The Return of Marvel Legends Wave Two – Dark Wolverine

Today let’s take a look at Hasbro’s Return of Marvel Legends Wave Two Dark Wolverine from the Arnim Zola Build a Figure Series. We have seen this body reused many, many times to represent many Marvel Comic Book characters by Hasbro, so I am sure you’ll recognized this buck immediately. Quicksilver, Symbiote Spider-Man, Nova, Guardian, Yellowjacket, Kree Soldier, are but just a few of the characters who have sported this base body. Don’t get me wrong, it still stands up as being a good basic smaller body-build buck for a figure but, I would like to see some new bucks developed for this line in the near future. The case pack out I received had included the unmasked version of Dark Wolverine, or Daken, if you prefer. I still haven’t found the masked version of this figure yet so I can’t compare the two for you now. It is essentially the same figure with a different head though, as far as I know. I stopped reading comics before this character was introduced so most of you will know much more about Daken than I do. I do know he is Wolverine’s son and that the two of them don’t get along very well. Daken was recruited to be a member of Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers during Marvel Comic’s “Dark Reign” storyline, where he portrayed his father for that team. It was in that storyline that he wore Wolverine’s old brown and tan costume and what we have represented with this figure.

I think that this is another great head-sculpt on Dark Wolverine. You can see the anger in his expression and the mohawk is billowing off to the right. I don’t know who is doing the head-sculpts at Hasbro for this line, but they are doing a very nice job and I would like to commend them. I really like how they included a part to depict the mask hanging around his neck and draping off down his back. We’ve seen this done before but, it’s a nice addition for a mask-off look and it helps to visually shorten the neck somewhat. You don’t notice it as much looking at him from the front, but from a side view, that’s some neck you got there pal. The tribal tattoo on his left arm is painted very well on my figure but there is a noticeable difference in the shade of the flesh tone on his shoulders and his bicep, forearm sections. The ball-joints on his shoulders have been painted half brown to resemble the costume and half flesh-tone to resemble his arm and they don’t match up with the tone of the molded plastic on the rest of his arm. The dual bone claws look nice but are made of a soft plastic and mine just will not stay straight. I’m not sure if it was intended or a mistake but the belt is not glued to his mid-section as most belts have been in the past with Hasbro. Is anyone else’s out there unglued, or is it just mine?

Dark Wolverine comes with the left arm for your Arnim Zola Build-a-Figure and has no other accessories. He has a hinged ball-socket for his head, which gives him a really nice range of motion for posing. He has ball-jointed shoulders and hips, double-pinned elbows and knees, he also has the extensions on his chest that allow you to pull the arms further back, an ab-crunch, cut waist, a forearm cut, swivel-hinged wrists, mid-calf cut and the feet have pinned rocker ankles plus a toe hinge. Lot’s of articulation to put him into some great dynamic poses befitting a scraper like the son of Wolverine. I do like this figure and I hope Hasbro will eventually fill out the rest of the Dark Avengers team. It always bites to only have one or two members of a team on your collection shelves. (I’m talking about you Alpha Flight! Surely, they won’t leave us hanging too long, waiting for the rest of the Wrecking Crew. You wouldn’t do that to us, would you Hasbro?) Here’s hoping Hasbro will fill in some of those gaps in our team rosters this time around. I really love the teams.

As I said earlier, I still don’t have the mask-on version of Dark Wolverine. I could actually do without having it, I believe. As much as I like this figure, I really don’t need two of them. I would like to build the Red Skull version of the Arnim Zola BaF and I would need the arm that comes with Daken (preferably the mask-on version) to do that, so we’ll see. If I come across one out in the wild, I will likely buy it, but I’m not going to kill myself searching for it or pay the current e-Bay prices either. Surely, none of my readers out there is paying $200 or $300 for one of these, right? I really can’t see myself paying for a second Fantomex just for the BaF part though. Drax might make good fodder, but Fantomex… We’ll get to him in a couple of days. I hope you enjoy the pictures of Dark Wolverine and that you’ll let me know if you like this figure or not in the comments. We’ll meet here again tomorrow to talk about Drax.

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     The Return of Marvel Legends Wave Two Dark Wolverine Package Rear

Thank you to the awesome folks at Enchanted Toy Chest for supplying this figure for me to review for you.