I’m gonna be totally honest with you. My sole interest in this figure was too see if the figure could hold up as a first appearance or ’70s-era Beast. The old blue fuzzball was drawn smaller back then, not as tall or bulky as he’d later be depicted in the ’90s and beyond.
Yeah, I bought this classic Spider-Man villain with the sole intent of learning if he’d be good custom fodder for someone else. Miles Warren, aka the Jackal, never really struck me as a great villain. Sure, back in his first appearance, when he cloned Parker for the first time, he was interesting. But after that it got boring. Especially with the Clone Saga, although that did have its merits. We did get Ben Reilly, the Scarlett Spider (almost since he’s gone nuts and taken over the role of Jackal) …
The figure is great. It’s a beautiful piece of plastic that has a detailed sculpt and pops on the shelf. He has some of the most wonderful colors on this earth: green and purple. Yeah, he’s a furry Green Goblin ripoff, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t look awesome. There’s a ton of fur in the sculpt, and that means a ton of detail.
The articulation is great, blah blah blah Marvel Legends blah blah. It’s challenging to find anything new to say about the articulation. It’s super, it’s posable, and does everything you want it to do.
As for my original reason for wanting this figure … eehhh … I’m on the fence. I think he’d make a great first appearance grey Beast, and maybe a great first appearance blue Beast, but I’d need some more bulk on him to be my ’70s Avengers Beast or ’80s X-Men Beast. I know sculpts are done on computers these days, but he needs to be a little bit taller and little bit wider. Then he’d fit the bill.
The verdict: get this figure. It’s a great-looking figure of a classic Spider-Man villain. Even if you don’t use it for your Spidey shelf, you can probably outfit it with some 200x MOTU armor and make a killer goblin or orc.
You can pick him up today here:
His torso needs a better bend so he can hunch forward, but other than that I think he is great.
For me, if I were customizing him I had wanted to do the Brute from Mutant-X
Oh I absolutely see The Beast in this sculpt. He didn’t really get super bulky until the ’90s, and had kind of a lanky look. Maybe his arms could be a bit thicker and longer for an ape like build, but I would cool with this as my Perez era Hank https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/25d73f66ea9b3c30c11f4c7ba642799da4d8d2740e2996469282ae0309b496dc.jpg
I get the feeling that Hasbro wasn’t going to pour money into a 100% new sculpt for a B-list Spider-Man villain like the Jackal if they didn’t intend to use it for Beast. The big tufts of fur on the forearms is a giveaway; that’s much more a George Perez Beast thing than something the Jackal ever had. (I’m mostly talking 70’s Jackal- he wore a trench coat in the 90’s, so that’s a different design.) I like the proportions, it’s a little small, but other than that, I wouldn’t mind seeing a Beast on this base.
Black Manta still beats him for looking less like the animal he’s named after.
I’d buy this guy as “good enough” for 70s Beast. And I think he’d only need minor modifications to be perfect. Wider upper chest block, bigger shoulders/biceps and he’d be golden.
With a sculpted, or cloth, cap, and this could be a sub-head for Green Goblin. I totally agree with you about turning this guy, and multiples, into a goblin/orc army, just need some leather and glue, perhaps some cleaned/boiled chicken bones for weapons, any ideas for hands? Good review, sir, thank you for the opinion and the history on both Jackel and Beast; I would love to see a Beast custom, so please link such a great idea if anyone decides to attempt it.
nice to see like the green goblin the one other foe who has been a thorn in spider mans side since almost the very begining got some plastic loving at last though the mold looks like they took the animated green goblin and did some tuning on it to make the jackal