Daken

Oh great, him again. The mutant assassin Daken is recruited to impersonate his father, Wolverine, in Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers. How do you say "Daken"? In English, it'd most likely sound like "DACK-in" or "DOCK-in," depending on how you choose to vocalize the A. In rare cases, some of you might even say "DAY-kin," if you prefer a long vowel sound. But you have to remember, his name isn't English, it's Japanese: his adoptive parents named him Akihiro, but the villagers and their children all just called him 駄犬, or "mongrel," because his father was a foreigner. And if the internet is to be believed, in Japanese daken is pronounced like it would rhyme with "law pen" - Dah-Ken, alsmost as two separate words, with the stronger stress on the second. She's Da Barbie, he's just Da Ken. Dokken Daken has had a Marvel Legend before - two, if you want to count the chase variant separately - but that was right after Hasbro came back from their brief 4" scale break, so it's been a good long while. This one seems designed to go along with the Dark Avengers Ms. Marvel exclusive, as though they're trying to do new versions of the whole team. The figure's body is an existing one, with a new belt and new boots. That's the same thing that happened last time, but this body is better than that one. He's much taller than all the Wolverines, which is as it should be - his mother must have been a giant among her own people to offset Logan's short king genes that way. Technically the character is supposed to be 5'9", making this toy about half an inch too tall, but such is the burden of reused parts. Daken's left arm is bare, showing off his silly tattoo, done in an inky blue this time instead of black like on the previous figure. That's an acceptable choice, but making the wings on his mask black is less so: he didn't wear a direct copy of Wolverin'e brown costume, his had a brown mask instead. And yet the boots remained black. What a goofy design. Unlike the last figure, this one gets all his claws, and they look right. In an effort to out-Wolverine Wolverine, Marvel gave Daken two claws on top of his hand and one underneath; the Series 2 figure only got the top two, and they looked like thick bones, rather than being thin and sharp. These are painted silver, as though they were adamantium, but that's incorrect: they're naturally black, and only the underside ones were evr coated in metal (and even that was only for a short time). If you don't want him to have all his claws out all the time, the figure includes a right fist with just the top two popped, and a left hand that's open to hold something, and only has the ports on his gloves, no actual claws at all. As mentioned above, the first time Hasbro made a Daken, he had a variant: either masked or unmasked. I never saw the masked on in person, but photos made it look like it had a weirdly skinny head, so I wasn't too broken-hearted about it. This time we get both heads, and they're swappable. Sadly, no "dropped back mask" piece to sling around the neck. The masked head has a grin that on Logan would look intimidating but on Daken just looks doofy, while the unmasked head has a big sneer that's unique and suits the character. There are dark circles painted around his blue eyes, and his hair is up in that wavy mohawk he insists on wearing. As part of Series 13, Daken doesn't have a Build-A-Figure part, but rather one of those silly replica comics. His is at least suitable to him, which is more than we can say for some: he gets Dark Avengers #1, and he's right there on the cover. Not that you can recognize him, since the gag was to put them all in such heavy shadows that you couldn't actually tell who anyone really was, but take our word for it. The idea of the comic accessories is silly, but the cover itself was smart: it cut off any complaints from us fanboys about how "people would be able to tell those wasn't really the heroes" by making sure we couldn't tell until we'd been told. If you already have the older Daken, you don't need this one. Yes, it's an upgrade in every way, but (to borrow a phrase) despite everything, it's still Daken. A character who deserves "eh, whatever, good enough." This may be a better toy, but it's not the must-update some other redos have been. -- 01/26/26 Who is the dumbest "knockoff Wolverine" character? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.