Marvel Legends: Dani Moonstar exclusive review

The newest Walgreens exclusive lets you build three figures, so let's pretend they're each their own thing.

Part of a group of young mutants, Xi'an Coy Manh has the ability to overwhelm her enemy's mind, placing her consciousness in command and operating their body by remote.

Yeah, she's basically got the same powers as Naruto's Ino Yamanaka, though Karma doesn't pass out when she does it. The only bio on the back of the packaging is for Mirage, so that text is just our reworking of her copy. "Shan" was the only member of the New Mutants who had appeared before Marvel Graphic Novel #4 - Chris Claremont created her for Marvel Team-Up #100, where she (and her doomed twin brother) met Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. She was the oldest of the New Mutants, joining the team only because Professor X offered to give her a paycheck (with all her other family dead, she was in charge of supporting her younger siblings). She was eventually possesed by the Shadow King, which left her traumatized, but she was just generally utilized by writers as a gimmick because no one could think of anything to do with her personally. Or her personality.

No surprise this figure is made on an existing body. This particular costume is... most similar to the one she wore in New Mutants Vol. 3, though to really be accurate it would need a new left leg: Cameron Hodge, the immortal robo-bigot behind the hate group called (appropriately enough) The Right, attacked Shan and severed her leg. That would have limited the body's usefulness with the other accessories though, and she had been wearing the suit for a while before getting mutilated. The costume is appropriate for an X-Men team, a black suit with a giant yellow X covering the entire torso, and a small circular-X logo on the breast. The gloves and boots are new, with panels sculpted on the insides.

Thanks to comics' sliding timescale, Karma was originally a survivor of the Vietnam War. The second issue of the recent History of the Marvel Universe series retconned that into "the Sin-Cong Conflict," so maybe that's where she's from now? Or maybe her family was just visiting Sin-Cong at the worst possible time. The figure's head sculpt features jaw-length hair held back by a yellow headband, and depicts her powers by painting her eyes solid pink.

Marvel mental powers are often illustrated by globs of pink energy around the user - witness Psylocke, for instance. Everybody gets their own unique shape, though, and Karma's was square and jagged. Hasbro could possibly have created some kind of piece that fit onto the head to represent that, but for the third accessory-derived character in an exclusive item, that was probably too much to ask. So what she does get are a pair of splayed hands, typical for Marvel Legends with non-physical powers.

This set also includes parts to turn the figure into either Mirage or Wolfsbane, meaning it's going to be three times as in-demand as regular, with people looking to have all of them on display at once. You know, like these exclusives weren't hard enough to find already. But at least you won't have to create or commission your own custom versions to fill up your X-Mansion.