Welcome to another Fantastic team-up in the Furious Fwoosh tradition. Ibentmy-man-thing here, with canonball on camera duty. Gee whiz, have we got a figure to show you!
If there was ever a comic book character that typified the type of four-color wish-fulfillment that make comics fun, it’s Captain Marvel. Yep, I’m calling him “Captain Marvel” for the duration of this article even if legalities prohibit him from being officially called that anymore.
When young Billy Batson uttered the acronym “SHAZAM,” he gained the powers of the Gods, becoming the mightiest mortal on Earth. Which Earth? Well, that’s a matter of which era you’re reading, I suppose. But on any Earth, and in any comic, Captain Marvel is usually one of the more optimistic and idealistic of any superhero this side of a guy with an S on his chest. When Mezco announced that they’d be adding him to their fabric-laden One:12 Collective lineup, I knew I’d have to get him, and that feeling was doubled when Captain Marvel’s nemesis Black Adam was announced. To get that good guy/bad guy synergy right off the bat was too strong a lure. The bonus was that, unlike the upcoming Superman, which I’m still holding my breath about, Captain Marvel looked from the start, so with the high quality we’ve seen, he seemed destined to be a strong figure. Let’s take a look!
Captain Marvel’s costume
To put it simply, the fabric here is on par with the highest quality Mezco figures yet. It fits nice and tight, accentuating his heroic build without excessive bagginess yet allows for freedom of movement. The arms are firmly tucked into the wristbands, and the bottom of his legs are tucked into his boots, and so far nothing has pulled out or caused me any issues.
The gold trim on his chest is mainly a Mezco addition. Mezco has taken flak for some of their design tweaks on various figures. While I do admit I would have liked a fully comic-faithful take on him, the gold looks so natural here that I can’t bring myself to find much fault with it. It goes well with his overall aesthetic.
My only costume problem is with his cape. The cape itself looks great, and it features a wire running along the edges to aid in poseability. It does, however, float freely, without much to hold it on, which can get a bit annoying when you’re playing with the figure. If you pose it just right and leave it alone, then it’s no doubt fine, but if you’re fiddling with the figure, it tends to ride up or scoot around and not stay put. I’m not sure if it would have been better to be permanently stitched down, but I would have liked some kind of solution.
The other problem is the hood. Captain Marvel with a hood is a recent development, and I don’t really care for it here. He’s usually been portrayed with a collar of random lengths, especially in this costume, so the hood to me is kind of useless, but there it is. It does lay down out of the way more or less, so it’s not like it has to be “on” all the time, but I could have done without it. But that’s really my only issue with the figure’s costume as a whole.
Captain Marvel’s Head(s)
Captain Marvel comes with three heads that each serve a very specific purpose. The main head head is the heroically grinning head. Captain Marvel smiles. He smiles even when he’s kicking the ass of every bad guy out there. It’s just a thing he does, because he’s very happy to be here, there, and everywhere. And keep in mind that although he looks like an adult superhero, Captain Marvel is essentially a little boy “playing” superhero, and his big grin has always suggested to me that he is so stoked to be a superhero.
He also has a less smiley head, which I think of as his “stoic and heroic” head. It’s still a pleasant head, it even looks like it’s about to crack a smile, but it’s a bit more of an “all business” expression. Because even when you’re an idealistic and optimistic hero like Captain marvel, sometimes the situation calls for a bit less smiling.
The last head is more of a scene-specific head. When Billy utters the word “Shazam!” his transformation isn’t a delicate thing. There’s a bit of lightning and thunder and all the tumult that comes with that. This is a fully powered-up, white-eyed head that evokes the fraction of a moment when the lightning hits very well. The look is amplified by the lightning strike accessory I’ll be covering later.
Captain Marvel’s arms
Captain Marvel has double jointed elbows with a nice range. He has ball-jointed wrists that get a very large amount of motion.
Captain Marvel’s hands
Captain Marvel comes with three pairs of hands. He gets one set of fists, one set of open flying hands, and one pair of half-gripped expression hands, all of which can be paired off in a variety of ways for varying dynamics.
Captain Marvel’s accessories
Captain Marvel comes with some very cool accessories, although one of them might take an issue with me calling him an “accessory.”
First, there’s the lightning burst. It slides onto his chest and holds on tight. Pair this with the white-eyed screaming head and you’ve got a good transformation moment for your shelf.
Up next is the severed head of Mr. Atom, a large, sentient, and evil robot that Captain Marvel has tangled with all the way back into the Golden Age. I love the fact that it has a fist-print sculpted into it. Such a nice touch.
The final accessory, or the pack-in figure, or however you want to think of it, is the genius alien worm known as Mr. Mind, because comics are awesome. Outside of Dr. Sivana and Black Adam, Mr. Mind is Captain Marvel’s most reoccurring villain and is the only one of the three that could fit into the box. So it’s perfectly fair to think of this as a Mr. Mind figure with a Captain Marvel pack-in, because did I mention highly intelligent alien worm?
Captain Marvel is another success story in Mezco’s One:12 Collective, taking very few liberties with an established icon and providing a high-end experience in a hand-sized package.
