A Forgotten Classic: Reviewing Marvel Legends Marrow

I’ve been collecting action figures in earnest for about two years and I hit a milestone for the first time this week- completing one of Hasbro’s Marvel Legends build-a-figure lines. Now I’m going to take a look at each figure the Marvel Legends X-Men Nemesis line, starting with Marrow.

Sarah was a member of the Morlocks as a young child. During the mutant massacre, she was rescued by Gambit, who had been hired to lead the Marauders to the tunnels. Several years later, she was shunted into a parallel dimension, where she grew up, and eventually returned a young adult calling herself Marrow, embittered and leading a terrorist organization known as Gene Nation. Another few years later, she joined the X-Men in the wake of Bastion’s attack on the team where she became a mainstay for about three years, then was shunted into character limbo ever since.

The X-Men are confusing, yo.

So why is Marrow getting a figure? Outside of her front and center role in the comics for several years, she was a prominent character in Marvel Vs Capcom 2. Hasbro has slowly been releasing figures based on designs from the game- such as Iron Man, Cable and War Machine- so she’s a popular choice.

I was pleasantly surprised by this figure right out of the box. I’ve recently gotten a few older Marvel Legends based on a variety of Spider-Women. They’ve had great designs but are limited in articulation and are difficult to stand. Not so with Marrow. She’s a solid figure directly out of the box.

The figure is made from a slightly softer plastic than most recent Marvel Legends. That makes her easier to pose immediately. Almost every Hasbro-made figure I’ve ever bought has required a hot water bath to pose, but not so here. She was easy to pose and didn’t ever feel overly flimsy like some of her female-presenting predecessors.

For the most part, I LOVE the design here. The figure is ultra detailed through and through. Hasbro did not skimp on the bone growths all over her body (primary on her ab crunch and her back), which makes for one of the coolest looking figures in my collection. The two bone daggers are perfect accessories- they have a detailed sculpt and just enough of a paint wash to make them look like real bone.

The figure isn’t perfect though. She was difficult to get to stand up in anything but a neutral pose- understandable given how top heavy the figure is. Unfortunately, when I grabbed one of my few stands (yes, a McFarlane DC Multiverse stand) I discovered that the stand peg-holes in her feet are both extremely shallow, so the stand doesn’t help much either. Doing jumping poses with the flight stand was fun though.

As far as the design, this is a figure that really could have benefited from an alternate head. The neutral expression made some of the dynamic posts look kind of silly. An angry/yelling expression would have been helpful, and it could have added the forehead bone growth that the character sported for the vast majority of her X-Men tenure. Also, her skin should have been more pink- the figure was only a little more pink than fleshtone, but Sarah was distinctly an unnatural shade of pink. I didn’t see much use for the alternate hands, but I might after a little bit of time.

Overall though, this is a good first figure from this wave. She’s a forgotten part of one of comics’ greatest franchises, and it’s so great to see her get her due.