MASTER MORDO

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Mordo has gone rogue since leaving Kamar-Taj, hunting other sorcerers for breaking the laws of reality, and is never far off the trail of Doctor Strange.”

In addition to some new faces, and some guest-starring faces, Doctor Strange: Into the Multiverse of Madness also has some faces that were in the last movie.  And the rest of the people attached to those faces, I suppose.  One of the returning person and face combos is Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Karl Mordo, though the face is now sporting a beard, so it looks a little different, I guess.  But, the face is still Mordo, and so’s the rest of him.  Well…mostly.  I’ll get to that.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Master Mordo is figure 3 in the Rintrah Series of Marvel Legends.  He’s the second-to-last of the movie figures, with the final one being the second of the two Strange variants.  Mordo’s getting his second Legends release here, since he was the only non-Stephen Strange figure to get a movie offering the first time around.  This one’s obviously based on his appearance in the sequel, which looks to be taking him a little closer to his comics roots, with longer hair, a beard, and some slightly more ornate robes.  The figure stands about 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 30 points of articulation.  Mordo’s posablility is okay.  It matches up more or less with Wong and Strange.  There’s some restriction at the shoulders, and the hair obviously has an effect on the neck joint, but he’s not bad at all.  The sculpt on this figure is largely new, though not entirely so.  The legs and feet are borrowed from the Vol 2 Star-Lord.  Not sure as to how accurate that’ll be to the final film, but they’re generally pretty hidden, and the details are vague enough that they don’t look super out of place.  The only downside is the visible pins at the knees, but, again, that’s pretty well hidden.  The rest of the sculpt is all-new, and it’s pretty good at that.  The head has a really strong likeness of Ejiofor, improving on the passable likeness of the last one.  The body sculpt exhibits a good selection of texturing and depth, which makes him quite visually interesting, and is a good use of the general space of the sculpt.  Mordo’s paint work is generally pretty solid as well.  The head now gets the printing on the face, which aids the sculpt a good bit more than the last one, and the clothing gets a lot of smaller details, which help to accent the sculpted elements nicely.  Mordo is packed with three sets of hands (fists, gripping, and open gesture), the Staff of the Living Tribunal (rather than the generic staff the last figure erroneously included), a crossbow, and the right arm to the Rintrah Build-A-Figure.  Oddly, the hands seem to have slightly different peg sizes, resulting in some of them fitting loosely after swapping them around.  It’s minor, but it’s annoying.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Mordo was my favorite part of the first film, and by extension my favorite of the figures from that set.  I’m looking forward to seeing him reappear, and likewise I was looking forward to the updated figure, so this one was on my shortlist from this line up.  He’s not without his flaws, namely the shoulder movement and the issue with the hand pegs.  That said, I still really like how this one turned out, and I’m even more excited about seeing his role in the upcoming film.

Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review.  If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website.