“I never pretended I was a damn gentleman.” – Tony Stark. Marvel NOW! Iron Man #1 (August, 2014).
When I reviewed War Machine yesterday, I knocked it a little for being a straight repaint. I don’t really mind a ton, but that figure is really done justice thanks to the “but wait! There’s more!” Rhodey head sculpt. This Iron Man figure is in the same boat. Except there’s no “more” to catch my attention. They’re stealthy Marvel NOW! color scheme is really cool, but I can’t shake the notion that this is just a movie Iron Man figure repainted into comic colors.
I suppose I shouldn’t say “just”. The basic figure gets the job done. In Marvel NOW! Tony’s armor get a redesign very similar to what we see in the films, albeit black instead of red. This figure captures that with little issue thanks to the “original” design. And the tooling & development here surely helped out with Hulkbuster or one of the other figures. I get that that how this works. Figures like this are supposed to be the money saver, but I just want more…
The sculpt is a solid movie version of the Mark III with great articulation: ball-joints at the neck, shoulders, wrists, mid-torso, hips, and ankles; double-hinges at the knees & elbows; swivels at the biceps & thighs. Everything works like you’d expect and you can get some great poses out of the figure. My joints are a little loose, so I don’t know if this mold is getting a little long in the tooth or I’m just that lucky. I don’t quite recall where we got the original figure. If memory serves there was a brief 6″ Iron Man 2 line that the original figures hails from (and that line had a black/gold figure of the Mark V. I bet that figure would look great along side this guy).
The paint is basically what sets this guy apart and it does a good job. The satin black looks great and distinguishes itself from the shinier War Machine in the same wave. The gold paint makes for a great contrast and a good package deal. There are few other random areas of paint where the sculpt isn’t suited to this particular design. The biggest thing are the extra light up areas at key joints. Those should be sculped and recessed, but some quick tampos are doing the work. That doesn’t quite work, but overall the package works overall and makes for a nice looking figure. The back of figure isn’t really painted – but neither is the armor in the comics. It’s like a win-win. Continue to Page 2…
I think you hit all the major points, esp the already outdated “Now!” looks. I shuddered at the thought of how soon that phase was going to be outdated and I wasn’t too far off the mark. I still say they should just give up and switch the volume numbering to years published (ex: vol2015).
altho, “NOW!” I’m itching to get out the paints and cover up the gold with blue as kind of a new “stealth” armor. the “classic blue stealth” already has the infrared chest repulsor, which this one doesn’t need too much work to “fix”, aside from shape.
Actually I believe this figure is a reuse of the IM2 Mark IV. The squared off biceps and thighs are the giveaway.
Yeah. The Mark III figure was from the first IM movie line, and the figures were based on Adi Granov’s design work rather than the final movie renders, so they were way too slender. The IM2 figures looked more like the movie suits, as in they look like they could be a suit with a person inside, rather than a skinny robot.
This is correct.
I don´t like any of these new line of Iron mans,
because they are out of scale.
How a head with a helmet/mask would be smaller
than any head.
It gives the idea Iron Man is a robot, and not a
man in an armor.
i think their reason for picking this mold is that the marvel now comic was largely drawn by greg land who often uses stock photos as sources for his art (some say he traces…) and many images from the book, especially the cover, are re-dos of existing MCU ironman photos, so this mold makes sense
When the IM 2 movie series came out as a Walmart exclusive, the Mk4 that this is repainted from had a bunch of alternate hands. Too bad those didn’t make it into this release.