Avengers Assemble Wave 2 Is Marvel Now At Its Best

Avengers Assemble Series 2 delivers four great new modern Marvel heroes and villains.

I was very impressed with the first series of Avengers Assemble figures, which employed some great new designs and lots of very clever parts reuse as only Hasbro could do so expertly.  Series Two continues this winning trend, with four more great comic book style Avengers characters, many of whom are based on the current Marvel Now! comic looks.

The set sees the release of the final three core Avengers in this series– Thor, Hawkeye and Nick Fury.  Thor gets an all new sculpt featuring the God of Thunder in his current Marvel Now outfit, which is kind of a more streamlined version of his previous costume.  Thor is very poseable, with rocker ankles, double knees and ball hips on top of the standard Avengers articulation, allowing lots of posing options.  The mighty Avenger includes his hammer and a recast of a goofy sword/ axe kind of thing.

Hawkeye is also depicted in his Marvel Now! togs, via a repaint of the movie figure with a new quiver and new unmasked head.  Clint looks very good, with the matte black and metallic purple of his costume offering a dynamic contrast.  However, the sculpting of the movie costume gets in the way of the comic book design, making it slightly off model than his on-page appearance.  And the body still sports arms that are too short, and could greatly benefit from wrist articulation that is sadly lacking.  Still, this Hawkeye is a good approximation of his current look, and the new head looks great.

Nick Fury gets a new figure as well, which is a repaint of his Avengers figure in comic book SHIELD colors under his trench coat, and a new head modeled after his Ultimate look.  The new colors definitely make this guy pop more than the solid black outfit of his movie figure, and he works quite well as both an Ultimate Fury or 616 son of Fury.  The SHIELD commander includes his pistol with a leg holster and a pop-open jetpack from the Captain America movie line.

The final figure is the wave’s sole villain, and the star of the show– The Leader is a great new figure and a must-have for any Hulk fans.  This version of the green goliath’s arch nemesis features a great new head with a nasty ridged brain atop a very smart repaint of the comic style Skrull figure from the Avengers movie line.  The body works incredibly well in The Leader’s iconic black and orange costume, and he includes a wrist mounted missile launcher that actually works well for the villain.  The only dow2nside with this guy is his limited articulation– he lacks wrists, a torso joint and ankles– but a bad guy like Leader doesn’t necessarily need to be super articulated, and he looks cool enough to make up for the slightly limited poseability.

Avengers Assemble continues to impress with this new wave, and it makes me hopeful for the future of Marvel’s 3.75″ universe.  There was some panic when Hasbro announced Marvel Universe would be morphing into an Avengers toy line, but the quality of this previous iteration of the comic style Avengers in this scale should put to rest any concerns collectors may have.