Marvel Legends Secret Wars Absorbing Man review (2026)

Absorbing Man is one of the best goon supervillains in any company. He’s a thug who has one of the strongest power sets and can legitimately battle Thor, The Hulk or an Avengers squad on his own. Coming up with a sound strategy to defeat them is another story, but he’s a bad guy who can always be counted on to provide our heroes with a good fight.

Hasbro has done a few Absorbing Man figures in the past. One that was a decent for the time Build-A-Figure and several other variations in the Marvel Universe line in varying stages of using his powers. While Toy Biz delivered several single card versions this is the first Hasbro Marvel Legends single card figure. Ironically, it’s in the Secret Wars line, which is pretty cool as this was my introduction to the character.

The first Secret Wars wave gave us a pretty sweet Titania figure so let’s see if her squeeze gets an equally good figure or if it’s going to be a crushing disappointment.

Packaging: In a rarity for Absorbing Man, he’s actually packaged. The Secret Wars packaging is the standard Marvel Legends Retro card style homage to an old school line.

While Absorbing Man wasn’t in the old Mattel line, he was part of the original event so it’s nice to see him get included in this wave. It’s got a vibrant light blue with a lightning bolt in the center. Crusher Creel and all of his accessories are easy to see.

His bio is fine explaining his power set and Absorbing Man’s role in the original Secret Wars. We also get the cross sell of the other figures in the wave, which is always a nice touch. This is a solid wave with 5/6 being must-gets for my collection.

Likeness: I was ecstatic from the first image of this updated Absorbing Man. The BAF had a head sculpt that showed plenty of personality even if he looked like a very perturbed cone head. That was consistent with how he was drawn in his earlier appearances so no issue with that choice. This one fits in better with his 80s to present day look with a less pronounced cone head — it’s still there, just not as missile-like.

The default head sculpt is excellent with a wide smile like he’s found his next victim and is ready to start bullying and pummeling them. He’s got a slightly raised left eyebrow in a nod to the BAF figure. Depending on the artist, Creel had eyebrows so it’s pretty fun that the alternate head sculpt doesn’t have them painted.

Absorbing Man is using the upper half of the Hercules mold, which is only disappointing in the sense he lacks the butterfly shoulder joint. Otherwise, this was the ideal torso choice for Creel as it’s thick, fairly muscular without making him look like a giant, which was the case with the BAF.

He’s rocking his prison pants with the sculpted belt and buckles. The pants aren’t too baggy yet the cuffs flare out a bit and drape over his boots/shoes to show they’re not spandex.

Scale: In the comic books, Absorbing Man is listed at 6’4″ making him shorter than the 6’6″ Thor and 6’5″ Hercules. Creel should be taller than the 6’2″ Captain America and 6’1″ Iron Man.

The big issue with the BAF version was Hasbro decided to bump his height, which made him drastically out of scale with other figures in the line save the Wrecking Crew. With improved Thor figures that had better scale, Absorbing Man really looked out of place.

This version fits in much better with characters like Thor to Spider-Man to Baron Zemo. Hopefully this means the Wrecking Crew will fit in better with other villains as well.

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Paint: A big knock for many collectors was the plain look for Absorbing Man with no paintwork to show his powers kicking in. This base look is better since it’s not committing him to any one specific look. His head sculpt has the aforementioned black eyebrows, but he’s also got a well-done 5’o clock stubble going too.

It’s a small thing, but I really like how the ML team did the lines of his pants which have more of a faded look instead of very distinct black lines showing. It’s far more subtle than previous takes on his old prison garb.

Articulation: Absorbing Man is the quintessential brawler. He’s all about getting in some punches — cheap or otherwise — or flattening his foes with his ball and chain. Those ball and chain swings would look better with butterfly shoulders, but he does have solid range for action shots.

The torso hinge has been getting phased out for smoother, more natural articulation cuts so that prevents him from hitting those nice tilting side poses. Again, that’s the downside to using the Hercules mold as none of the figures that have that updated torso would be beefy enough for Creel. Despite the “dated” mold, Creel can still hit plenty of fun poses.

Absorbing Man has:

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

Accessories: This is the category where the ML team took some hits. Absorbing Man has a decent array of extras even if it’s not what everyone wanted.

He gets an alternate head with a more brutish expression with his eyes narrowed and a sneer. This is a perfect secondary portrait option, and it has the barely-there beard as well.

Absorbing Man has a swappable set of hands — a grabbing right hand and fingers spread wider left hand to help provide a little posing variety.

He’s got the Secret Wars shield with the villain square shield with grey rivets around the lenticular image showing him transform back and forth.

Finally, he’s got his ball and chain. It’s much smaller than the BAF version although sadly it still doesn’t have any articulation on the chain to actually make it look like he’s swinging it.

A lot of collectors wanted some swappable arms to show his absorption powers in action. The good news, and likely intentional from the ML team, is you can swap the arms from the BAF from the bicep down for a simple change that doesn’t require massive figure surgery. That actually bumps his value up for me.

Worth It? Absorbing Man is regularly $27.99 the current price for Marvel Legends. It’s not the best value, but I didn’t want to wait for a sale since I’ve been clamoring for an improved Creel for years. I used my GameStop rewards to get him down to the old $25 price, which is a better value.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Absorbing Man gets his best figure yet with two excellent head sculpts, superb articulation and drastically improved scaling.

Where to Get It? Absorbing Man seems to be fairly common to find at Wal-Mart or GameStop. You can also get him online at Amazon or Entertainment Earth.

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