Drax the Destroyer & Moondragon

Weirdest daddy-daughter dance ever! When his daughter Moondragon is kidnapped, Drax the Destroyer battles his way to Thanos, punching a hole through his back, and ripping out the Mad Titan's heart. Okay, now this is Drax! It's been more than a decade since we pointed out that "skinny Drax" just wasn't the version anybody thought of, and finally we've got a toy of the real guy (even if the promo text references something Skinny did). This is an existing BAF mold, so he's plenty huge, nearly 8¼" tall. He gets new bracelets and a belt with various skull and bone emblems on it, as well as a large cape with a golden skull clasp. Everything new on him was sculpted by May Thamtarana. Drax gets a new head, with an angry mien, dark eyes, and his usual pointy skullcap. See, "Drax the Destroyer" is a very loose update of a Golden Age character, similar to how the Golden Age Vision was updated into a robot. The 1940s Destroyer wore grey and red, but he also had a pointed skullcap and a skull symbol on his chest... or rather, on his stomach. Some artists drew it higher (like a cape clasp) and some drew it lower (like a belt buckle), so this 1970s homage gets both. If that head is too calm for the way you want to play with Drax, he's also got a second, with an even angrier, shouting face. The downside of being made on a Build-A-Figure body is that the legs want to pop off the thigh joint very easily when you're moving them. Yes, they go right back on, but it's still annoying. Drax moves at the ankles, boots, knees, thighs, hips, waist, torso, wrists, elbows, biceps, shoulders, neck, and head. His molded plastic cape is billowing behind him rather than hanging flat, so it will look good in different poses, but it does get in the way a bit. As usual, Hasbro's problems with color-matching their plastic are here, so his legs, shoulders, and gloves are a different shade of purple than his body. The figure includes no accessories, but does have open hands to swap out for his fists. C'mon, Hasbro, you couldn't have given him a saxophone? Moondragon is not as well known as Drax, because she hasn't appeared in any movies. When the Douglas family (Arthur, Yvette, and their daughter Heather) were driving through the desert and spotted a shooting star, they didn't realize it was actually Thanos' ship, or that he would blow them up rather than leave even a potential witness. Thanos' father, Mentor, was trailing his murderous son, and discovered the wreckage. Mentor, along with Thanos' grandfather, collected Arthur's soul to fuel a champion capable of fighting Thanos (that'd be Drax, duh), but also discovered Heather had been thrown free from the crash and survived. She was taken back to their home on Titan to be cared for and trained, learning martial arts and high sciences, but not humility. They forgot to teach her that one. You ready for a complicated publishing history? At some point, Bill Everett came up with a one-off inventory story where Iron Man and Namor fought; it ended up never being used. In 1972, Iron Man writer Mike Friedrich was about to leave the title with issue #54, so he just grabbed that unused plot and, with some input from the writer who would be following him on the book, Jim Starlin, introduced a new villain to be behind things: Madame MacEvil. He then helped Starlin with #55, and Starlin worked with Steve Gerber on #56, but Stan Lee hated that issue and fired him from the title. Of course, Starlin had already been working on #57, so now he had a story and nowhere to use it. But his co-writer, Gerber, was on Daredevil at the time, so they simply dropped those pages - featuring the origin of the character now called "Moondragon" - into the middle of DD #105, setting her up to appear there for a few issues before moving to Captain Marvel with Starlin. Yeesh! Moondragon was raised by "Shao-Lom" monks, which is why she's bald. The smirk on this face really reminds me of Selene - wonder if they're by the same person? She has crescent moon earrings to match her crescent moon cape clasp, and while most of the body is reused, her top is new: while the character originally just wore a 1970s swimsuit costume (and it got worse in the '90s), this is a more modern look, with pants, a bare midriff, and a triangular keyhole top. Like Ronan, she seems to be based on a videogame design: his was Contest of Champions, hers is Avengers Alliance. (This costume also appeared on some covers, and some cards, but none prior to her game appearance in 2016.) Since she knows martial arts and has mental powers, the figure includes both fists and gesturing hands, but nothing else. Her cape is new, and is glued into the front of the chest, with a long peg going into the back to hold it away from her body and provide some volume. This also has the unintended side effect of drawing attention to how utterly narrow this body is, front-to-back. You normally don't notice, since you're generally looking at an angle, but here you have to look side-on to see beneath the cape, and suddenly it becomes apparent. This two-pack was devised to complement the Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 line, though released quite a bit after the rest. It's interesting that all the comic-based figures for the line are exclusives: Yondu at Target, Star-Lord at Walmart, Ronan on Amazon, and now this set on Hasbro Pulse. That's good, in that it means we got the entire movie team in a single series, but bad in that if you're not after a bunch of characters who are all dressed alike, you have to go searching to get the more colorful ones. How utterly annoying! But we needed "Space Hulk" Drax, and Moondragon's only toy before has been a Minimate, so this is a good pairing to get. -- 08/28/23

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