I hadn’t read House of X or Powers of X when I pre-ordered this figure. Moira MacTaggert has been a mainstay of the X-Books for as long as I can remember and I love to get figures of supporting characters like this, so I had to get one. Let’s take a look at House of X Moira MacTaggert!
The box is in the typical Marvel Legends style, but I like how they added the script from the comic into the logos. The art is quite lovely and the box does give you a brief idea of Moira’s role in the miniseries, so I’m glad I finished the first storyline before getting the figure.
Moira comes with extra arms and a jacket overlay, two heads (one with permanently attached glasses, one with a permanently attached hat), four hands (2 fists, left grip, and right splayed) and a scarf. With the parts you can approximate a couple looks she had in the comic, though the colors and details don’t exactly match to panel, it gets the job done for the most part. Swapping the arms was way tougher than I expected and I ended up heating the figure to make the swap easier for myself.
The book seems appropriate for a student or scientist and she holds it fine with the grip hand. The fists are some nice variety in lady limbs and also highlights how tired I am of the splayed fingers hand for the lady legends. A relaxed hand for the women might be something worth investing in. The figure also comes with the Tri-Sentinel’s leg which looks appropriately spindly and robotic.
The figure looks to be mostly re-use from the Gwen Stacey/ Mary Jane Watson figure and it works pretty well for Moira. I especially like the knit texture on the sweater and having seen how the long sleeve arms work here, I now wish that Gwen came with some black versions to go with Mary Jane.
I do like the skirt a bit better when the jacket is on, because the opening on the side is pretty high. The lab coat hangs nicely and feels like a really useful piece for anybody customizing doctors or scientists in this scale.
The portraits are incredibly cute, but this is where my one problem with the figure crops up and it is a doozy. The paint on the lips on this figure do not match the sculpted lips very well. From some angles there is more of an upturned smile painted on than the sculpting really indicates so it makes me think of the joker. It’s tougher to see at a normal viewing distance, but is jarring up close and it is a real shame because the sculpting looks great and the glasses are some of the nicest I’ve seen in this scale. I’m going to have to repaint these. There is also some kind of crud on the back of one heads that looks like superglue. I hope.
The articulation is typical for what we see in this line for the women with:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Hinged neck with a ball and socket on the head
- Thigh swivels
- Ball and socket mid-torso wobble
It moves decently for the most part, but the forward leg movement is impeded by skirt.
Overall, this is a bit of a disappointment. I love the concept and the execution of the swappable parts to pay tribute to Moira’s power from the comic, the sculpting is lovely, and it is a key character that would also work well as a civilian in other displays. Unfortunately that shoddy paint work on the lips almost kills it. I didn’t notice it until I was taking close up photos, but a huge part of the reason I buy these things is to photograph them, so that’s a problem for me. I wonder if I just got a lemon or it is a line-wide issue.
