With Black Panther at the height of his popularity, now is the time to capitalize on that recognition. Ever since the first buzz began around his appearance in Captain America: Civil War, people were wondering if the comic version of Man-Ape would appear. When news of M’Baku appearing in Black Panther’s solo movie started hitting, again hopes were raised. Would he be the BAF of the Black Panther wave? The answer to that is clearly no, and so far there has been no trace of him.
Of course, SDCC is a very viable option for the character, but that remains to be seen. When or if he shows up is still up in the air, but what is clear is that this is a character whose face is sticking out of a white ape’s mouth, and that needs to be an action figure, for the good of mankind.
If you’re a hardcore Black Panther fan, you can no doubt run off a decent list of villains for him to fight. If you’re not so hardcore, then you might be able to list a couple. Certainly Man-Ape would be right at the top of that list. The striking duality of one man dressed in a sleek Panther suit fighting another man draped in white apeskin is one made for the comic page. It’s something that needs to happen in toyland as well.
Many believe that Sasquatch BAF from the upcoming Deadpool wave will somehow be repurposed into a Man-Ape. In fact, that could be the reason that Sasquatch isn’t quite as large as he (technically) should be. I won’t get into that here, as those scale type conversations have already happened on Fwoosh, and have been the usual amount of fun.
M’Baku’s cinematic look is vastly different from his comic portrayal, and falls short because it doesn’t appear to be a man with his face sticking out of an ape’s mouth. I might be in some strange yet awesome minority, but to me if you’re a super-type person and you choose your costume to be one where you stick your face through the mouth of a random animal…you get to have a toy. In fact, you have to get a toy. I call this the Razorback rule. Some people look at a Razorback and see a Razorback, and maybe they run away. But Buford Hollis saw a Razorback and thought “I wonder if I can get my face through there.”
Well, M’baku went to the same genuinely awesome school. One man, one white ape: bam. Stuck his head right through the mouth. His powers were derived from eating the meat of and bathing in the blood of the white ape also. So basically M’Baku is one dedicated sumbitch. You kind of have to respect that.
Man-Ape — which he almost certainly will not be called on the package when and if he gets a toy—serves a couple purposes, from a toy perspective. Not only is he a valuable villain for the numerous versions of Black Panther we’ve managed to acquire but he can also add to the extremely lonely Lethal Legion we have, which currently consists of Grim Reaper and…nobody. So yeah, he’d be the second member. Or you could go nuts and build your own.
Sasquatch is currently the best option, body-wise, if they were to make a Man-Ape. Not having it in hand and not seeing really good straight-on pictures I can only go on guesswork, but it seems like he’d work well enough, even if he might be a tad too big. If Sasquatch were all white and had a Man-Ape head and all the accoutrements, then it would probably work out well. If you run with the SDCC idea, then a de-powered version of that recent Vibranium suit Black Panther along with Man-Ape would go great together. I’m sure they could flesh it out with a few more related characters. Maybe a comic-styled Killmonger. I really don’t know who they’d choose, and going on the very loose connection the other characters in Panther’s wave actually had they might not stay strictly thematic at all.
Regardless of the how, right now at this moment in time is as popular as M’baku is going to get, so to squirt out the other side of all this Panthery hype without getting the comic version would be some kind of tragedy.
