So does this make Absorbing Man Oberon?
When Doctor Doom harnesses the Beyonder's power to create superhumans, Mary MacPherran becomes Titania - whose immense strength and durability make her integral to the supervillain team.
That's Mary "Skeeter" MacPherran - she was born prematurely, and was small her entire life, which is why a bitchy rich girl in her class gave her that nickname: she said Mary was like a mosquito, buzzing around the cool kids and trying to leech off their popularity. Mary always dreamed of blossoming into something more than she was, which is why she accepted Doom's offer of superpowers (though technically he harnessed the power of a storm, not the power of the Beyonder to do it). It's also why she's so pathological about her need to beat anybody she thinks is stronger than her, even if it never works out in her favor for long.
So the first thing you may notice about this figure is the size - she's big, but not extraordinarily so. It's not her fault that she's coming out so soon after that giant Retro Collection She-Hulk,
but she is coming out soon after that figure, so the size discrepency stands out. Moreso when they stand together.
According to official Marvel stats, She-Hulk stands 6'7" (200cm), but come on: She-Hulk kas not been drawn as being under 7' tall since the '80s. The comics generally show Titania as around the same size as Shulkie - a little shorter, sure, but in a "they'd have to stand back-to-back and move hands over their heads to be sure" way, not anything like these two figures. The same sources that list Jen at 6'7" say Mary is 6'6", so maybe it's like Sprocket joked: Hasbro saw Titania was supposed to be one inch shorter than She-Hulk, and thought that meant at scale, not at full size. The toy is nearly 6⅞" tall, so really only another ¼" of height and it'd be great.
Titania is a fully new sculpt, and even if she's not as tall, she's just as much a stack of cheesesteak as her arch-enemy is. Her arms may not be as big
as Jen's are, but her thighs certainly are! Even Chun-Li would be jealous. The hands do seem slightly undersized for the arms; is it possible they're reused from an existing source? She's got an appropriately nasty scowl on her face, and all her costume details are sculpted on, both the spikes on her arms and legs (which really gives us hope for the possibility of an Excalibur Rachel Summers) and the edges of her belt and the T-shape in her top.
But speaking of which, Hasbro does seem to have shied away from accuracy with the paint. At no point in Titania's 40-year comicbook history
has the front of her suit ever been anything other than bare skin; this figure takesa a cue from the Contest of Champions game and paints the center lavender to cover her up. You can tell this wasn't intended from the start, because while the sides of the opening are sculpted, the collar line isn't. They just added a paint mask at some point for "modesty," similar to what they did with Madelyne Pryor's upper thighs. The money wasted on that would have been better spent giving her hair a paint wash to bring out the sculpt. It's a nice strawberry blonde (since she lived in Denver, she briefly pretended to secretly be Spider-Woman, after her friend pointed out the similiarity of their hair color), but the details can get lost.
Being a new mold, Titania doesn't get shin swivels, and does get a barbell neck - both downgrades from what Marvel Legends should be delivering. Yes, she's a tall character and thus would look down to see most other people, but remember: her primary foe is She-Hulk,
and She-Hulk is taller, and the barbell (combined with the shape of her hair) will not allow her to look up at all. To have a staredown with Shulkie, she has to arch her back like she's trying to balance a book on top of her boobs. At first it looks like she doesn't have any thigh swivels, but she does - they're just at the bottom of the thigh rather than the top, hidden by her boots. You can give her either fists or hands that are open to hold something, though she doesn't come with anything to hold. Maybe she's grabbing She-Hulk's wrists. Or ankles.
Honoring the original Secret Wars toys, these
40th Anniversary figures come with a shield that features a lenticular insert. It doesn't show anything interesting, just the character in question and their secret identity, but it's a cute throwback. For some reason, Titania's is not just done as two images, like Beyonder's: hers has her regular human face, but her masked appearance is actually a combo of one image with just the magenta layer, and one with blue and the shadows. Were they not able to make purple work in this format, leading to them having to oombine two different passes to fake it? Either way, it's odd.
Titania was one of the new characters created by Jim Shooter for Secret Wars (getting her name and original, slight build from one of Marvel's production assistants, who looked like Angela from The Office), but never got a toy in the vintage line. Heck, none of the female characters from the comic did, old or new. The only ones who nearly did weren't even part of the story! But Titania is She-Hulk's #1 foe, so she deserves a figure, even if it's taken her four decades to get one. Although now we need her best friend Volcana to go with her.
-- 02/10/25
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