Superior Spider-Man

So this is Marvel collecting is from now on? Toys just being branded as part of a series of made-up anniversaries that mean nothing? When Doc Ock swaps bodies with Peter Parker, gaining his powers and conscience, he becomes the unlikely hero Superior Spider-Man. Has it really been a decade since we got a Superior Spider-Man figure? To give you an idea of how long ago that was, it was released in the Amazing Spider-Man 2 line. Now Hasbro is doing a Marvel 85th Anniversary series, with a selection of characters far more esoteric and piecemeal than the similar 80th Anniversary line from a few years ago. [somewhere between four and six years, you think? --ed.] So Hasbro can't get stores to carry an assortment of random characters with a Build-A-Figure, but they can get stores to carry an assortment of random characters and a BAF-sized character? Sure, that makes sense. Like the previous figure, this one is a new sculpt. Well, from the waist up, anyway; the legs already existed. This is the second "Superior" suit, the first one Otto wore that looked different from Peter's, the one that shares its design with at least two other Spiders-Men. Dennis Chan was given a break from sculpting every Iron Man to finally do someone who's thin and muscular, and he's delivered on that directive just as well as he does all the armors. The previous attempt at this costume was missing the devices on his wrists (suggesting it was based on the cover of Superior Spider-Man #14 and not any of the inteior art), but this time they're sculpted just as they should be. The figure includes two heads, but I don't really know why. They're the same mold, just with one painted with normal pearly white lenses in the mask, and the other... not. The head he's wearing in the tray has lenses that are darker gray/silver, with random dark lines printed on them. Are those supposed to be cracks? Reflections? The figure seems to be loosely based on the cover of ASM #10, which does feature highlights and shadows on the eyes, but those look nothing like this. So whatever it was Hasbro was trying to accomplish with this head is beyond us. Other than those eyes, the paint is great. Most of the costume is flat black, of course, but the red chosen to go with it is a darker shade, fittingly, and the webs painted on it are jagged and unpredictable rather than perfectly segmented. Creepy! The wrist things are a dark silver with a red oval at the front, and they remembered the red palms on all three pairs of his hands: fists, thwips, and clawing. This Spider suit debuted in July 2013, and the toy came out in January 2014. That quick turnaround may explain why it was missing so many features, from the jagged web paint to the sculpted wrist-things. And perhaps most damning of all (and also reinforcing the notion that Hasbro based that toy on the cover art rather than Humberto Ramos' actual design sheets), he was missing his backpack and his spider-arms! The ASM2 toy basically just made up the back of the figure, which only makes sense if it was based on a piece of art that only showed him from the front. Anyway, this version gets the backpack. In fact, it gets two: one that's flat, for when the arms are retracted, the other thicker so the included arms can be plugged in. He gets four of them - because haters gonna hate, players gonna play, and Doc Ocks gonna Ock - and unlike the disappointing Iron Spider figure from a couple years back, these are fully jointed! There are four segments in each arm, and all of them are joined to the others by a swivel/hinge joint. That's great! It is slightly surprising that this toy gets a new torso - after all, they probably would have been fine just pulling the Superior Octopus molds out again. That one had pec hinges, that one had a backpack where extra legs plugged in... if they'd done that, no one would have really complained. Superior Spider-Man has a typical swivel waist and hinged chest, as opposed to Superior Octopus's balljointed chest, which does cause at least one little problem: the backpack hangs down over the joint just slightly, so if you bend him all the way back, the pack will get pushed out of place. Slightly. Not enough to fall off, but enough to loosen two of the three pegs that hold it in place. One thing that's surprising, though? He's got hinged toes! That's not a standard feature of these leg molds, so Hasbro had to specifically choose to add those. There may not be a Build-A-Figure to go with these 85th Anniversary figures, but with a mostly new sculpt, plenty of alternate bodyparts, and a backpack with fully articulated spider-arms, this is a Marvel Legend that may actually be worth the $24.99 Hasbro charges for its figures in 2024, which really impressed me... and then I looked the figure up on their Pulse website, and it turns out they're actually trying to charge $29.99, and the $24.99 Target had him on the pegs for was just a mistake. Makes me glad I got him when I did, and not later when the price may be "corrected." -- 08/12/24

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