Toy Review: Excalibur’s Phoenix Springs To Life

There have been a lot of heroes to use the name Phoenix. One in particular proved herself to be the greatest, but most readers have forgotten about her. Today, we’re taking a look at Rachel Summers’ in action figure form.

Rachel first appeared in the seminal “Days of Future Past” as the key to sending Kate Pryde back in time to stop the apocalypse that was her timeline. Later, she traveled back to the present day herself, and eventually joined the X-Men. Her time with the team was eventful, to say the least, and ended with her kidnapped by Mojo.

In Excalibur: The Sword is Drawn by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis, Rachel escaped Mojo, but was hunted by a group of bounty hunters hired by the Spineless One. She was rescued by her former teammates Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde — as well as England’s own heroes: Captain Britain and Meggan — and the quintet formed the legendary X-team known as Excalibur.

Rachel was a character that I was aware of but didn’t have any affinity for until the post-Grant Morrison Reload era of X-Men. In the initiative’s Uncanny X-Men, Claremont returned to the team again and reunited with Davis, telling an X-Men story that was a semi sequel to Excalibur in a lot of ways. Rachel quickly became a favorite, and eventually I dived into Excalibur, which has become my second-favorite X-Men spin-off in that time.

Throughout Excalibur, Rachel held the power of the Phoenix Force, and was actually able to come to peace with the force. That’s the iteration of the character we get in this figure from the retro card minicomic line.

This figure is simply an Alan Davis drawing come to life.

There have been a lot of criticisms of this body mold from action figure fans. They are fair, particularly because about 90% of all Marvel Legends based on female characters use this mold. In Rachel’s case though, it works, and the embellishment of her spiked costume elevates it significantly. I’m also glad we got her “regular” face (which is actually a psychic disguise) and an alternate headsculpt that’s her Hound tattoos (another long story), and both heads have her thin braid executed perfectly.

I adore the flaming “wings” that come with the figure. It’s one of the best accessories I’ve seen in a very long time (though looking at the product pictures again, I may have had them oriented the wrong way). It’s too bad the effect was really only seen with Rachel during Excalibur, because it would be a very cool effect to see packaged with other figures. The downside to a great looking accessory, though, is that you have to remove the hands to place them on the figure’s wrists. Her alternate hands were great, with one fist and one grasping hand, and like I said above, I adored her Hound headsculpt.

As far as posing, the figure is beyond fantastic. She was fun to pose, and even with her thin limbs I never felt like I was forcing or straining anything to get those poses. Holy cow though, this figure is a testament to the fact that Hasbro needs to include flight stands with figures. Rachel almost never touched the ground when powered up, and this figure needs a flight stand to capture that.

As for the figure itself, it’s darn near perfect. But it falls short in the manufacturer’s continued refusal to include any sort of stand with it.