LILANDRA NERAMANI

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

Just three issues into Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum’s run on X-Men, readers were introduced to the Sh’iar via its first member, and eventual empress, Lilandra Neramani.  Lilandra would become a major recurring character through the Phoenix Saga, and in fact a notable recurring character for the X-universe as a whole.  She got a good focus on X-Men: The Animated Series, and even got a returning role in X-Men ’97 earlier this year.  Despite her prominent placement in the mythos, she’s not been exceedingly lucky with toy coverage.  She had a Minimate, but that’s effectively nothing these days.  Beyond that, she was relegated to just an extra head included with Mystique.  But no more!  No, now she’s getting real coverage!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Lilandra Neramani was part of a Marvel Legends two-pack released earlier in the year.  The pack is inexplicably part of the Wolverine anniversary celebration, made slightly less weird by the inclusion of a Brood-Infected Wolverine as the other half of the set.  It’s still a little odd to pack Lilandra and Wolverine together, given they don’t exactly have much of a history, but then neither do Lilandra and Mystique, so maybe it’s just her thing?  She’s seen here in her armored attire, which is very Empress-y.  Doesn’t quite have the same nostalgic twinge for me as her original design, but that one’s also a little harder to sell as a toy, I feel.  The figure stands a little over 6 inches tall and she has 29 points of articulation.  Her sculpt uses some of the more standardized female buck parts, but she gets her fair share of new ones.  The most surprising new piece is the head, which isn’t a re-use of the Mystique piece as I’d expected it to be.  The detailing on this one is a little sharper and the shaping on the helmet is more in-line with her usual depictions.  The body sculpt gets a lot of character specific elements, rather than leaning into the painted detail side.  This is especially notable on the chest; those lines are actually etched in.  Her color work uses a lot of molded colors, but there’s a little bit of paint mixed in there as well.  The work on the face is particularly crisp.  Lilandra is packed with two sets of hands, in gripping and flat/fist pairs.  She’s also got her staff, which is a brand new sculpt.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Since ’70s X-Men is my favorite era of X-Men, I’m always down for figures of the characters that originated there.  This set, however, presented me with a conundrum, since it paired Lilandra off with a decidedly ’80s Wolverine variant.  I thought about sticking with my Mystique head on Silver Sable body, but I did really like the more character-specific elements, and I thought I might be able to suffer through the Wolverine to get her.  I didn’t actually have to, though, because somebody who bought the set from All Time only wanted the Wolverine, so there was a spare Lilandra.  Well, not really, because it really meant there was a Lilandra for me.  She’s a solid figure.  I’d still love a first appearance version, but this one’s a good one to start with.

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 and their eBay storefront.