ANTI-VENOM

MARVEL LEGENDS INFINITE SERIES

In the 70s and 80s, the mark of a successful comics character was getting a female counterpart. When comics moved into the 90s, the money was all in spinning off a grittier version of your character. Case in point: Venom. Of course, Venom’s kind of an insane example of this, because he ended up getting a spin-off, Carnage, who ended up getting several spin-off characters of his own. And pretty much none of them made it out of the 90s. Eventually, Marvel ended up going back to Venom for spin-offs, and came up with the brilliant idea of Anti-Venom. Can you guess what character I’m looking at today?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Anti-Venom is a part of Series 2 of the Amazing Spider-Man Marvel Legends Infinite Series. Fun fact: in the 5 years the character has been around, Anti-Venom has managed to get a Minimate, a Marvel Select figure, and this here Marvel Legend. Lucky guy. Anti-Venom is about 6 ½ inches tall and has 32 points of articulation. The figure is built on the large male buck, first put to use on Hyperion. It’s a pretty decent body, however the neck sits just a tad too far back. It’s a minor nit, and it isn’t too apparent on this particular figure, but it’s still there, waiting. In addition to the base body pieces, Anti-Venom uses the forearms and hands from last series’ Toxin figure, which themselves are just resized versions of Carnage’s hands. He also has a brand-new head and… uhh… back spikes? I really don’t know what those are. But, they’re well sculpted, I guess, and easily removable, if back spikes aren’t your thing. The head is a rather nice piece, and there’s some rather nice detail work, especially on the face. Anti-Venom is, for the most part, just white plastic with black paint for detail. The black is generally pretty evenly applied, and the edges are all nice and sharp. It’s also pretty shiny, which works well for the whole symbiote look. There’s a little bit of misplacement on the black parts of the head; there are some etched lines that it seems like the black is supposed to go inside of, but in ends up just being in the same general area. Given the various sculpted texture in the surrounding areas, it’s not immediately noticeable, but it’s there. The head also has some orange for the eyes and mouth, and that’s all pretty decently applied as well, although the eyes do have a little bit of bleed through from the black underneath.  Anti-Venom is a little on the light side as far as accessories go, only coming with the left leg of the series’ Build-A-Figure, Hobgoblin. The lack of extras is forgivable, though, since he’s a larger figure.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Yeah, I picked up Anti-Venom as part of the full set of Spider-Man Legends I ordered through Big Bad Toy Store. I really wanted Hobgoblin, so I bit the bullet and just bought the whole series. I’m not a huge fan of the Anti-Venom concept, so I didn’t really have high expectations for the figure, but he’s actually not bad. Sure, he’s not as amazing as some of the other Legends we’ve gotten recently, but he’s pretty solid, and he does have a clean, bold look to him. I do find it interesting that in the last year of Legends, we’ve gotten the Flash Thompson version of Venom and both of Eddie Brock’s post-Venom identities, and we’re even getting the “Superior Venom” later this year, but we’ve yet to get an update on the classic Brock Venom. This figure shows that they can certainly do him justice, so maybe he’ll show up soon.