One of the comics I had and reread a million times as a little kid was Marvel Team Up #37 where Spidey teams with Frankenstein’s Monster to fight Man-Wolf. In most of the stories I read, Man-Wolf had that sort of yellow romper, so that would have been my preferred version, but the Stargod version is pretty cool looking in a ’70s comic book character way. Let’s take a look at the Marvel Legends Man-Wolf!
The packaging is a little new since this is part of the Magic: The Gathering collaboration. It has a big window up front where you can see the card and the figure and an actual cross-sell on the back for more of the wave. The art on the side of the box is from the card and is quite nice.
He comes with the card, a quiver, some arrows, two extra hands, a sword, and a bow. The card means less than nothing to me, but the art is nice and the foil effect looks pretty cool. I’m pretty ignorant of the game, so I don’t see why adding this card to a basic Legends figure justifies the price bump from a $25 figure to a $40 figure as packs of Magic cards run you 5 or 6 bucks. But again, I do not understand the economics of these card games at all.
The sword and bow look like re-use from Taskmaster and Hawkeye respectively. They work for the look of the weapons in his first appearance as Stargod in Marvel Premiere even though there was a wolf head on the pommel in the comic that’s not here. The sword fits in a loop on the belt. I would have preferred a full sheathe, but this is pretty good. I like the silver paint on the sword and the gold plastic is pretty effectively shiny.
The arrow pack fills the quiver nicely and you can also put the loose arrow in there. I’m not a fan of the bows with a plastic string, they just don’t look convincing to me at all pulled back, though this figure doesn’t really have a hand that can nock an arrow anyway so it’s got limited utility as an accessory. I do wish they would either leave the bow without a string or do two bows with plastic string, one nocked and one neutral. The alternate hands are good options for a wolf-man with punching and claw options. Once accessory I do miss is the thigh knife that Stargod had in the original Marvel Premier books.
Sculpting is pretty great on this guy. I’m not seeing a lot of parts re-use and there’s a nice subtle furry texture to the limbs and the scale-mail looks very detailed. I like the proportions a lot, though it looks a bit long-limbed when standing straight.
The original Man-Wolf figure from Legends had a bit of a weird head which I attributed partially to the jaw opening function, so I was a little concerned about the opening jaw here. I think it works pretty well and looks nice with the jaws clenched or wide open.
The wolf portrait has a lot of character and I also like that the little gold cap sleeves are separate pieces that don’t impede movement. The articulation is pretty much Marvel Legends standard, but the neck has especially nice movement at the ball joints. I think this because they cut out a bit of a notch at the back of the ball joint where it connects to the body allowing the figure to look up well. There’s also a really long barbell which is covered by a furry sleeve which allows a lot of movement.
The paint is decent and I actually like the gold plastic here when I don’t usually. There is also a slight metallic to the chest armor which is nice, though the bright white of the fur could probably use a wash to bring out that detail a bit.
Overall, this is a very nice figure of an obscure ’70s Marvel character who was a super weird mix of sci-fi and fantasy in a very proto-Masters of the Universe way. Jameson was probably most often depicted in that yellow onesie, but the fantasy inspired Stargod version is the cooler look in my opinion. This kind of thing is right up my alley, but not terribly popular with the mainstream, so I wonder if this one might have been better to gamble on clearance prices later. As it is, it’s a great and fun figure to mess with, but I overpaid for it.
