Marvel Legends: Spider-Man Homecoming Wave

With the newest Spider-Man movie coming out tonight, there’s really no better time to review the Marvel Legends movie wave! Unlike the Crawlspace Catch up reviews I’ve been doing, this one is brand new, so read on to see what I thought of getting these figures in my hands!

For this wave we have 3 movie figures: Both of Spider-Man’s costumes and the Vulture. We also have the original Beetle, Tombstone, Moon Knight, and Cosmic Spider-Man. This wave is also the first to not have a normal build-a-figure, but instead, you build the Vulture’s wings! Some people have mixed feelings about this, and I’ll get to my thoughts later in the review.

Let’s start with the star of the movie! Spider-Man!

Sculpt and Accessories:

At first glance, the Spider-Man figure for the new movie might just look like a slightly retooled and repainted version of the Civil War 3 Pack one, but it’s actually an entirely new mold. I guess it’s because they wanted it to be as close to the movie suit as possible, and the Civil war figure was based on the concept suit that wasn’t in the movie.

If I’m being totally honest, I really don’t like this figure. On the surface it seems fine, and the actual mold itself looks great, and there’s slightly indented web lines and even a bumpy texture throughout the figure, but the paint app leaves me so many questions, and one of my biggest complaints: The web lines are blue! This really annoys me, and I can’t help but dislike it. The blue lines aren’t even clean either, and regularly get messy whenever the lines get close together. Just look at the big splotch my figure has got right under his eye. The hands look similarly dirty, as if there’s a bunch of gunk between his fingers. I just don’t think it’s very nice looking at all. For accessories he’s got an extra pair of swappable hands, another head, and his web wings. I’m a little disappointed he only came with fists and web slinging hands, but no open ones. I really like the look of the squinty eyes though, so that’s a neat accessory.

But we also have to talk about how disappointing the web wings are.

They might look fine and the mold and texture are good, but they really don’t work in any pose other than having the arms at the side at a 45 degree angle. Raise the arms up and there’s a big gap between the arm and the body, and if you turn the bicep forward they just sorta stick out awkwardly. And this isn’t even mentioning how easily they pop out from the little slots in the sides of the arms. I’ve almost lost them multiple times because they kept falling off if there’s a slight breeze.

On the other hand, I’m fairly surprised with how much I like the Prototype suit. I really wasn’t expecting much, but it’s honestly a pretty good looking figure. It’s got a completely new mold as well, which has some really nice looking details such as the little folds everywhere and the texture on the socks. The paint is fairly well applied overall, but it’s a bit messy where his fingers are, and I do feel they could have detailed the goggles a little better.
This figure also has the web shooting hands and fists like the other figure, but instead of an alternate head, you get an alternate hood you cn swap out, for when you want him to have the hood up. I’m not sure how much I’m going to use it, but it’s nice to have the option.

Articulation:

Though I may be fairly disappointed with how the figure looks, the Homecoming figure does make up for it in the posability department. He’s got the same amount of articulation of as the Pizza Spidey figure, but he can bend slightly more in some places, like his torso and legs. Pretty happy with it, but one thing I noticed is that if you bend his legs up past his waist at an angle, the legs pop off pretty easily. Luckily they’re not difficult to put back on.

The prototype costume Spider-Man has the exact same articulation as the Ultimate Spider-Man figure, which is the same as the Pizza Spidey one, but with no butterfly joints, and calf rotation. Even without the butterfly joints you can still get some nice poses out of him, but I do wish his torso bent one more notch forward, and his hood can sometimes get in the way of bending his head

Movie Spider-Man:

Pros:

• Great articulation
• Alternate head is nice to have

Cons:

• Blue web lines?
• Kind of messy paint
• Awful web wings

Grade: C

Prototype Costume:

Pros:

• Looks very movie accurate and nicely detailed
• Good posability even with no butterfly joints
• Being able to put the hood up or down is cool

Cons:

• Slightly messy paint in some places
• Goggles could be detailed a bit more

Grade: B+

Now let’s move on to the two figures I personally was most excited for

Sculpt and Accessories:

I was looking forward to these figures a lot, and I was not disappointed. This Moon Knight is based off of the recent Declan Shalvey design, and while it’s not what some people were hoping for, it’s a look I really liked, and am happy to see here. I don’t believe all of Moon Knight’s body is a new mold, but a lot of it certainly is, and what isn’t has some new armor added on to make it seem new. The new parts look great though, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how his hood and cape look, with the folds and waves, and I love how the crescent shaped armor pieces turned out. Moon Knight has a pretty simple paint job overall, but it’s done very cleanly, with the nicely done logo and bright white and dark black, and his two white eyes. The only problem I really have with him is that the back ankle of his right foot is painted white instead of black (you can see this in the next picture), which is obviously an error. And one interesting thing to note is that his cape actually has a little peg that you can plug into his back, but you can just let it flow free if you want to since it’s not at risk of falling off because of the shape of the hood.

Moon Knight’s accessories are also fantastic. He’s got the same two part baton/staff that Daredevil had, and it’s just as flimsy as ever, but he also has 3 more weapons, a large crescent shaped throwing star, and 3 smaller ones. Something really cool with it is the fact that he has two pairs of hands, and open one and a closed fist, but each closed fist has 3 little slots for you to place the little crescents in, so it looks like he’s holding them in between his knuckles. It’s a really cool look, but unfortunately it’s not easy to put them in there, and they’re very prone to falling out. Try not to lose them, I almost have multiple times already.

Cosmic Spider-Man is mostly a reuse of the new Spider-UK body Hasbro made, and it really works for this figure and gives him the power powerful feeling Spidey should have in this form. The folds are a really nice added texture, though I guess cosmic Spidey is one of the figures that could have the excuse for a skin tight costume. The paint is extremely clean over the figure, especially the starry pattern and the Spider-Man style part of the mask, except on the portion of the body where the the white costume meets the blue costume. It could serve to be a bit of a sharper line, but that’s just a minor nitpick at this point.

Cosmic Spider-Man doesn’t have nearly as many accessories as Moon Knight, just two alternate heads, but they’re really cool ones. One is a classic Captain Universe, so if you’re a fan of that character you can also display him, which is a nice thing of Hasbro to do for a character that is a bit more obscure. They also gave him a really nice looking bearded Peter Parker head, based off of the look Captain Universe Spider-Man had in Spider-Verse. It’s nicely detailed and has much better beard texture than some of Hasbro’s past figures. The only thing I wish this figure had included were some of the effect pieces that there Shocker had, to be able to use in some action shots.

Articulation:

These two figures share more or less the same amount of points of articulation. Head joint, neck hinge, shoulder joint, bicep swivel, double jointed elbows, wrist swivel wrist hinge, abr crunch, hip rotation, leg joint, thigh rotation, double jointed knees, foot hinge, and ankle pivots, your fairly standard stuff for a Hasbro figure these days. The only main difference between them is that Cosmic Spidey has calf swivels and Moon Knight doesn’t, but each figure still has little differences.

Because of Moon knight’s scarf around his neck that’s connected to his cape, he’s not able to tilt his head very far up, so it’s harder to get some hunched over poses with him. One really interesting thing is that each pair of hands has a different type of hinge. The fists both go inwards and outwards like most Marvel Legend’s hands, but the gripping hand tilts up and down. This allows him to pull off slightly better poses for when he’s got his weapons in his hands, and is a really nice touch.

Since Cosmic Spidey uses the Spider-UK body, he also has no butterfly joints, and while I think most Spidey figures should have one, I’m ok with this one not having it. After all, the character can just fly around. It would have been nice to have the option though. Word of warning though. When I got my figure, the right shoulder joint was incredibly stiff when I tried to tilt it up or down, and I legitimately felt like I was going to break it, so be careful. I managed to finally loosen it by just carefully working it, but I’d recommend heating up the joint with a blow dryer or hot water to avoid snapping it.

Moon Knight:

Pros:

• Great looking figure
• Lots of accessores
• Fun little touches like crescents in fists and different wrist hinges
• The cape looks so good

Cons:

• Paint error
• The Cape restricts his head movement slightly

Grade: A

Cosmic Spider-Man:

Pros:

• Great detailing
• Swappable heads are really nice
• The Body fits the character

Cons:

• No effects piece is a little disappointing
• Very stiff joint

Grade: A-

Let’s get to the villains of the wave

Sculpt and Accessories:

These are two classic Spidey villains fans have wanted Legends figures of for a while, and these do not disappoint. Admittedly, I didn’t care too much about them when they were announced, but I really like them now that I have them in hand. They’re both a mix of old and new parts with some special additions. The first thing you notice with Beetle is his nice green metallic look, pulled off perfectly on some nice looking molded armor. The purple on his Helmet/Mask is made of a soft rubber, but his head just looks so good. They even bothered to give him little studs in his belt. I don’t think they could have done this figure so much justice, but they did. Even the wings! He’s got two sets of holes on his back, one for the wings and one for the shells. You can use just the shell and close it to give him the look as if they’re folded up inside, or you can have them sort of just hanging out the bottom, whatever you prefer. Other than the wings and shells, he doesn’t come with any accessories.

This is the first Marvel Legend Tombstone’s ever gotten, and I kind of would have preferred a suit for him to wear, but this pulls off his classic look excellently. You have the big studded belt, boot and wrist cuffs (that are actually loose and not blued to the figure to allow for more movement) and even his big popped collar. It might not seem like a terribly interesting figure, especially since he doesn’t come with any accessories, but it’s hard not to like this figure because of one big detail. The Head. Holy cow, they absolutely nailed his head. There’s so much attention to detail here, from the amazing looking texture of his hair and raised eyebrows to his sharp teeth and features. Hasbro’s definitely been improving their faces, and this is one of the perfect examples to show how far they’ve come. You really can’t get much better than this, and even the paint is perfect. You can clearly see his gums and everything. The head alone justifies the entire rather boring figure in my opinion, because there’s honestly not much else here.

Articulation:

These figures pretty much have the same amount of articulation as the Cosmic Spider-Man figure, but they also have little differences.

The most obvious one would be the Beetle’s wings and shells. These are the same wings the female Beetle came with, and the have a hinge on the main wing, and the smaller wings are attached to the bigger ones via a simple swivel, so you can fold the wings or spread them out in lots of directions. The shells have the same type of joint as the bigger wings, and are positioned slightly above the wings. Something else that will probably vary depending on your figure is the looseness of the joints. My beetle’s right fist is so incredibly loose that I can literally spin it by blowing on it.

Tombstone’s articulation is nice, but some of his huge muscles do get in the way of his limbs bending, so you can’t fully take advantage of the double joints. It’s nice that the belted cuffs move around so you can move the wrists and ankles as much as you want without them getting in the way. And as nice as his popped collar is, it really restricts how much his neck can tilt back.

Beetle:

Pros:

• Looks perfect
• Wings are fun to play around with
• Metallic paint really gives the suit a robotic feel

Cons:

• Literally limp wristed

Grade: A-

Tombstone:

Pros:

• Perfect detailing on the head
• Good depiction of his classic look
• Finally got a figure

Cons:

• No accessories
• Bit of a boring figure overall

Grade: B+

And finally, we get to my favorite part of the wave

Sculpt and Accessories:

The movie Vulture is an interesting case, because he specifically wasn’t the build-a-figure, but his wings were. I’ve seen some people get upset over this, and think it’s a waste of a build-a-fig, but I’m very happy with it. I don’t think we would have ever gotten something this detailed otherwise. The wings are extremely detailed with every little mechanical part, and they’re massive, with a wingspan an inch or two shy of 2 feet long. We never would have gotten something like this if it wasn’t the BAF. Just look at how awesome this looks!

And we have to talk about Vulture himself. He’s a very nicely detailed figure. I guess he’d half to be, otherwise he’d look out of place compared to the wings. You’ve got all the little folds on the jacket, the belts, the straps, the textured collar, and the detailed helmet, this is a very good depiction of Michael Keaton’s character. Couldn’t be happier with it. And the eyes in the helmet are just paint, but they really do look like they almost glow. He doesn’t really come with any accessories other than the stand his wings come with, but other than maybe some sort of alien weapon like he has in the movie, I really think the wings are the only accessory he needs.

Articulation:

I have to talk about this in two parts, one with just the Vulture, and one with the wings. The Vulture has the same articulation as the Moon Knight figure, and there are some parts of him that are good, and some that are not so much. His head has a great amount of rotation thanks to a skinny neck, and his arms and torso can move around plenty, but his lower half is a little disappointing. The legs are very restricted by the little stiff rubber packs he has on his belt, so you can’t move his legs very far up, which is unfortunate, especially when he has those nice looking claws on his feet. And the claws can’t tilt very far forward either, so it’s hard to get a good pose where he’s attacking someone with them. And what’s more, his armored legs restrict his knees, so he can’t bend much more than a 90 degree angle. It’s possible to get Vulture to stand without the need of the stand in some poses, but his loose leg joints sure don’t make that easy. The wings also plug into a slot on his lower back instead of upper back like most figures have for some reason, and this makes it so he can’t bring his lower torso up, instead bending away from the wings which I find a little strange. So while Vulture looks very nice, he sacrifices some of his movement for it.

Now onto the wings. These bad boys have way more movement than you’d think, with a total of 12 points of articulation. Each wing has the outer wing which can bend outwards and inwards, but also tilt down so you can fold them up. You can also tilt it up, but it leaves a large gap in the wings that looks a little silly. The inner wing can only bend forward and back, not tilt up or down. There’s also two mini wings attached to the same joints that hold the rotor, and these can bend just as much as the inner wings can, but also independently of the wings themselves. The actual rotors can spin around, and you can even twist the rotor blades. I really couldn’t be happier with such a huge articulated figure, and it absolutely makes up for not getting a “real” build a fig. This figure is absolutely my favorite of the wave, and the wings make him so much fun to play around with.

Vulture:

Pros:

• Fantastic detailing on Figure and wings
• Gigantic wingspan
• Extremely articulated wings

Cons:

• Vulture’s legs kind of suck

Grade: A

Overall I’d say this was a very great wave with lots of things that surprised me, even with how much the Spider-Man figure disappointed me. I finally got a Moon Knight and Captain Universe Spidey, and since I love the design of the movie Vulture and always personally thought the comic one was kind of lame, so this one will look incredibly intimidating among the other sinister 6.

I’ll leave you with some photos while I go see the movie.