As a kid growing up reading Marvel Comics, one of my favorite books was The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. My friends gave me a ton of those comics and there are many Marvel characters that I only know due to their OHOTMU entries. The Kyle Richmond Nighthawk is one of those characters, but he always stood out because I was fascinated by the parody and alternate universe aspects of the character. Let’s take a look at Nighthawk!
Nighthawk comes in the standard Marvel Legends box and comes with an Avengers: Endgame Thanos arm, Thanos’ weapon, and a removeable cape.
The arm attaches easily to the body and looks well sculpted, though the paint job is pretty sloppy on some of the armor.
His weapon, which looks like a propeller or perhaps a futuristic outrigger paddle is cast in a fairly dull gray plastic that holds it’s shape well.
I do like the etched details on the paddles because they kind of remind me of the scribing you would see on giant spaceship models like Star Destroyers from Star Wars.
The cape is pretty neat. Kyle has a pretty bonkers cape set up with a huge upswept section that flies over the shoulders. It’s intended to look as much like wings as a cape and Hasbro did a really nice job capturing the feel of this design in 3-D.
It attaches securely via a peg in the back and it fits nicely around the neck. One slight quibble I have with it is that the collar slightly obscures the hawk symbol on the chest.
The body is mostly re-use of the common medium base body we just saw on Citizen V with a new head, gloves, and clawed hands. The head is pretty cool with deep set eyes and a grim, determined expression.
I think the claws look really nice too and I always like to see that boot cuff sculpt. The color combo, cowl, and bootcuffs have me jonesing for a classic X-Men Cyclops on this body.
The articulation is the typical Marvel Legends wide range, the only issue I noticed playing with the figure is that if you crouch the figure too low and the cape hits the floor, it will pop out of the back peg.
I come to Nighthawk from a weird spot. I was never a big reader of Defenders, so when I think Nighthawk I think mostly of the alternate universe Squadron Supreme version of Nighthawk, which is a completely different design!
This is another solid, if not particularly flashy figure and a good representation of the Defenders Nighthawk. Even though I was not a big reader of that book, I like that they are filling out that roster a little more and it makes me want to grab some old back issues and learn more.
