Superhero Times: a service of Action Online
Okay, wait a minute. Now, Xorn started out as an Asian mutant with a tiny sun in his head, that’s pretty certain, but didn’t he later turn out to be Magneto in disguise? Only now, he wasn’t Magneto in disguise, but instead he went bananas and thought he was Magneto? Maybe Magneto went crazy and thought he was Xorn? Man, you miss one or two comics, and the whole thing turns to chaos. Maybe later it’ll be revealed that Xorn never really existed, that he was always just a psychic projection of, oh, let’s say, Jubilee.
Anyway, one thing that nobody can go back and change is the fact that Hasbro’s second wave of Marvel Legends figures has now been released, and with it, a Xorn figure. This is the first figure in the Marvel Legends line to be based on Grant Morrison’s excellent and popular run on “New X-Men” from a couple of years back. It’s a good idea; good enough of an idea, in fact, that one wonders why they’ve waited this long. This run of comics still has a sizeable fan base, and the costumes from it are very unique and striking besides. Plus, if we got more figures from Morrison’s “New X-Men,” maybe we’d finally get a cat-headed Beast who wasn’t dressed like a commando! Please, Hasbro?
And so, without further ado: Xorn. He looks badass, he’s from a great comic series, his story is maybe a little confusing.
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PACKAGING: For their second series of Marvel Legends, Hasbro has, perhaps predictably, elected to use the same package design as for the first series. The card is basically whitish, on the front, and the plastic packaging is a riot of sculpted curves and angles. The figure is plainly visible from a number of angles, so that’s good. Down the viewer’s right of the package is a montage of images of the character, as is now typical for Marvel Legends. The Xorn pictures are frankly pretty dull, being just a bunch of head shots. Okay, so Xorn wasn’t in all that many comics before his end, but this was X-Men; surely he must have jumped over something, or been punched by someone, at some point.
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On the back of the card, there is a short biography of Xorn, confirming the “He went crazy and thought he was Magneto” version of events. So we’ll assume that that’s the canon. For now. Remember when the bios used to have a little graph of the character’s abilities, like “Strength” and “Fighting Ability” and “Energy Projection”? It is completely okay that those are gone.
SCULPTING: Xorn always was a great character design; the rough, metal, skull-shaped mask, and the chains across the chest, went really well with the black and yellow leather of “New X-Men.” And this figure does a bang-up job of capturing this design in plastic. The lined texturing of the clothing is particularly impressive, very much capturing the feel of the art from which Xorn comes. The squared-off shoulders are a nice touch as well, especially since this is accomplished without sacrificing articulation. So high marks for sculpt!
The closest thing to a stumbling point in this category is the Magneto head, visible when you take off the mask. It’s pretty okay-looking, though it has an unsightly depression on the right jaw. The main problem is that it is teeny-tiny. Xorn’s hands are bigger than his Magneto-head. Now, there’s an obvious reason for this: This was done so that the masked head wouldn’t be freakishly distended and colossal. And that’s a good decision – better that the masked head look right, than the unmasked head. Still, the shrunken Magneto head bears mentioning. If we neglected to do so, and you found out on your own, many of you would attempt to kill us.
PAINT APPLICATION: Mostly, it’s pretty simple, and mostly, it’s pretty good. There’s a tiny bit of smudging on the back of the collar, but it’s the sort of thing you have to really be looking for, and you’re certainly too busy for that. Hasbro still hasn’t totally mastered Caucasian skin tone, either; the skin here isn’t as bad as it was for Hercules in the first series, but it’s still a bold, solid, loud skin tone. And nobody really has a bold, solid, loud skin tone.
The only really noticeable problem with the paint job is at the chains across the chest. A lot more care could have been taken here; many of the sculpted chain-links have gone entirely unpainted, and the overall effect is simply one of sloppiness. It’s hardly a deal-breaker, but there is room for improvement here. Hasbro, we know in our hearts that you can do fine detail work, if you would just apply yourselves. Give one of those guys working on the 700th Clone Trooper repaint some overtime, maybe.
ARTICULATION: This figure has 32 points of articulation, and that is, be any rational standard, just a whole mess of articulation. All of the joints we all got used to back in the Toybiz days are present and accounted for, apart from the ones in the middles of the feet and hands, and the ones that let the hands wave forward and backward. So if those points were all you lived for, the only reason you got out of bed in the morning, well, bad news. (Snarkiness aside, though, Hasbro would be well-advised to reintroduce these points to future figures, since any step down is, well, a step down.)
Not only does the Xorn figure have loads of articulation, but each point is very nice and tight as well, and so it holds its poses extremely nicely. Almost too nicely; you’ve really got to yank at some of the joints to make them move at all. But better that than looseness! Anything’s better than looseness. Well, not anything. No articulation at all, that’s not better. Flesh-eating viruses; neither are those.
ACCESSORIES: One could consider the mask to be an accessory, perhaps; Xorn neither has, nor really calls out for, any others. The mask is quite good, with an excellent sculpt and paint. It also goes on easily and yet fits very snugly. There are, unfortunately, some little holes in the cheeks. Perhaps this was a good idea on paper, something to make it look more three-dimensional, but in practice, you get some wholly inappropriate skin-tone, visible through the holes. Very small bits of it, mind you; overall, Xorn’s mask gets a solid thumbs-up.
Xorn is also packaged with the extraordinarily grotesque left leg of the Blob, the build-a-figure for this wave – collect all eight, and build your own Blob! Which poses the question: Does the Blob really have that many fans? Are there people who wouldn’t have collected all eight anyway, but who are going to now, so that they can get their Blob? Seriously. More power to ‘em, assuredly, but what are their numbers?
COST & OVERALL IMPRESSION: Hasbro’s second series of Marvel Legends is only just hitting the stores, and doing so unevenly, as these things tend to go. The review copy was found at a store called Toy Corner, where it cost fully $15. Assuming, however, that the release of this second series follows the pattern of the first, it will soon be widely available, and have a usual retail price of around $10.
Your humble reviewer has a friend called Dan. Dan was one of the people who instantly and utterly despised the first Hasbro wave of Marvel Legends, the very instant he saw them on the pegs. He thought your humble reviewer had the brain-worms for defending the series, and he would not relent. But he happened by as the review you now read began to take shape, and he played around with the Xorn figure for a little bit, and he finally concluded, “Okay, that is pretty good.” If Hasbro keeps producing Marvel Legends as generally good-looking and well-articulated as this one, maybe they’ll win back even more of the old Legends fans.
Review and photos by Matthew Kessen
