Marvel Legends The Hood review – BAF Xenmnu wave

The Hood was Brian Michael Bendis’ passion project during his Avengers stint. Although created by Brian K. Vaughan and artists Kyle Hotz and Eric Powell in 2002, it was Bendis who decided The Hood was ready for prime time and made him a key villain who basically ran the modern equivalent of the Masters of Evil.

Parker Robbins’ prominence as an A-list villain has not surprisingly subsided now that Bendis is no longer at Marvel, but his status was enough to get him a slot in the Marvel Legends Super Villains Build-a-Figure Xenmnu wave.

The Hood actually came close to getting a timelier release back when Hasbro was still tinkering with the kinks of reviving the Marvel Legends brand. In that wave, he basically used the Nick Fury mold that has just now gone into retirement and was slotted to be released with X-Force Wolverine, Lady Bullseye, Jamie Madrox, Bi-Beast, Nuke and Phoenix in her white costume.

That’s a significant wait for Hood fans. Let’s see if this take was worth the wait or if it’ll have them screaming like angry fanboys.

Packaging:  I really like the color scheme of this wave with the light green and purple accents. It invokes a classic Marvel villain color scheme. The package art is fine although I tend to think of Leinil Francis Yu as the more definitive artist for The Hood thanks to his Avengers run.

His bio just needed a bit more information like how he became The Godfather of the Marvel villains and led a gang in battle against the Avengers.

That would sound more impressive than just him becoming a true criminal menace. Seriously, I’d happily write these bios for the low, low price of three Marvel Legends figures a month.

Likeness:  In most portrayals of The Hood, he’s calm and rarely showing much emotion. It’s hard to keep a gang of villains in line if you’re constantly showing your feelings.

Hasbro opted to give their figure more of an expressive angry head sculpt, which the Marvel Legends marketing crew jokingly said was like the angry chat board troll’s likeness.

That ‘shockingly’ went over terribly. I’m more annoyed with the execution of The Hood. We’ve seen with figures like Dr. Doom that hoods look better when they’re a separate piece from the cape. The challenge was keeping the hood and cloak looking like one piece, but this wasn’t the best solution.

Hasbro’s take can’t avoid the shell style visual whenever you move his arms. We haven’t seen this often from the line, but this was probably a case where Hasbro could have gone with a cloth hood/cape and it would have looked a lot better. Here’s one version on eBay that captures more of the comic flow of the hood and cape.

Back to the head sculpt. It’s not terrible yet another situation where a neutral expression would have helped a lot. The rest of The Hood’s outfit is fine. It’s a complete reuse of the Peter Parker figure, but there’s zero need to complain that since it’s a perfect match for The Hood’s gear.

Some artists tend to draw the hood and cloak more raggedy like it’s tattered. Hasbro does avoid making it look too neat by having some ripped edges on the end.

Paint: The Hood doesn’t have the most exciting outfit, which makes for a figure with a far lesser degree of difficulty paint wise. Neither his jacket nor pants really need a wash.

The hood and cloak would have benefitted from one and probably helped to bring out the texturing stronger.

Maybe the ‘biggest’ issue with the paint applications was some of the red paint around his mouth spilled over onto his teeth a little.

MORE:

• The Book of Boba Fett – The Streets of Mos Espa review S1 E3
• Jazwares reveals AEW Unmatched Series 3 – The Dark Order
• Naomi – Pilot review S1 E1
• Marvel Legends action figure reviews

Scale: The Hood was a regular size guy. It does call attention to the ridiculously oversized figures like Absorbing Man and Wrecker and The Wrecking Crew.

Articulation: The Hood was more of a schemer and planner. What’s the point of having a gang of super villains at your disposal if you’re fighting Spider-Man, Warbird, Luke Cage and Spider-Woman all the time yourself?

Naturally the hood and cloak significantly limit his ability to sit in a chair. They also seriously hinder any useful bit of movement for Parker in action poses.

So we’ve got The Hood that can’t actually be posed to look even remotely decent because of the shoddy construction of the hood and cloak. Sigh. Here’s another seller with a useful cloak.

The Hood has:

• neck
• ball-jointed shoulders
• bicep
• elbow (double-jointed)
• wrist
• wrist hinge
• torso
• waist
• hip
• thigh
• knee (double-jointed)
• ankle

Accessories: The Hood at least gets some thought put into his accessories. He shoots pistols that channel the demonic energy from the possessed hood.

Hasbro went with a shape collectors should be worried if their mothers can readily identify with the main projectile, but the energy swirl around it was a nice touch. These can plug on to the end of the guns.

Again, it would have been nice to have an alternate head sculpt with a neutral expression.

He also comes with the left leg of the Build A Figure Xenmu.

Worth it?  The Hood saw some solid discounts around the holidays going as $10 through some retailers. That’s the ideal price for him since collectors that actually like him will want to invest in a better hood/cloak.

Rating: 4 out of 10

It’s hard to rate a figure too high when his whole gimmick is wasted because of the execution of said gimmick. The Hood is really only worth grabbing if you ditch the hood and use him as a generic villain or are building Xemnu.

Where to get it?  You can still get The Hood from online retailers like Amazon and Entertainment Earth.

As an Amazon Associate and Entertainment Earth affiliates, I earn from qualifying purchases.