Toy Review: Marvel Legends Spider-Venom Mostly Rules

It’s rare for a modern superhero to have two equally iconic designs. Sure, guys like Cyclops and Batman have a few really cool, well loved designs. But you can probably name truly iconic designs for popular characters on one hand, one of which Hasbro has immortalized in a recent Marvel Legend.

Without a doubt, one of those heroes is Spider-Man with his iconic red and blue and his eighties-debuting black and white costume. Now, the black and white costume has a complex history. 

Debuting in Secret Wars #8, Peter Parker first thought the costume was just an alien fabric that he discovered on Battleworld. Once he returned home from the Secret Wars, he gradually discovered that the costume was an intelligent alien lifeform, which through a long series of events eventually became Venom. (Did you really think I would cover the entire origin of Venom in a paragraph?)

Decades later, and so much has happened with the Venom symbiote, resulting in Venom War, as several Venom hosts battled over who would keep the mantle (and so much more). Peter Parker ended up bonded with Venom over the course of the events of the story, as the war raged around them. This resulted in a cool new variation of the black costume, which has been adapted into plastic form here.

If it’s not obvious from my preview action figure reviews, I’m a huge sucker for Spider-Man figures. I far and away have more Spider-Man in my collection than any other character (with Superman, Wolverine, Cyclops and Snake-Eyes probably being the runners up). But for the most part, they’re variations of the red and blue or variants like Miles, Scarlet Spider, 2099 and Uncanny. Besides Spider-Venom, I only have one other black suit, and honestly, I think I’m going to leave that one on the retro card.

That’s a long way to say this figure is a blast. 

Starting with the design standpoint, the Spider-Venom costume is a modern take on the original black suit’s design. It adds a few modern elements, but the figure translates that design into 3D so well. Spidey should look slim and agile, not muscular or even athletic. That’s exactly what we get here. And I love the alternate Peter Parker headsculpt, which looks very much like Marvel modern house style. It would just be nice to have the same alt head without the symbiote tendrils to potentially use with other Spider-Men.

At this point, I feel like I know what to expect with a Spider-Man figure’s posing ability, and this figure does not disappoint. It didn’t just pose well. It posed like Spider-Man. Minus an included stand (the 3D printed screws on mine are wearing out fast so I borrowed one of my McFarlane stands), this figure posed well both in a fairly neutral sense, as well as action and jumping poses.

I was also very happy with the included accessories. Every Spider needs to come with alternate thwip hands and wall-crawling hands are a pleasant bonus. Normally I would say it also needs webs, but for story reasons, the symbiote used a chain instead this time around. The chain is mostly great, but not doing it as a wired piece did limit how it could be used a bit.

So was this figure perfect? Not quite but it’s excellent. This would be the first figure I’d recommend for someone looking for a black suit Spidey, or even just a good “core” Spider-Man.