Avengers! A few new picsAbove we see the Black Panther in what appears to be his original costume, even perched atop a small Panther totem. Next to him is Taskmaster, back in what appears to be his original costume. The base is complete, too, so that we can see he's both an uncommon (the green background to the set logo) and a member of the Minions of Doom, so he keeps the wildcard TA that helped make the Xplosion versions so fittingly versatile.
Below is a shot, even a little blurrier, of the Iron Spider-Man on the left, the Black Panther on the right, and the Red Skull in the middle. This shot of the Skull is from his moment of triump, when he had control of the Cosmic Cube (it's in his right hand and difficult to distinguish from his glove in this shot) and so could have whatever he wished for.
The Red Skull has accurately blousy-thighed pants to cover his WWII-era roots, but seems a tad slight in the shoulders and chest. Capturing him at the height of his hubris, when he'd fashioned a golden suit of armor for himself, would have been both more striking and appropriate, but what we appear to have in store is still fairly cool. If the dial will have any more success at representing a character whose wish becomes reality, though... that's where I'm expecting it to fall down.
Oh, I've also just seen that an article in Game Trade magazine(#87, May 2007) has listed the roll call for the Legion of Superheroes starter set: Superman, Cosmic Boy, Phantom Girl, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Timber Wolf, and Ultra Boy.
Comments
Am I the only one who is starting to get a little tired of extraneous objects being included in the sculpts? At first it was interesting, but lately, I've come to more and more miss the sculpts that simple feature the figure itself in some kind of pose.
I wonder what level that Black Panther is going to be. A Batman level Black Panther, to reflect how he's been developed over the past several years (okay, ::gack:: ten years, but, you know, let's pretend it's less than that so we don't have to stick our heads in any ovens) is something a great many people have been clamoring for, and I wouldn't mind seeing a more competent T'Challa myself... but at the same time, a rookie level Panther with a Fantastic Four TA would be kind of charming, too. Ah, well. Guess we'll just wait and see.
The Panther statue/totem T'Challa's standing on struck me as a nice touch for a statue, but, yeah, it's more of a snapshot representation than something that should be lugged from one square to the next on a battlefield. At least for the Panther and Red Skull the objects mean something, though. The Spider-man variant is on an object that's just clutter making the sculptor's job a little easier, I suppose.
Not knowing how basic any of these are (to what degree they're mock-ups) it's difficult to make strong statements about which versions some of these represent -- Black Panther in particular. The way he's presented here, though, the statue is covering any shot at a TA on the dial. It looks like a very muscled, Kirbyesque version to me, leaning towards an early appearance, but how much can we really tell from this shot? Could it be an early version with no TA and only Fantastic Four and maybe Avengers as keywords? I know there's an Animal keyword or something similar, and depending on what Seth's thinking at the moment he might even have "Scientist" on there.
Late June - possibly earlier via spoilers and previews - we'll know.