It has been an emotional past few months for the old Web-Head, hasn’t it? He made his MCU return in Endgame and had turn as Night Monkey in Far From Home, only to suddenly be swept back out of the MCU into Sony’s sweaty hands with a cinematic future unsure for the first time in years. To say fans are nervous is an understatement indeed, but as usual, Marvel Legends has been our rock. A new Spider-Man Legends series was announced recently (featuring White Rabbit!!!) for an early 2020 release, and we now have this new Fan Channel Exclusive Big Time Spider-Man to add to our ranks as well.
2019 certainly has been a banner year for Marvel Legends, both in quality and quantity. While we are getting some of the best MLs of all time, sublines like the 80th Anniversary and Fan Channel exclusives are building up our displays faster than ever before. We took a glance at the Cowboy Wolverine a couple of weeks ago, and this re-up on the “Big Time” version of Spider-Man is the second release in a plan of exclusives that will take us right through the end of the year. So, your shelves are likely rejoicing while your wallet is crying, but that is what brings balance to the universe, and there are few, if any, lines going right now that are more comprehensive and fun to collect as Legends.
As you probably know, this is not Hasbro’s first take on this version of Spider-Man, but the last version was produced at a time when ML was still experiencing a bit of growing pains, and when released, it was already on a body that was pretty outdated. So, for a relatively simple version of Spider-Man, I think this was a good choice to revisit, especially in this Fan Channel group. I like the idea for certain versions of characters to be released outside of a Build-a Figure schema as it takes some of the pressure off some people having to revisit figures they might not require, but get these out to people who do want them. I will be interested to see how this continues (if it does) into 2020 because I think there are a LOT of character versions that can fit this pattern nicely.
In the interest of full disclosure, I only have a passing familiarity with this version of the character, but as a new take on a Spider-Man costume, the green most certainly stands out. More of a protective suit for a Peter Parker without his Spider Sense, the glowing green is unique for this version, even if the figure itself does not offer any new parts. This is the classic/Pizza Spider-Man base, complete with the fists, crawling, and web-casting hands, with the webbing that we have also seen before. So, if you have that classic Spider-Man (or several other iterations), you pretty much know what you are getting here in terms of construction.
That makes the paint work the most crucial part of this guy because anything but the cleanest of bright green lines on a black base will stand out like a sore thumb. This is going to obviously vary from figure to figure, but mine turned out to be pretty clean, so I don’t have anything specific to nitpick past a bit blur on one of the eyes and some slop on one of the butterfly joints that is mostly hidden anyway.. There are a few spots with a bit more blurring to the lines, but it is nothing that instantly draws your eye here, so I am not going to complain. Based on the box art, I *kinda* wish that there was a bit of a lighter green or faint yellow around the outside of the green lines to make them look like they are glowing a bit, but that certainly doesn’t detract from the figure.
Hey! If you are into Big Time Spider-Man, Spider-Man in general, or just an ML completist, you will want to nab this figure as it is an instant upgrade over the previous version. You can get him at Dorkside Toys right now, if you haven’t already. If this is not your bag, no worries, there is not BAF dependency, so this Fan Channel pipeline serves its purpose well, and I am excited to see what they announce next.
