“Y’know, I’m sick of you whining about what you can’t do… Let’s run like the devil and make Hell freeze over!” – Speed Demon.

I couldn’t answer a question to why I’m fascinated with Speed Demon. He’s just one of those low-level Tier-X characters that catches your attention and doesn’t let go. The funny thing is that I couldn’t even come up with where I first saw him or that I even knew much about him.

I do like speedster characters. I love the Flash and Speed Demon here is a Flash rip-off more or less. It’s complicated though, so try to follow me here. SD first appeared as the Whizzer, a member of the Squadron Sinister, a JLA-knockoff conjured to fight the Avengers in the late 60s. It would later be established that the Squadron Sinister was also a knockoff from the Squadron Supreme from Marvel’s Earth-712. So he’s a quick Flash-knockoff in real life, but also a Whizzer-knockoff in continuity. The Sinisters then lose to the Avengers as villains tend to and ol’ Dr. Strange mindwipes them all. The real Whizzer goes on to appear with the Squadron Supreme and James Sanders gets his job back and forgets his life as a villainous knockoff pawn. Things are good.

Then, the Spider-Man team is needing a new villain in the early 80s. Instead of making a new speedster, they return to Faux Whizzer here, give him a new name, a new costume, and set him off to join the MU. I found him there at some point, in some comic, but have no idea where or when. Somehow, I’ve retained all this information about him though. Weird. The important thing now though, is that I’ve got a figure. That’s what matters.

Thing is though, I’m not 100% in love with the figure. It’s not bad and it will definitely be in my collection for a long while, but it’s just a little off. The first thing is that, while I appreciate Hasbro going with the leaner, Spider-Man buck (which we all know I love) here because he’s a runner. I don’t like it for him. He’s been portrayed both lean & brawn, so it’s not wrong, but I feel like he would look better on the next buck up. This buck is lanky & scrawny for Spidey and I’m not sure it works on any thinner character.

The second part of this is the new parts – the head and the hands kinda look like they were originally intended for a slightly bigger buck. The running hands are a fantastic addition, but they are ginormous. They’re even too big for the slightly too big head really. The head is probably not as big as I make it sound, I’m going with slightly here, but it could also be that sculpt appears soft due to thick paint, but it just seems mismatched with the body to me. I love the smirk though. It makes him a fun figure to pose.

The articulation is the upside to the Spidey buck though and it makes for some fantastic running poses. We’ve got the same setup as yesterday: ball-joints at the neck, shoulders, wrists, hips (well, most are well-ranged), & inverted ankles; swivels at the biceps, waist, & thighs, double-hinged elbows & knees, the ab crunch, and the extra lateral hinges in the shoulders. He can look like he’s running which is something not many speedy action figures can claim unfortunately. Continue to Page 2…