My wife has a singular perspective on my action figure collection, and a while back I shared some of her reviews of my purchases. Recently, we thought we’d try it again. Without further ado, here’s what my wife had to say about some of the figures from the Marvel Legends Infinite Ant-Man series.
Hagop: Wow, it’s been a long time since we did one of these. So these are four figures from the Marvel Legends Infinite Ant-Man series.
Hagop’s Wife: This is what confuses me, is that everything seems to be infinite.
H: Well, that’s the new over-arching brand…
HW: I just sort of feel that there’s an argument to be made that not everything can be infinite.
H: Well isn’t that the definition of infinite?
HW: Ehhhh…
H: This is not an example of infinity, because there are—
HW: Only four?
H: Yeah. Four of the six figures from this series.
HW: All right. So this is not infinite. This is four.
H: Yeah. This is “Tiger Shark.” Shall we open him up?
HW: (Tentatively) Yeeeah. This looks like a parody of an action figure. This doesn’t seem real, on any level.
H: In what way? The big fin head?
HW: Cuz this is just seems… it… this just seems real arbitrary. Like somebody needed to come up with a new thing. And they were like, “Ugh, Jesus, everything’s been taken. How ‘bout a shark? We’ll just put a big floppy fin on his head. And he has pointy teeth.”
“What are his powers?”
“Who cares.” It just seems like something that somebody made up in the middle of the night because they had to and it was due the next day.
H: All right, well any other thoughts on him?
HW: (long pause) I mean, as a figure? He just seems… I mean, you know that my continual complaint is that they’re just too ropey. Like everybody’s all ropey and their legs are weird and ropey and, like, it’s weird.
H: Like, steroid-y?
HW: Yeah. It’s steroids. I know that they allegedly have super powers but also — by the way, his legs turn around all the way. That seems like a super power in and of itself. Um… yeah. He seems mad. He’s a bad guy, right?
H: Yeah
HW: Yeah.
H: Clearly.
HW: Well, sometimes I’m wrong about that. He has lots and lots of joints. He has every joint. All of his things flip around, totally. It’s weird. And I made him look like this.
H: Looks like he’s been in a fight with Thor.
HW: That’s a comic book joke, huh?
H: Should we move on?
HW: What’s the build-a-figure that you get out of this?
H: Ultron. From the movie. Which obviously we can’t build.
HW: It sort of seems like more people would want to have Ultron than shark human over there. So they might have been better off — well, I don’t know, maybe it’s a canny marketing thing; you have to buy all of these guys —
H: That’s exactly it. You got it.
HW: All right.
H: Here you go. This is the Grim Reaper.
HW: Oh, his hand is a scythe.
H: Mmhm.
HW: So they just cut right to the chase. He doesn’t hold one, he is one.
H: Right.
HW: His eyes are too far apart in a scary way. I mean, maybe it’s supposed to —
H: Be scary. Right —
HW: He looks a little like Marty Feldman.
H: He does a little bit.
HW: Is he, like, the Joker equivalent for Ant-Man?
H: Uh —
HW: Cuz he seems like it. He seems a little crazy.
H: No. I mean, he is a little crazy. But, first of all, all these characters only have a tenuous association with Ant-Man, to be honest. He’s sort of an Avengers villain, generally — particularly of Wonder Man …
HW: I don’t know what Wonder Man is, and I don’t care. (Back to the figure) Well, all of his things twist around completely in the same way. I guess nerds would like to know that. He’s very flexible. He has a skull and crossbones, which seems a little “on the nose.” Is he a person?
H: As opposed to?
HW: A symbol of death.
H: Ohhh, no. He’s a person. He’s not, like, a spirit.
HW: His story is that he is a person who adopted the Grim Reaper as his character. He is not “the” Grim Reaper.
H: Correct.
HW: Sometimes these things need to be clarified. How did he get his scythe hand, if he’s a person? Did he have an unfortunate incident? And he just opted, “Oh hey, instead of getting a robotic arm or a grabber, I’ll just put a giant blade.” Also, how does he brush his teeth?
H: I guess with his left hand.
HW: Is he left-handed?
H: He is now.
HW: That’s a good point. Why does he have Loki things (referring to the head design)?
H: Because late ‘60s.
HW: Late ‘60s. That was the height of arbitrary things. Does he have a power besides “he has an arm”?
H: Yeah, well… his scythe has been weaponized in different ways over the years, depending on different writers.
HW: For crying out loud.
H: I think there was a time when he shot lasers out of it.
HW: He shot lasers out of his scythe?! How?!
H: Like, through here (pointing to the tip of the staff).
HW: When was that, in the ‘80s?
H: Yeah, I think so actually.
HW: Pew pew.
He’s in very good shape.
H: Ropey? What do you think? This is a new body type for the line.
HW: He’s less ropey. Here’s the thing: you can make it so that he does sit-ups. Let’s do it now. We have to take off his cape.
I mean, anything he does is going to be difficult because of (his scythe). Here, he can do crunches. He can go like that and like that and like that.
H: That’s why he’s in such good shape maybe.
HW: That’s why he has a six-pack right here. Unrealistic, but even so. I don’t know. This guy just, again, seems real arbitrary to me.
H: Ok.
HW: Do only like, real special nerds wanna buy these particular action figures? These are for grown-ups, right? These are not for children.
H: Right. Grim Reaper has been a highly fan-demanded character for a long time.
HW: But does he have any powers beyond “he has a hand”? And sometimes lasers?
H: I don’t think so, but honestly I don’t remember.
HW: So he’s just good at fighting and he has the power of sharpness. Does he put a cozy over it when he sleeps? I wonder, is Edward Scissorhands kind of a rip-off?
H: I don’t know. Ready for another?
HW: Sure.
H: This is Bulldozer from the Wrecking Crew.
HW: He’s a bad guy too?
H: Yep.
HW: People tend to like bad guys more than — I guess there’s more bad guys. They have to constantly come up with new and novel bad guys, don’t they? For the hero to fight. And so it just gets more and more ridiculous. All right. What’s this person’s power? Does he have the power of strength and craziness?
H: Yeah. And running into things with his head.
HW: JESUS! Does his helmet come off? (Checking underneath the helmet) No. Eww, weird. It’s like he has no head. I don’t like to look at that.
Ok, where did he get his armor?
H: The armor is just, eh….
HW: He was born with it?
H: No. So the Wrecking Crew are these four guys that were endowed with Asgardian strength. So the armor is sort of ornamental, essentially.
HW: (long pause) All right. So he just has a costume.
H: Right.
HW: To indicate “bad guy.” He could be dressed in sweat pants, which would make a lot more sense. He could wear, like, what karate guys wear and he’d have more freedom of movement, he would be more effective. These things (armor pieces) are probably slowing him down more than they are helping him.
I don’t understand how he’s an enemy of Ant-Man if he’s been endowed with Asgardian powers.
H: This is really more an enemy of Thor and the Avengers, generally. Like I said, these aren’t really Ant-Man characters per se.
HW: So he doesn’t fight Ant-Man.
H: I’m sure he has, in a big group melee at some point, but he’s not an “Ant-Man villain.”
HW: Why is he so sad? Does he just have second thoughts about this whole… thing? So that’s what he does; he just runs into things with his head?
H: Pretty much.
HW: Is he a popular person?
H: Yeah. Actually the Wrecking Crew were really highly demanded as figures for a long time. And now they’ve finally done them. He’s the last one to be made.
HW: The Wrecking Crew seems like a bad name, also. Let me tell you why. Because it sounds like the name of a crew of people in the Bronx in 1979 who, like, wanted to be a gang but mostly there was just like one guy who was good at breakdancing and they just sort of hung out together. And maybe they got jackets made, or t-shirts, and yelled things at another crew, but they weren’t like, a real gang. But then, y’know, nowadays they talk to their grandchildren and they’re like, “Oh yeah man, I was part of the Wrecking Crew.” Instead of a divinely created group of Scandinavian god-heroes.
H: Right. Well, you’re not too far off. There was the Wrecker, as a character, originally. And then they made the Wrecking Crew which was… construction-worker themed. So you have Bulldozer, Piledriver, and Thunderball.
HW: And they came from Asgard?!
H: No they’re humans, but Loki was like, “Boom. Now you’re super-strong and shit.” And this is Bulldozer.
HW: This is Bulldozer?
H: Yes.
HW: Oh. You probably already told me that, and I already forgot because I don’t care.
H: Last one. Ready?
HW: Yep!
H: So we’ve had three figures that don’t really have a connection to Ant-Man—
HW: Even though their boxes say “Ant-Man.”
H: Right.
HW: I mean, are children that buy these gonna be pissed?
H: Children don’t care. So here is Ant-Man.
HW: Oh. This is Ant-Man?
H: Actually, in this guise, he’s Giant Man. This is his Giant Man getup.
HW: What?
H: This is Henry Pym, the character who is Ant-Man.
HW: What?
H: He’s had many different identities. He was Ant-Man, Giant Man, he’s been called Goliath —
HW: (This triggers her memory of the Bill Foster figure she once reviewed) Oh wait! G !
H: Different Goliath.
HW: For crying out loud.
H: That Goliath was his lab assistant at one point.
HW: So here’s the thing. Ant-Man and all of the Ant-Men, their special power is that they all knew each other? And ultimately whoever puts on the outfit is the thing. Has the power.
H: Well —
HW: They have the power of an outfit. They’re like Batman.
H: It’s not the outfit that’s powered. It’s something called Pym Particles that you use in order to change size. But several people have worn the costume and taken up the mantle.
HW: I’m gonna make a weird thing here. I feel like the creators of comic books have the same attitude of people who don’t put their phones in airplane mode when they are on airplanes.
H: What attitude is that?
HW: The attitude is that they clearly respect science. They’re like, “Oh yeah, science! Science is cool !” All these guys are scientists, and scientific geniuses who discover something that gives them a power. Here are my examples: This guy. All of his lab assistants. Spider-Man. Even Batman — he’s an engineer, more than anything else, but sure. All these guys — The Fantastic Four — they’re all these scientists, and all the comic creators are like, “scientific genius scientific genius scientific genius.” But they don’t respect science enough to actually research something and figure out if things are a) possible and b) they just make it up, and they call it… ”yeah yeah yeah, they’re… uhhh…’Pym Particles’.”
H: Well that’s his name.
HW: RIGHT. It’s the most… it’s the easiest… they’re like, “Ooh! ooh! They both have ‘P’.” It’s the same as the guy in the airplane, who’s like, “Science is so great, I have such confidence in the ability of science to figure out how to put this giant metal tube in the air, that I am going to ignore what the people who actually know about aeronautics and airplane engineering and such have to say, and NOT turn off my cellphone when I’m in the air. It’s cool. They know what they’re doing. I’m going to ignore them.”
H: All right. Well, that is an analogy that you’ve made.
HW: It’s a tortured one, but it is one.
H: Well what do you think of Giant Man here?
HW: I like his head nubs. I guess he looks like an ant, a little. He has jester boots. The paint is chipped. Why is it like that? Not the paint, why is there two balls?
H: That’s just the buckle, I suppose.
HW: Is this an ant symbol?
H: Nooo, that’s really just a riff on the design of his original costume.
HW: It is strange to me how they put muscles where no muscles are. To the point where they just look bumpy. These dudes just look bumpy. (Points to a lower back muscle) Like, that — that’s just silly. Look how bumpy he is! After a while it starts to look like cellulite.
Here’s his number. His barcode. 51191. (sings) Five, one, one, nine, oooone!
H: What?
HW: 24601. It’s from Le Mis. It’s Jean Valjean’s prison number. I’m saying this is Giant Man’s prison number.
I also just feel the science between making something small and making something big are two very different branches of science.
H: Probably.
HW: So… I think comic book writers should maybe explore science a little bit more. I feel like I could be a comic book writer, because you can just be like, “All right, so there’s a guy and he’s walking along and out of the sky there is a thunderbolt and that thunderbolt has ‘scientific principles’ and those principles mean that now he has the power to see through walls. Also in addition, he can see the future. And the way he uses the power is he makes his eyes go wom-wom-wom and they’re green now instead of regular eyes, and he sees through the wall and he sees what will happen in that room in the future. And also he can fly. And then there are other things that happen and he fights enemies. Ok, go draw it.”
H: Any final thoughts about our Ant-Man Legends?
HW: In summation, I would say it appears to be a bit of a misnomer to call this the Ant-Man Legends Series of Infinity.
H: To be fair, the two figures from the series that we don’t have here are Ant-Man and the Wasp.
HW: Did anyone at your office ask you about this when it was delivered?
H: Nah, it was just an Amazon box.
HW: You’re going to have a bigger problem when the Big Bad Toy Shop box comes, aren’t you?
H: Yep.