Shadowland Daredevil

If I were honest, I'd say I liked the 2003 Daredevil film. It wasn't the bees knees that Ang Lee's Hulk was, but it made me want to learn more about the character. But since I know that the fan boys will skin me alive for saying that, pretend I didn't say anything.

Comics wise, I've only got maybe a handful of issues of Hell's Kitchen's own dark knight. None of them are part of the Shadowland story arc where he defeats the ninja cult, The Hand, and becomes their leader, establishing a base of operations in New York. That arc came out much later and I can't really give you an opinion on it.

The Marvel Universe figure, though, that I can tell you about.

I'm not sure who they got to do the face art to these card backs, but it's not floating my boat. Most of the portraits from this wave really looked phoned in, hardly better than some fan sketches I've seen online. They've also dumped the cards, the dossier, and the figure stand that came with previous waves and traded it in for a "Collectible Comic Shot!" which is basically a tiny card reprinting a comic cover featuring the character. It's about 2"x1" and it sucks all sorts of ass.

What the hell, Hasbro? Come on. These things are made to be lost, and there's no way that it's going to fit in anyone's collectible card collection. How do you protect it? It's no where near standard size. It's SMALL. How can you really appreciate the art when it's shrunk to the size of half a Post-it?

It bothers me that they keep switching things up. There should be figure stands with every one of these figures. At this size, it is required. They do it right with Star Wars: Clone Wars, with every figure since they started with the blue cards having a stand. In fact, those are what I'm forced to use here.

At first, I thought that this figure was a re-color of the old Marvel Universe Daredevil from way back in Wave 1 from 2009. The one they used to make the Yellow Costume Daredevil that came in the 2009 Toys 'R' Us box set.

It's not.

This body's got a few differences. For one, it's better proportioned. He doesn't have that same annoying barrel chest that the other two (or three, depending on if you count the darker red version of the figure as a variant) had. It's also got a fist on its right wrist, a lack of the sculpted boot tops, and shallower lines across his chest. The head looks the same though, as do the nunchaku that he comes with.

Overall, the figure looks better than the Wave 1 Daredevil, and slightly worse than the Greatest Battles Daredevil.

The nunchaku the comes with is the same as the original accessory from Wave 1, but it's been painted this time out. Sadly, he's only got the one hand that's open, and the grip is too big for him to hold the thing with any success. It is big enough, however, to hold the pair of truncheons together in one hand. This looks much nicer than having it flopping around, but it doesn't really help extend the posing options.


Articulation is about par with the rest of the Marvel Universe line: meaning he's missing a few required cuts. The thighs are the biggest problem since he's missing the swivels needed there. It's really hard to get him into a position that's stable. If he came with a stand, it would be far easier, but he DOESN'T, does he, Hasbro?

Paint doesn't really seem to be a problem for this particular figure, largely because the only problem areas it would have is the flesh tones of the face. Though I didn't see any bad examples, you may want to be careful that yours has eyes that are aligned correctly. I imagine it would be very easy for the red highlights there to go out of bounds.

He's not a solid black, though that's what I thought at first. The plastic is actually a very dark gray, while his boots, gloves and a belt are painted black with a glossy paint. It's subtle, but works surprisingly well. The "DD" is of course tampographed on, so it's unlikely for there to be a problem in that area. His nunchaku are also painted, so we finally have a set that has a chain that is colored differently than the bars.

Huzzah!

The figure isn't one of Marvel Universe's best, but it's far from the worst. Though I can't place the body, I'm pretty sure that this isn't a newly made figure. Being a re-color with such simple colors, there's not much to really sell this figure, especially since it's not coming with anything extra. Add to that the fact that it can't actually hold (or store on his person) the one accessory it does come with, plus the fact that all the includes that the line has had in the past have been removed, there isn't much here to recommend.

It seems this is a figure that Hasbro decided to pack too many of in a case (they were left on the pegs during the most recent distribution). If it had been a chase figure, maybe it could have gotten away with being pretty crappy, but I'm thinking these will be on the shelf for a while.

I bought this figure because Daredevil's one of those characters that has had radical re-designs of his suit in the past, and I wanted some of those for the display. I doubt there are many who think that it's worth shelling out p500.00 for that.

What I really want though is Daredevil in his bio-mimetic armor. Get crackin', Hasbro!