One way Gargoyles was different was its villains - few were "true" villains like we saw all the time in the '80s, instead offering nuance and depth.
A tall, striking man with piercing eyes, David Xanatos exudes an air of great wealth and power. After power for power's sake, Xanatos loves acquiring - objects, people, information, or technology. With cool confidence and dangerous aplomb, he will dispatch henchmen to destroy anyone who gets in his way.
Okay damn, trading card set, it's okay to have a crush on the guy, but keep your pants on. Anyway, most cartoon villains completely ditch their goals and plans to focus on actively getting back at the heroes who stopped them, Xanatos doesn't even bother holding a grudge. Like he says, "revenge is a sucker's game." So if the Gargoyles were getting in the way of what he was trying to do? Sure, fight them then, but if they weren't bothering him? He wouldn't bother them, either. That's why they could leave their old castle and move to a new home that wasn't exactly a secret, but still sleep safely all day.
During the early production of the series, however, he was vastly different. Originally he would have been a direct descendant of the wizard who locked the Gargoyles in stone for a millennium, and would have been imperious and petulant in the vein of Captain Hook. And yes, he was named "David" because his enemy was Goliath. That's thematic storytelling!
Xanatos was a typical '90s "cool businessman" archetype, with his hair long enough to pull into a ponytail, and he never wore a necktie.
Honestly, no one should, they're a stupid remnant of a distant past with no point today, but the business world is nothing if not a slave to useless tradition, and filled with people afraid to make even incremental changes. The packaging lists more people involved in the sculpting and fabricating than any others in this line so far: Kyle Windrix, Djordje Djokovic, Tomasz Rozejowski, and Thomas Gwyn. Well, technically it says "Djordje Djovic," but we're assuming that's just a typo. Obviously we can't say for sure who did what, but we will hazard an educated guess that Tomasz did the head, for reasons we'll get into elsewhere. And Thomas Gwyn was specifically credited only for fabrication on earlier figures, so that may have been his role here, as well. But that still leaves two more guys to share credit on what is essentially just "guy in suit."
This is the first human to appear in NECA's Gargoyles line, so it's also the first one to actually be in a human scale - remember,
Gargoyles are larger than human, so they're comparitively tall as toys. Creator Greg Weisman has said that Xanatos is 6' even, but he said it in an offhand way to help fans calculate other characters' height, so you can read it as a bit more "general average" than "precise and specific"; so the fact this figure stands just a bit above 6⅞" does not mean this line suddenly isn't done in a 7" scale, or that the toy is undersized. The figure has a barbell head, barbell neck, swivel/hinge shoulders, double-swivel/hinge elbows, swivel/hinge wrists, a balljointed chest, swivel waist, balljointed hips, swivel thighs, swivel/hinge knees, swivel/hinge ankles, and hinged toes. The shirt is a separate PVC piece that fits over the torso beneath, which means if you tip him too far there's a gap of pink skin visible just above the belt.
The figure includes two heads: one with a confident smile, the other
quite angry. The sculpt on both of them is... odd. Gargoyles took cues from Batman: the Animated Series when it came to its animation style, which meant smooth, simple lines and not a ton of detail. Both these heads, though, have extra-wide jawlines and deep cheekbones that, if we're being entirely honest, don't fit Xanatos at all. The sculpt looks like a Snapchat filter has been applied to make him look like Gigachad. And the eyes sit slightly too high on the face.
Xanatos' accessories include
the large blaster rifle he was using at the same time Demona was using her bazooka, a blast effect to fit onto the end of that, the Eye of Odin necklace (though just the frame of it, missing the blue gem that's meant to be in the center), and the weirdest piece of all, a physical rendition of a computer's "Save" icon? What could that possibly be for? [skeumorphism --ed.] He also gets alternate hands capable of holding this stuff.
As a (relatively) small figure in the line, Xanatos also includes a pair of folded wings for another character. Fittingly, given their working relationship, his are the wings for Demona. They're made from a much softer and more flexible PVC than the brittle wings she originally came with, because they're meant to hang like a cape, not stick into the air where they'll have to worry about sagging under gravity over time. They look nice in place, and even have stubby pegs to make sure they stay in place in her back.
Cartoons in the 1980s gave the world iconic new villains like Skeletor, Cobra Commander, and Megatron, but with the '90s focusing more on licensed properties for its animated series, the biggest names from that decade are characters like Joker or recycled Disney movie villains (unless you want to try to claim Dark Kat or Skullmaster have stood the test of time). David Xanatos is one of the few original creations (it's like him, Mojo Jojo, and Angelica Pickles) who have remained in the public consciousness from that era, so it's nice to get a figure of him in his normal look instead of only one wearing power armor.
-- 03/07/24
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