Marvel Legends Spider-Woman Review

With the Gwenpool review my first review of the Marvel Legends Lizard Build-A-Figure Series, I thought I’d jump to the other female in this wave, Spider-Woman, aka Jessica Drew.

In 2015, Hasbro released the classic costume for Jessica in the Thanos Build-A-Figure Series. It was a fantastic figure, and one I still proudly display on my Avengers figure shelf. It’s what I would consider the definitive Jessica Drew figure. So imagine my surprise when a rumored line-up of the Lizard Build-A-Figure Series started popping up online. I thought they’d go with Julia Carpenter’s Spider-Woman look when I saw the “Spider-Woman” name on the rumored list, but nope… they swerved and went for the modern Jessica Drew outfit.

As a figure, she’s nice for what she is, but I’ll admit, this costume does nothing for me. Were it not for her coming with the Lizard’s torso, I probably would have skipped this figure.

With that said, however, there is some good with this figure, but she is far from perfect.

Her sculpt is nice. Her face is quite beautifully rendered. She gets a new torso sculpt that is unique to her, which is great, since unique sculpts are a hard thing to get in modern action figure lines when parts reuse is so common. I believe she also gets new hands. One thing that bothers me about this figure is the inconsistency between this and the classic 2015 Spider-Woman figure. They look like two totally different characters. If they knew they were going to give her a unique torso, I don’t see why they didn’t just make that in conjunction with the more voluptuous 2015 Spider-Woman parts. In interviews with the Hasbro Marvel team, they revealed that they, however briefly, toyed with the idea of Spider-Woman coming with a pregnant belly add on piece, which I feel would have been a fantastic idea! I think it would have really gave her a unique look you don’t see and definitely set her apart from any of the other figures on my shelves.

So without the belly add-on piece, and minus the Lizard torso, what accessories does Jessica come with? Well, nothing, unless you count her removable sunglasses (which were, admittedly, a nice touch). She’s kind of plain without anything, which would probably be one of my biggest complaints about the figure. A venom blast effect or two would have been cool and made this an even more fun figure. It makes me wonder why they gave her a gripping hand with nothing to hold. You can put her sunglasses there, but I personally don’t trust them to stay in place for long without getting lost, so back on her head they go.

The paint job on her is mostly okay. It appears to be consistent with what we’ve seen in the comics, color-wise. However, the yellow paint does get a bit asymmetrical and messy in spots. The skin on her neck is also a bit sloppy, unfortunately. The bad paint applications could be something unique to my figure, but if you somehow get a chance to choose between a few Spider-Woman figures, keep this in mind and be sure to look for the one with the best paint.

For her articulation, she gets 27 points of articulation, two points less than Gwenpool. She has a ball jointed head, hinged neck (which is hindered by her hair), torso rotation, shoulder hinges and swivels, elbow hinges and swivels, wrist swivels and hinges, hip rotation, thigh swivels, double jointed knees, ankle pivots, and angle hinges. Her articulation scheme doesn’t bother me as badly as it did on Gwenpool, which I can only guess is because she doensn’t have the swords or cellphone Gwenpool did. More articulation on par with that of the males in this line would definitely be preferred, but as is, you can still find some dynamic poses for Jess.

Fans of Spider-Woman’s recent solo series may enjoy this figure for that alone. But as a figure, she’s unremarkable. You’ll need her to build Spidey’s reptilian adversary, though. These figures have been slowly hitting retail for about two months (Walgreens, Target, etc), though I picked mine up from Dorkside Toys’ site. She’s also, as of this writing, available on Amazon.