He's the son of the devil; how could he possibly be anything but happy fun-time?
Blackheart is the son of Mephisto,
one of the many rulers of the Underworld and a frequent opponent of Earth's heroes. Like his father, Blackheart desires power above all else and has shown a willingness to go to great lengths to achieve it.
Blackheart has slowly been working his way up the ranks of the Marvel Universe. He was originally a one-off villain for a fairly forgettable Daredevil story, but has hung around to be a pain in the ass for any number of A- and B-list characters: Punisher, Ghost Rider, Wolverine, X-Force, Wonder Man... he even served as Black King of the Hellfire Club for a time. The guy gets around almost as much as his dad did.
This is definitely one of the bigger Marvel Legends, and that's really saying something. Those big spiky tentacles that serve as his hair top out above 8⅛" tall, and he moves at the head, shoulders, biceps, elbows, forearms, wrists, fingers, torso, waist, hips, thighs, knees, shins, ankles and toes.
He's got a massive tail - so big, in fact, that he has to be twisted to fit in the packaging. Unfortunately, that tail is bendy.
Why's that bad? Because bendy parts never work right! They always end up being a bigger headache than they're worth. You want to make a tail? Make it like Hellboy's, solid pieces with three or four joints. As it is, the rubber around the wire is so thick, you can barely bend the tail at all. You're going to need about 7" of space behind the figure if you want him to stand, so forget any shallow shelves or crowded displays: Blackheart is a space hog.
That flaw aside, Sam Greenwell's sculpt is really good. Blackheart is covered with more texture than a Palisades Muppet, in the form of irregular bumps and warts all over. His head is constructed from at least five separate pieces, in order to accommodate those tendrils. He's got three claws on each hand, and his feet look like an animal's. Getting him to balance up on his toes like that can be a challenge, but the big dumb tail makes a tripod - lean him back a little.
It may seem like his paint apps are simple and straightforward, but there's a surprising amount of detail on there. His eyes are a dull, lifeless red, and while the rest of the figure looks black, he's certainly not. Like the Tumbler, he's a deep purple with a few highlights to give him shape. It's not a complex app, by any means, but it suits the character.
Collect all six figures in ML13 and you can build a seventh:
the bad idea run rampant, Onslaught. Blackheart has Onslaught's right leg, which is even more crooked than his own. He also includes a heavily pared-down reprint of Hearts of Darkness, an original graphic novel that made its money by teaming Marvel's three biggest early-90s anti-heroes: Ghost Rider, Wolverine, and Punisher. Unfortunately, about half the story seems to have been chopped out to fit the page limit on these reprints (half the original cover, too), so if you get, like, three or four pages in to the story and you like what you're seeing, it would be worth it to go hunt down the real thing.
ML13 also has a new extra packed in with the figures. There's a VS. card, from the CCG of the same name, but those have been an on again, off again inclusion since ML8. This time, however, we get a diorama backdrop display thing printed on the cardboard insert. Cut it out, stick in in the included stand and you've got a nifty little scene for your figure! Blackheart gets the stygian pits of his own little corner of hell, all red with stalgmites and stalactites, a cavern curving off into the distance, and swarms of lesser demons crawling around. Not the most versatile setting, but it would work well for Drs. Stephen Strange or Victor Von Doom.
-- 10/02/06
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