REVIEW: Marvel Toys' Legendary Comic Book Heroes - THE DARKNESS

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The Legendary Comic Book Heroes line does have a consistency; it’s all on the same scale, and it features excellent articulation throughout. Plus the packaging is of a single standard. What’s not consistent about the line, though, is the characters. In this wave alone, we’ve seen the ultra-violent neo-noir of Sin City, the cheerful old-school sci-fi of Monkeyman and O’Brien, the grim and gritty superheroics of Cyber Force, and so on. ‘Alternative comics’ is a category scarcely any less broad then, say, ‘mammals,’ after all. And so this variety is a strength of the line; it’s a massive crossover event! But it is also possibly a weakness – nobody’s going to be a fan of all the characters in a wave, and one wonders if this might harm sales. Hopefully, the quality of the figures and desire for the build-a-figures will lead to some people buying characters they don’t recognize, and perhaps broadening their comic horizons a bit.

For instance, did you know anything about The Darkness, from the “Witchblade” corner of Top Cow comics? Probably you did, at least more probably than you having known anything about, say, “Monkeyman & O’Brien.” But for those of you who didn’t: The Darkness is Jackie Estacado, a mafia hitman who, on his 21st birthday (so apparently a young mafia hitman; isn’t hitmannery supposed to be a four-year program?), receiveds a hereditary power, passed down in his family since the dawn of time. This power enables Jackie to call forth objects, and even beings, from pure darkness, though these do not survive in the light. With a premise like this, you’d think that they could get away with putting out comics of just word balloons in black panels, but no – the Darkness has a detailed and ornate artistic style that is very popular with the fans. And now that style has been put into the Legendary Heroes line.

PACKAGING: Light pours onto the Darkness as he rests in his plastic, which may be why he looks so grumpy; this figure is plainly visible from the front and right side of the package. It is obscured on the left by an insert depicting comic covers of the characters from this wave, and on the bottom by the instructions for building Monkeyman, the wave’s BAF. The cardback is blue and generic, the Darkness being identified on an insert in the front of the bubble. It’s a good-looking whole, this packaging.

Readers will notice the presence of French, the Language of Love, alongside good old English on the photos of the packaging here. This is because this particular figure hails from Canada, land of universal health care and people saying “eh.” If you, too get Canadian packaging, please feel encouraged to learn some action-figure-related French therefrom. “Preuve d’achat” means “proof of purchase,” did you know that?

SCULPT: The Darkness is a comic well-noted for its almost baroque sense of character design, and this figure does that right. The fine detailing on the ribbed bits, visible through the many holes in the costume, is especially impressive. The gauntlets, techno-organic in feel, are also very attractive. Actually, there’s really nothing wrong with any part of the sculpt of this figure; the hair looks good, the curving spines on the back look good, the muscle tone looks good, and on and on. So bravo!

Like all of the figures in this wave, the Darkness has a hole in the back. Marvel Toys, as Toybiz, had been making this a universal feature toward the tail end of their stewardship of Marvel Legends, as well as now. And this gives us a hint as to its function: Marvel Legends would sometimes come with articulated, clear plastic stands that would fit into this hole, allowing the figure to be posed in a leaping or flying sort of way. A nice feature – but then, none of the Legendary Heroes have come with these stands as yet. Making this hole mainly useful to people who happen to work at the stand factory, maybe.

PAINT: With all of the fine detailing on this figure, the paint job could very easily have gone south. Let us give credit to Marvel Toys, then, for the fact that it didn’t. The colors are strong, appropriate, and nicely shaded, and bleed is very minimal. Let’s give it a round of applause! Come on, people, give it up!

ARTICULATION: The Darkness has fully 37 points of articulation, and that can mean only one thing: individual finger joints. Those are always great news, and they’re especially well handled here, lacking as they do the sort of lumps on the sides of the hands with which some figures with this feature wind up. Beyond the hands, it’s the usual feast of Marvel Legends / Legendary Heroes articulation, and that is of course fantastic. Special note should be made of the fact that the head moves quite freely, in spite of the long hair; the hair is flexible, and stops just short of where it would hold the head in place. So many longhaired characters have effectively immobile heads that special attention must have been paid here, and that is excellent.

The joints are all very tight, which is also excellent. Indeed, the left pointer finger on the review copy is too tight; your humble reviewer has yet to succeed in moving it. But then, he’s not trying too hard, lest the finger break. A nine-fingered the Darkness is no the Darkness at all.

ACCESSORIES: This is not a line noted for its accessories, but Mr. Estacado comes with two: a pair of Darklings, the small, black, demonic creatures that the Darkness can whistle up. These aren’t articulated, unfortunately, but this is a quibble, since the Darklings are every bit as beautifully sculpted and painted as Jackie himself. The detail work on the one with the teeth and tongue is especially exemplary. They really are horrible-looking little things, and that is, of course, just right.

The Darkness also comes with the lower torso (or “partie inferieure du torse”) of Monkeyman. That figure will receive its own review on this site soon. Reviewing just the lower torso would be silly.

COST & OVERALL IMPRESSION: Legendary Heroes run for 10 to 15 dollars, under normal circumstances, but circumstances surrounding this one might be a little odd. For one reason or another, the Darkness may be the ‘chase’ figure of this wave; at least one website sold out of it prior to the release of the wave, and another is charging $30 for it, where even the Judge Death and Ann O’Brien variants are just $15. Since this wave has yet to hit a really wide release, the ultimate rarity of the figure remains to be seen, but good hunting, all the same.

And so here we see Marvel Toys getting it right once again. There is nothing seriously wrong with this figure, nothing at all; in every category, it is a winner. Even accessories! It is frankly so good that you don’t have to be a fan of the Darkness to be a fan of this figure. It is highly recommended.

CLICK HERE for even more images of The Darkness.

Review and Photos by Matthew Kessen