Mojo is beautifully disgusting. He is, perhaps, the most repellant character in the entire Marvel universe, which is really saying something. Art Adams outdid himself when designing this monster as the chief antagonist of the Longshot mini-series, and the absolute absurdity of the character has ensured his appearing every now and again to torment other Marvel heroes, particularly the X-Men.
Mojo was the Build-a-Figure of wave 14 of ToyBiz’s original Marvel Legends series, a wave he shared with Longshot, his greatest foe. Initial promo images of Mojo made him look absolutely fantastic, and everything that made the ToyBiz years great was clearly evident in the figure’s design. In other words: we had very high hopes for this figure, especially those of us who were diehard Longshot aficionados.
The good news is the figure mostly delivered. The sculpt is awesome and it effectively captures Mojo’s sick, twisted grin. The sculpt and paint work of his huge belly make him look suitably gross, complete with stretch marks and a giant dimple that sort of looks like a huge, gross butt crack. His chair packs a lot of detail and it’s a nice recreation of what he rides in the comics.
The paint job on all the wires that protrude from the back of his head is where the figure really shines. There are some beautiful metallic paints used to capture the look of his cyber-organic nature. The sculpt work of all the wires succeeds in differentiating them from each other so that it really does resemble a huge mass of wires. The same effect is continued down the back of his chair and up through the “scorpion” attachment that hangs over his head. The weathering further succeeds in giving the chair quite a realistic look, at least the back of the chair, anyway. The front looks a bit like unpainted gray plastic.
Small touches on his chair, like his own face cast in what is meant to look like gold or bronze, give a great deal of insight into what this character is all about. He’s just a little full of himself.
Mojo’s articulation is the first area where things didn’t quite live up to expectations. His own arms are capable of a great range of motion and feature all the articulation one would expect from a ToyBiz figure. His head is not articulated at all, unfortunately, and the “spider” legs of his chair fall a bit short in the articulation department, sadly. Each spider leg is only articulated at the point where it meets the chair, and the range of motion in each isn’t all that great. Promo pics led many to believe the spider legs would have multiple points of articulation, but that was not to be.
Each leg comes preposed in such a way that there isn’t a whole lot that can be done with them in terms of posing. And they’re certainly not capable of supporting Mojo’s weight. Fortunately, they don’t have to because …
… ToyBiz saw fit to furnish his chair with four clear plastic “nubs” that actually support his weight. That’s kinda cool, I guess, but it was actually a major letdown when we were first assembling this guy. Many were expecting articulation out the wazoo, but, instead, what we got was a figure that was pretty darn limited in the posing department.
The larger issue with Mojo is that he’s just plain small. He’s been drawn in a variety of sizes by a variety of different artists, but he’s never really been shrimpy, and I tend to defer to the way his creator drew him where scale is concerned. The panel on the above right from Art Adams’ Longshot accurately depicts his size in relation to Spiral, an average-sized human. When posed with Marvel Legends Longshot, Mojo looks almost comically undersized. This drove me crazy for years.
There are potential workarounds, however. In the above pics I have him sitting on a cap from a can of spray paint. It helps, but then, because of his legs, it makes him look as though he’s floating. It’s far from perfect, but it’s at least better.
Even better still, though, is integrating him into a Marvel Universe display. He looks way better with the 3.75-inch Longshot. I mean, it actually looks like he was designed to fit with the Marvel Universe line rather than the Marvel Legends line. I’d prefer a Mojo that scaled well with my Marvel Legends collection, but at least I can put together a decent display with him and Longshot duking it out.
The figure is a good representation of Mojo on its own merits, and if you can deal with his size, he’s a solid addition to a Marvel Legends collection (but an even better addition to a Marvel Universe collection).
