ARCHANGEL

X-MEN (TOY BIZ)

“Rich playboy Warren Worthington III was the X-Men’s Angel until the day that he was captured and transformed into one of the horsemen of Apocalypse. A darker reflection of his previous self, Archangel now possessed wings made of metal – wings that he could barely control, wings that fired paralyzing “feathers” at friends as well as enemies. Constantly battling his dark side, Archangel longed to regain the goodness that he once stood for. Recently finding kinship with the X-Men’s Psylocke, Archangel has come to terms with his transformation, and has started to rebuild the life he thought he had lost forever!”

Do you guys like X-Men?  I heard somewhere that you might.  I mean, I do.  And it’s my site.  So, you know, it’s ultimately my call, right?  Amusingly, I was actually not gonna do an X-themed review today, but then I thought better of it.  Yay for me.  And here, on the day before the day before X-Mas, I’m reviewing an X-Man named Archangel, which feels somewhat appropriate, right?  Sort of that “lo, an angel of Xavier appear and they were sore afraid” kinda vibe?  Of course, it’s just Warren Worthington, and he’s kind of a push over prep school guy, so, maybe not “sore afraid.”  I’m getting sore afraid of this intro going any longer, if I’m honest.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Archangel is from the Battle Brigade Series of Toy Biz’s X-Men line, which was the 14th assortment.  I’ve already reviewed the standard version of this figure, but he, like all of the figures in this particular line-up, also had a color variant.  While the standard was in his white and blue, Neal Adams-inspired costume, this one’s in the Champions-inspired version.  The figure stands 5 1/4 inches tall and he has 9 points of articulation.  He’s the exact same mold as the standard version, which was itself largely re-used from the “Invasion” series release.  It’s still a little bulky for Warren, and we’re just ignoring the sculpted wrist bands.  Still, it’s not too terrible.  I do rather like this particular head sculpt, especially for this version of Warren.  The wings remain a bit floppy as well, but they do at least look the part.  In terms of paint work, this guy’s got the same layout as the standard, but with red in place of the blue.  It’s a little rough on some of the edges, but otherwise looks pretty solid.  Like the standard and Invasion releases, this guy gets no accessories.  He’s still got the wing-flapping action, though, which remains pretty nifty.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

This guy is actually quite a recent acquisition for me.  I’ve been wanting one since shortly after I got my original, so it’s been a good 20 years, but in all that time, I’ve never seen the variant in person.  I was at Ocean City Comic Con last weekend, and found a booth that had exactly one sealed Toy Biz X-Men figure in it, which happened to be this guy.  I was honestly pretty excited.  He’s obviously not super different from the regular release, but the color change-up is enough to give him a pretty unique look.  It certainly helps that I liked the standard figure so much in the first place.