him. Nice to know they didn’t go that route. Too bad I didn’t research it before ordering.

Ok, so it should be obvious that this is a straight repaint of the Big Time Spider-Man and Future Foundation Spider-Man figures. Hasbro is determined to get their money’s worth out of this mold! And therein lies my issue with this figure. It’s too big. Take the figure on its own and it looks great. It’s got great articulation, it’s a good sculpt, the deco is fine, but as soon as I put it on my Legends shelf, he seems ridiculously out of scale with everyone else.

The deco is even simpler than the one used for FF Spidey. The figure is cast in red plastic, there’s a black spider emblem on the chest and there’s black on the shoulders and head. The eyes are painted red. I’m not a fan of this costume at all. At least the hoodie and ankle-pouch wearing outfit was made interesting by its very outlandishness. This one just looks blah! I guess Hasbro did an OK job with what they had to work with.

On the upswing, the articulation on this figure is excellent. The arms feature ball joints in the shoulders, double hinges in the elbows, swivels in the biceps and ball jointed wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, double hinged at the knees and hinged at the ankles. The torso features a swivel at the waist, an ab-crunch hinge and those awesome shoulder crunches. The neck is hinged and ball jointed. This is the kind of articulation that a good Spidey figure needs, if only the buck weren’t so big!

And that’s all I’ve got to say about this guy. I can’t deny that he’s a lot of fun to play with and pose. But, even if I were a huge fan of Scarlet Spider, this figure wouldn’t have worked for me, at least not as part of a cohesive series of figures like Marvel Legends. At this point, I should probably just pick up Big Time Spidey and move the whole trio to their own little display nook. They really aren’t bad figures on their own, but they look awkwardly large on my display shelf amongst their peers.