Khonshu

Behold: the Egyptian god of cartoon snoring sound effects. "I am the god Khonshu, in search of a warrior. To be my hands, my eyes, my vengeance. To be my final words against the evildoers. To bind your very being to me and eradicate only the worst, those who deserve it. Do you want death or do you want life? In exchange for your life, do you swear to protect the travelers of the night and bring my vengeance to those who would do them harm? Then rise. Rise, and live again! As my fist of vengeance! As my Moon Knight!" Okay, so if this series has eight figures total, and five of them are from What If...?, then wouldn't it have made sense fo Hasbro to flip Khonshu and Infinity Ultron's spots in the line? You know, put the cartoon BAF with the cartoon figures, put the live-action BAF with the live-action figures? Marvel's Khonshu first appeared in 1980's Moon Knight #1, but it took until 2014 for him to get the appearance most people now know for him: for three decades, he'd just had a smooth Moon Knight mask with a pharaonic nemes instead of a hood, but then artist Declan Shavely redesigned him with a giant floating bird skull instead. The real god, Khonsu, had a falcon head, but this is 100% not at all a falcon. Falcons have short beaks, not long monstrosities like this. Think back to that cute little goth girl you dated for a while, and you'll recognize this as something corvid, a crow or raven or blue jay. Goth girls love crow skulls. In both the comic and the show, Khonshu's head just sort of floats above his body. That would be difficult for a toy to achieve, so he has an actual neck. It's a translucent bluish-gray and is shaped like just a few vertical strips of... well, not "flesh," but whatever stuff. The comic covers him in cobwebs and the TV show had some sort of wispy smoke or something in there, so make of this what you will. Khonshu's outfit is similar to his avatar's: he's all wrapped up like a mummy and has a gold metal crescent tied to his chest. He's got long robes over the whole thing, though they're wrapped and twisted around weirdly in the back. His loincloth is held up by an ornate silver belt with Egyptian-style designs in the center. He's done in several shades, not pure white: the body is lightest, with the robes being slightly darker, and there's lots of shading on his skull and some pale yellow at the tip of his beak. The wrappings that are most prominent (on the arms, the chest and stomach, the shins but not the feet or upper thighs, etc.) get splotchy apps to make them look dirty and aged. Articulation is as you'd expect: balljointed head and chest, swivel/​hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, double-hinged elbows, swivel/hinge wrists, balljointed hips, swivel thighs, double-hinges knees, and swivel/​hinge wrists. Because of the way the neck is made, there's no hinge or anything, just the balljoint going up into the head, but the range is still good. The gaps between the robe and the loincloth are wide enough that the legs can still move well, and the chest will swing around to all sorts of wild angles. You could remove the robe if you want - it's just held in place by a plug in the back - but the rear of the figure isn't painted at all, so it won't really gain you anything. The assembled figure is more than 8½" tall, but his crescent moon staff is even taller. It's so big, it needs to be sold in two pieces to even fit in the Marvel Legends box: plug the top into the body and you'll have a device that just edges over the 10¼" mark. The crescent part is made from a soft PVC, so it can get warped before you open the toy, and the peg that connects the two pieces it a tight enough fit that getting them all the way together can be tough. The staff is mostly a dusty grey, with faded gold for the interior edge of the moon, and the style of the details sculpted on it give off a bit of a Bloodborne vibe. This isn't the first Khonshu in toy form - the big draw of the 2006 Marvel Select Moon Knight was that he included a full Khonshu statue as his included base, but that was the old "Moon Pharaoh" look, not the new "Dead Bird" look. But obviously that was an unarticulated thing, not the kind of dynamic fun this Build-A-Figure provides. You've gotta buy a couple clunkers to finish him, but isn't that the point of a BAF anyway? To help the mid-tier characters sell? It's kinda wild that we got the last BAF of 2022 and the first BAF of 2023 within weeks of one another, but (even if this isn't saying much for the middle of January) Khonshu is the Build-A-Figure to beat for the year. Agent Jimmy Woo | Classic Loki | Zombie Scarlet Witch He-Who-Remains | Howard the Duck | Red Skull -- 01/19/23

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