“I’ve defended and avenged… fought the incredible and the mighty… and carried the worthy to their great reward… I am Valkyrior… Brunnhilde, shield maiden of Asgard… I am Valkyrie! “ – Valkyrie. Valkyrie #1, Vol. 2 (Nov. 2010).
Ever feel like Hasbro is trying to crush you with figures to review? No, that’s probably just me? Well, how about at least figures to buy? No sooner does BBTS ship out my Ant-Man wave, then is HTS bein’ all “we got Hulkbusters” (and, not to be outdone, BBTS just dropped the “Rhino” is here bomb, I’m used – and when does HTS have their SDCC exclusives up? Oh yeah…).
Anyway, I’m swimming in Marvel figures over here and so despite just doing an Ant-Man week and reviewing the rest of the Marvel Ant-Man wave last week, we’re going to double down on some Hulkbuster Wave reviews this week and bring back the old Marvel Two-A-Days!
I figure I’d start with Valkyrie because she’s the one that I’m the most conflicted about. On paper, if you told me the list of names included in the wave: Movie War Machine, Blizzard, NOW! Dr. Strange, NOW! Iron Man, Thundra, Vision, & Valkyrie – I would’ve told you that Valkyrie was my big want. I’ve always had an affinity for the characters and I’m not really a huge fan of the Valkyrie figure we got from Hasbro a few years ago. In practice, I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of this one either, though for entirely different reasons.
Valkyrie, the character, is kinda difficult to explain. Calling her a female Thor isn’t really apt (and besides we have one of those now), but she does share similarities with him. She is the Asgardian Brunnhilde, and like the early Thor, her “power” was given to various humans to wield over time. And, also like Thor, she has since appeared simply as herself in more modern comics. This works out for me as to how I view the two figures we’ve gotten. The first Valkyrie figure is more reminiscent of her time with her powers channeled by one of her human hosts while the figure is undeniably Brunnhilde.
The biggest part behind that reasoning is her immense size. Clocking in at 7”, Valkyrie continues the trend of the Asgardians and some of their villains being much bigger than our average Marvel heroes. I’ve tended to be okay with this. Thor looks great that big. The Wrecking Crew, while out of scale to be sure, look great fighting him on the shelf. Valkyrie continues that trend. I’m a little less enthused here because I’m not used to seeing her this way and she doesn’t tend to hang with Thor, but I’m not going to get hung up on it. She’s a good size and I like the variety she brings to the shelf.
Her sculpt itself is mostly good and captures her most recent look in Secret Avengers. I like the new head sculpt and hair, though I wish they blended together better at the seam between them. The long braids are well sculpted and angled out to hang over her, uh, chest. Both the upper & lower torso are new as well to get the basic costume details right. The arms and legs are reused from She-Hulk. The arms are my only complaint on the sculpt, the forearms are just too narrow – they’d be too narrow for nearly any character, let alone one the size of Valkyrie. Continue to Page 2…
I haven’t even seen this wave hit yet. Really Antman just hit, stillbworking on Odin, HobbyUrich, and just startedbthanks.(that wave came and went here) I’ve been christmas shopping early thanks to Combner wars as wantvto get Superion and Menasor completed for a Transfan, MarvelFan and TMNT fan. Can see the pickle I’m in there.
On to Val, know only from the Hulk vs. and a few random books I have. I dig the earlier look and woud’ve dug that but think FemThor may be part of this though yet, wonder reaction if was Ultimate Valkyrie (now theres a barely costume look if ever) She looks good and do like the height on Asgards being towers high over norm though feelbHulk should still dwarf em. When see know will buy if got the $$$$$ (hoping not at Target as weird oddball prices have turned me away from them. 20.59 a legend thats not Spidey, hogwash)
Still haven’t seen her in the wild yet, but Valkyrie may be the only character I get out of this line. You’re right that Dragonfang doesn’t look quite right, but I’ve got plenty of extra swords for her to use.
I like the idea of a big brawler lady, but her arms look too short, almost like chubby baby arms. It may be my eyes playing tricks, but it looks like the short Valkyrie has arms at least as long as tall Valkyrie.
You’re right. They just used normal height arms and hoped it would work out haha
The old one Valkyrie is the best!
I’ve never seen the previous version. When and in what wave was this released?
She was in a TRU exclusive two-pack with the Ed McGuinness Hulk, came out in 2010.
The head is an improvement, but Valkyrie’s modern costume is just so bland.
The blade on Dragonfang should also be gold since the whole sword is carved from a dragon’s fang.
I don’t understand why Thundra & Valkyrie and Dr. Strange & Vision are being treated like variant swaps on the packaging (shared names & extra vague bios) even though you need all of them for the Hulkbuster Veronica BAF.
The only reason I can think of is that each pair can then share one packaging layout. Their graphic design company must charge a fortune for each layout they do lol
@clark Thanks for the info! Next to her white outfit with blue trim, I like that version much more than the one just released.
This is actually not Valkyrie’s most recent costume. After Secret Avengers, she was a member of the Fearless Defenders, and got a Mark Brooks redesign. It has a little more visual flair than the Secret Avengers suit, and blends better with the more modern (Coipel and beyond) Asgardians than the Kirby-era guys.
Here’s a link to a pic of the most recent Valkyrie (I think it’s still the newest, anyway. Once the crossovers, especially Secret Wars, starting running rampant, I stopped reading a lot of Marvel books):
http://24.media.tumblr.com/686a860e6d6a2d2dc0954cbca9ff3dcd/tumblr_mlxvgdERVW1qzvqf7o1_500.jpg
Her hair throws off what would otherwise be a great figure. not sure if it’s supposed to be 80s Big Hair or what (the MIA Dani Moonstar’s hair mold?), but for such a minimally detailed and dark costume, the big blonde hair stands out more.
If any of these needed a running change/variant, it would be Val and SIF!
then again, that SCC poll was pretty Asgardian heavy…could SIF already be in the works for next year?
y’know, I was looking at this figure today and my finger found a, for lack of better term, “crease line” across her buttocks. I can only imagine it was sculpted with that for another figure, but it wasn’t Thundra, who I checked it for.
hair still bugs me. too tall in back. not sure if it’s sitting wrong, but not according to the pics I’ve seen of her.
Personally I actually like the Secret Avengers outfit, though I was a bit iffy about the new Valkyrie figure at first, there were a couple things I didn’t like, the skinny wrists paired with the muscular biceps makes the arms look out of whack, and I didn’t really like the loose strands of hair on the right side, though I really have no issue with the rest of the hair sculpt. Having the wrist and arm bands just painted on strikes me as lazy and a cost cutting measure, but I addressed that by trimming and painting up the wrist bands from the Rocket Raccoon Jean Grey figure and using pieces of heat shrink tubing over the upper arm bands, definitely makes a world of difference. The one other thing that bothered me is how plain they made her, since in the comics a lot of the time this costume is depicted with additional belts and straps to break up the monotony of a mostly all black leotard. So again I added some bits and pieces (the belt from the Marvel Universe Infinite Valkyrie fits snugly around the thigh) and she’s looking quite a bit better with just some simple additions. Again, must have been a cost cutting move on Hasbro’s part since they could have easily spruced her up a bit likely with pieces they already have on hand. I’m still happy getting a decent Legends (or slightly bigger) scale Valkyrie, though kind of wondering why it’s taking so long to get a comic Sif.