Marvel Legends: Thanos

 

Man, Byron was right: April really is the cruelest month. What with Star Wars Celebration, numerous birthdays, the start of the NHL Playoffs, the winding down of the Spring semester, and this year, Avengers: Endgame to end not only the month, but the current cycle of the MCU. In honor of that last piece, let’s take a look at Marvel Legends Thanos, in his comic book, and thus best, appearance.

Marvel Legends: Thor

In preparation for the Marvel Comics event “War of the Realms,” let’s have a look at Legends Thor, as she appears in Jason Aaron’s spectacular Thor run dating from 2014 until just last year. Spoilers ahead, for those who don’t know who this Thors’ secret identity is, so proceed with caution.

Marvel Legends: Magneto

 Mutant activist Magneto is perhaps one of the most problematic villains in comics, seeing as he really is responsible for some horrible atrocities, but also is a staunch advocate of Mutant rights . . . that often transgress into genocidal ideas. So yeah, problematic.

Marvel Legends: Silver Surfer

 

 

Let me tell you a story: once, not that many years ago, there was a young girl who would play with her cousins. One of her cousins had action figures of Spider-man and the Silver Surfer; this little girl always wanted to play with the Silver Surfer, but found perpetual denial, constantly being forced to play with Spider-man instead.

Some years later, Legends Silver Surfer would be released as a Walgreens exclusive, most likely the fairy godmother equivalent in this story, as that very phrase, “Walgreens exclusive,” is still so odd to hear. A man would purchase this Surfer for that young girl, now all grown up, in a gesture so romantic an entire group text worth of friends cheered it, only to have the woman not be that impressed by the figure that was now hers after all those years of wanting. Fortunately for her, she is married to the guy who runs Child Sized Coffin, so nothing went to waste.

Marvel Legends: Mysterio

 

 Illusionist/hypnotist/special effects wiz Mysterio is one of those figures that sent a shiver through the Coffin from first photo reveal to finally having one in-hand, and was highly sought after. Looked for everywhere, and found nowhere, this copy came to me thanks to eBay, and remains the single physical sighting of the figure that I have had. All of that to say that Mysterio here is highly desired and hard to come by, but man, what a cool figure.

Marvel Legends: Carnage

 Holy shit everyone, work. Work has been such a total pain in the ass these last few weeks. There were such high hopes for posting several articles this month, and they all got ruined by the constant, unrelenting onslaught of work. But, now there’s a quiet moment, fresh off finishing another class of essays (one that I started grading two days ago, and feel like an utter failure for needing two days to complete. –mr) so let’s celebrate that with some time spent on action figures.

Carnage is the super villain persona of serial murderer Cletus Kasady, and is the first symbiotic offspring of Venom. First appearing in the Maximum Carnage arc of The Amazing Spider-man way back in the early 90’s, Carnage has been an occasional Spider-man villain, as well as periodically menacing other Marvel characters, and even on occasion getting his own title. (More on solo comics later, specifically the most recent one, as I’ve got feelings about it.—mr)

Marvel Legends: Darkhawk

 Strange to think nowadays, when each Marvel movie breaks box office records set by the previous Marvel movie, but in the early portion of the 1990’s, comics were hitting something of a low point in terms of general public interest. Large, earth-shaking events were happening, new characters were being introduced in runs like Maximum Carnage, and legacy characters from companies like DC and Marvel were being pushed in all kinds of relatively unheard of situations, like The Death of Superman. Publishers like DC and Marvel did what almost always works during times of slumping: they introduced a slew of new characters with their own books and cool, xtreme 90’s appearances. Some of them stuck around, some of them did not. Some of them were kinda dumb, and some were pretty cool. An example of the latter is Darkhawk.