If you don’t like this article, you can swap it out for a different one. Ha! See what I did there? Well I don’t either. Yeah, swap was the buzzword of the NYCC for Hasbro’s Marvel news, and for a while it drowned out all other news. With that, let’s take a look at all the news fit to print from NYCC.
I’ll be honest with you all, once it gets to the minutiae of things like case pack-outs and all that, I sort of check out and go pay attention to things that are cooler and less anal-retentive, like little plastic figures what look like the whatchamabobs from the funnybooks, dagnabberit. From what I understand from blank-brained skimming is that the utterly failed concept of the “running change” is now being referred to as “swap,” except for the fact that all the characters will now be in the packages. Hell, I got confused just writing that. I have to do some research. Or let one of the smart alecks in the comment section correct me. You know you love to do that.
But enough of that — on to the figures. Since Marvel Legends, in the strict sense we once knew it, is dead (thank you, stupid retail people), and the line is going to aim itself more towards movie tie-ins, the news is centered around Captain America and Spider-Man, both of whom are all cinematic. It seems like I’ve been hearing about this Spider-Man movie for forever now. It’s the one where Spidey is played by that fat orange cat from the daily strips, and Electro is being played by Ray Charles.
I don’t know.
But the good news is HYDRA.
Yes, correcting a horrible mistake way back in Hasbro’s early attempts at running a Marvel line, they’re redoing the famed HYDRA army builder on their new Black Panther-styled body. See, the previous HYDRA figure was an absolute hunk of junk with crap articulation and looked more like it should have come rocketing out of a gum machine in a clear bubble after you stabbed a quarter in the slot. But this new one is a bitchin’ fully articulated rammajamma that finally looks like it deserves the name HYDRA. I hear if you buy one, you actually come home with two. That’s how HYDRA rolls.
The preceding statement was false. Do not expect your HYDRA figure to multiply.
The Build-A-Figure of the Cap wave will be a Mandroid. While it looks as cool as could be for a big murderbot-deal, it is, in fact, the wrong color. It’s not yellow-gold. Obviously, Mandroids are yellow-gold. So I am confused. I’m sure it has something to do with these young punks and their movies and everything needing to be all gritty and real and all that, so whaddayagonnado? He still looks cool despite being the wrong color to be a proper Mandroid, so it’s not a full miss.
The Spider-Man line fared pretty well, all in all. I don’t care about Ultimate anything, so that means if I choose, I can skip trying to buy all the figures since the BAF is that Ultimate Green Goblin that pretty much looks so generic I fell asleep writing this sentence. Ooh, big green guy with fire. You suck, Ultimate universe. I don’t care about Electro either because Electro is green and yellow and that figure is a Smurf wearing the movie X-Men’s costume, so not having to buy him is fine with me.
Better news, though, is the one-two-three punch of the movie Spidey, the Superior Spidey, and Carnage.
Movie Spidey first: see, they’ve corrected their mistake of having a stupid costume in the first movie I didn’t care about by putting Peter in his actual costume. Comic-approved. It is one of the greatest designs in comic history for a reason, so it only makes sense. And since this movie figure doubles as a comic figure AND is on a pretty much totally revamped body — which means no more of that bastard son of a bastard hodgepodge they’ve been using for BigTimeFutureFoundationScarletSpider — it’s a win win.
Superior Spider-Man is my favorite Marvel comic right now. Other titles get more buzz, but Superior is taking the entire Spider-Man mythos in a completely new and deranged direction with a Doctor Octopus in charge of Peter’s body. The new Superior costume is a darker update of the regular-styled Spidey design, and I dig it a lot. It mixes in elements of some other Spidey designs but the final effect looks like a take-no-prisoners, harsher Spidey, and that’s what this version is. I’m looking forward to grabbing him.
That Stupid Beetle costume is still stupid. I point and laugh at it. Ultimate Beetle. Ultimately I don’t care what he calls himself; that ain’t the Beetle.
The final newly revealed figure is a brand new Carnage on the Black Panther body. Man, Carnage really incites some opinions. I love him. Some of the nonstop Symbiotes that came later are fairly useless, but Carnage has never bothered me. The thing about the hate for Carnage is I’ve never really read a decent criticism of him. People always point out that he’s just a killer, that he’s not a character just shock value, he’s nothing but a third rate Venom, or that he’s everything wrong with the ‘90s. Essentially, that’s like hating chicken for tasting like chicken. All of that was the point. Carnage is Venom taken to it’s most extreme. Who cares? It’s comics. Carnage is a spree-killer with Venom and Spidey’s powers, with no compunction about using him. He got way overexposed as time went on, but that happens to everyone. He’s a fun concept, and his initial appearances are fun comic stuff.
But yeah, he looks like a fun figure, and he’s on a great body. I kind of think he might have been better on the new Spidey-body for a more lithe look, but this works too.
So while it wasn’t a deluge of new toys like SDCC can be, NYCC brought out a handful of decent reveals for Marvel figures in their new iteration. I’m pretty happy with everything I saw that hadn’t been announced yet, and I think switching to a movie-centric grouping may not be that bad in the end if it means we get a chance at new Spideys, HYDRA, and such.
Oh yes, get rid of those heels on Black Cat, please. Signed, everyone.
You know, swap them for some flats.
Swap.
To see more pictures from Fwoosh’s coverage, click HERE.