Though Cut Marv wasn't very different than the previous version, NECA's San Diego Comic-Con exclusive strayed a bit from the norm. Depicting the aftermath of Marv's fight with that little jackrabbit, Kevin, Marv is a bloody mess. He's taken his coat off, as he tries to slow his heart down and breathe the fire out of his lungs.
Bloody Marv has only a single bandage left on his forehead, and it's not one seen on the mass-market Marv. He's got deep gashes on his face, but they're different than the ones on Cut Marv, and are instead specific to his fight with Kevin. That NECA didn't scrimp on these details, especially for an exclusive, is really nice.
While the legs and
chest are the same as the standard figure, Marv's got new bare arms. Mickey Rourke's face may have been covered in makeup to play Marv, but those biceps are all his. There are overlapping bandages painted on his right shoulder. Why painted and not sculpted? Couldn't say. Maybe so the motion of his balljointed shoulders wasn't impaired? Kinda seems a waste not to have elbows on these arms, but there you go.
Bloody Marv has a few new accessories, too. Sure, he's got the hacksaw and the handgun, but those are the only two reused pieces. He also has a pair of handcuffs and an alternate left hand. The cuffs are particularly nice, made from metal and really functioning like actual handcuffs do. That's darn impressive workmanship, right there. The alternate hand is a fist, clutching Kevin by the hair - what's left of him, anyway.
The head is great. The frame of Kevin's glasses is bent, and one of the lenses is shattered. We get a decent likness of Elijah Wood, hinting at what the figure in Series 2 is going to look like. The only problem is his expression: even in death, he had that small, slight grin on his lips, but here he looks almost unhappy. The raw end of his neck tries to look anatomically correct, but it doesn't quite work - not only is the cut too smooth to have been delivered by a hacksaw, but he's missing all those bits that run down between your head and your chest: no spine, no trachea, nothing. A minor complaint.
Now here's the thing - while these are both exclusives, both of them are also available in Series 2 of the action figures. The only difference? The variants are in color, while the standards are grayscale. And mass-market Cut Marv has a few new accessories: razor wire and the gloves to handle it. But since Marv is a pretty black-and-white character, the monotones suit him better than a flashy technicolor get-up. With greyscale versions of both these versions readily available, is it worth it to hunt down the exclusives?
Actually, it kind of is. Though we don't see much of Marv in color in the film, the deep red blood has a tendency to get lost on the grey unless it's absolutely caked on like a middle school girl's make-up. So yes, if you can only get the mass market versions, fine, but if you have a shot at the exclusives, go for it.
-- 09/11/05
majority of this figure, we merrily direct you to Monkey Boy's review of the standard b/w figure 
To that end, ToyFare offered "Cut" Marv. The sculpt is basically the same, minus the nifty white bandaids. The gashes on his face line up perfectly with the bandages on the normal version - they're not just applied haphazardly. Blood is smeared around the cuts, making them look more realistic than just plain red lines. Even his hands are bandage-free.
