If you are a Marvel Legends collector, you know the drill: many series throughout a given year support major blockbuster movies, and in those assortments, we get a combination of movie and comic-based figures. This first assortment to support Avengers: Infinity War is no exception, and while we brought you a look at a couple of the MCU figures before (and will have more soon), we are turning our eye to the comic figures in this wave over the next few days, and we will start with Serpent Society, er, rather, COBRA!
While the MCU Legends figures have grown on me to the point that I have pretty much become a completist over the past year, my bread and butter with Legends has always been the comic figures. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the MCU, but be they Marvel, DC, or otherwise, my preference for action figures based off of comic book characters has been to have them based on the original source. So, with each series, I am always most interested to see what comic figures will be added. I have made my opinion clear that the Legends figures Hasbro is producing now are the best ever, so be they new characters like Cobra and Songbird, or revamps like Taskmaster, I welcome them all. We will get to Songbird and Taskmaster in the next couple of days, but lets start with the ever-growing SERPENT SOCIETY and Cobra.
No matter what you call him, this figure is long overdue for inclusion in Legends. He will always be Cobra to me, but now he goes by KING Cobra, and I understand that both of those handles are too general to really put a trademark to, so I understand Hasbro’s need to slap Serpent Society on the package, even though it is a silly moniker for one character. That said, we are on our way to building out many of the main components of the Serpent Society, so getting Klaus off the books help support that team building goal as well. Cottonmouth and Eel have been running around without any leadership as of late, but that has now been rectified.
Now, while we saw the typical droves of new tooling with the MCU figures, the construction of Cobra is much more inline with a traditional Marvel Legends figure. For this primary base, he is made up mostly of Green Goblin parts, the smaller build claw hands, some of those old plain shins and Bucky Cap shoes. Honestly, these all work just fine for me, and coupled with the new head/hood, gauntlets (at least, I THINK those are new), and cape, we get a very fine classic Cobra figure. I have never overly into Cobra and his Serpent Society, but these slithering ne’er-do-wells have been fangs in the collective sides of the Avengers for a long time, so getting their leader in this assortment is definitely appropriate.
The two best new pieces here are obviously the head/hood and cape. There was no real way for Hasbro to fudge either of these and do justice to the design, so good on them for making the smart tooling choices. The cape has an interesting design that really lends itself to the serpent look both in form, but also texture. The tapered shape mimics the snake tail, and the texturing on the underside certainly harkens to the belly of the serpent. The hood also looks really nice, and, of course, gets you the shape of that king cobra head. It continues the trend of the hood being attached to the head, which is believe is a good thing. so it will not restrict most of your posing.
Most of the production quality on this figure is up to snuff comparatively for recent ML releases, so you should not have too many worries when scoping him out in the brick and mortar stores. I jumped on Amazon and could not resist ordering with Prime, so I did, and I came out pretty well in the end. The construction and joints are mostly good, but as you probably know, knees have been a bit soft as of late, and Cobra is no exception. My entire collection is in storage right now pending a move, so I imagine I will have a lot of knee-straightening to do when the collection goes back up. Also, the green “fang” painting on the face of this one is a little sloppy with some bleed from the flesh tone, so I would have been looking closer at that if was shopping at the store.
Cobra has arrived, and while he joins Cottonmouth and Eel, we still have a LOT of work to do to complete the Serpent Society. Frankly, I am not really expecting to get all of them, but I think it is a safe bet that the more prominent members will continue to trickle out over the next few years. If you cannot wait to get Cobra, head over to Amazon now, as he is in-stock. If you need the whole series, BBTS and Dorkside has you covered.
Check back tomorrow, we continue to look at this new Avengers Infinite series.
