The big draw of the Marvel Select Fearsome Foes box set is definitely the Flash Thompson Venom figure. However, there are three other figures in the set to help collectors out by giving them several Spider-Man related characters in one fell swoop. The figure I'm taking a look at now is Spider-Man. This figure is a straight reissue from a previous release. Join me as I take a closer look and determine if he's a good pick for the box set.

Check out hi-res images for this figure in our GALLERY below.





PACKAGING - Spider-Man comes in a giant window box with the other three figures in the set. He's posed in the package so you can see him clearly, with his display base packaged behind him. The box features art work of all the characters inside, with huge vibrant logos letting you know that they're all Spider-Man characters. The back features photos of each figure, as well as bios for each character.

SCULPT - Spider-Man stands at about 7" tall. It's hard to pinpoint a specific era this figure was based on in the comics, but suffice it to say that this is very much Spider-Man. He has a slender build, but you can still see lots of muscle definition under his suit. The webbing on the suit is sculpted in negative relief, to help make it easier to paint all the lines in. Still, I've never liked negative relief webbing on a Spider-Man figure. Call me picky, but it never made much sense, when you think about him as a real person. If someone in real life had that type of webbing on him, that would mean it would have to be dug into his skin. I've always preferred the webbing just be painted on, or sculpted in positive relief.

His left hand is a fist, while his right is posed to shoot some webbing, something I think it essential for any Spider-Man figure. His head sculpt looks awesome. It's hard to mess up Spider-Man's head, but even still I really like this one. The shape, and the size of the eyes feel very "comic booky", and I really dig it.

PAINT - The paints used on Spider-Man are very vibrant and look quite good for the most part. There's some washes applied to the blues that come out looking sloppy more than anything. A lot of the webbing is left unpainted, and some of it goes outside of the lines and onto the red parts of the costume. The whites of his eyes look mostly clean, with only a few small spots that look sloppy. On the whole, it looks like they didn't spend much time or effort on painting this figure.


ARTICULATION - Spider-Man has a ball jointed neck, ball jointed shoulders, swivel-hinged elbows, cut wrists, cut waist, ball jointed hips, swivel-hinged knees, and hinged ankles. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. There's not much you can do with the figure at all. His upper body articulation is ok, though why he has no ab crunch or floating ab joint is beyond me. His lower body articulation is really bad though. Even though he has ball jointed hips, there's hardly any movement there. I can see that they sit on ball joints, but it's just not designed to allow much outer movement. They move back and forth ok, and the figure stands well, but you're not going to get any classic Spidey poses out of him. What you see in the photos is probably as good as it gets.


ACCESSORIES - He comes with a rather cool display stand. It's a crushed car, no doubt due to him battling with Rhino or any of his other rogues. It's got all kinds of paint weathering and realistic looking cracking to the windshield and crumpling of the fiberglass body. Even though it's meant to be a crushed car, it still looks too small for the scene it's meant to be in, but it's really not that big of a deal. Just pretend it's a smart car or something. Besides, it's still a really cool display stand to include.


FUN - This figure isn't very fun at all. For me, a figure has to have a good amount of articulation so it can be posed all sorts of ways for me to find it fun. This just doesn't. And the articulation it does have isn't very useful. His display base is a lot of fun, but it's just hard to consider a Spider-Man figure fun when you can't actually place him in any Spider-Man poses.


QUALITY CONTROL/THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR - If you have the luxury, just watch out for his paint job and try to get one that isn't very sloppy.


OVERALL - This is a pretty bad figure. The sculpt looks great, but everything else is sub par and down. The paint job, while having vibrant base colors, is really messed up with the sloppy wash and the paint job on the webbing. The articulation is abysmal, especially considering it's a Spider-Man figure and he needs as much articulation as possible. I get that it's a slightly older reissue, but with as much articulation as Marvel Select has been putting into their figures recently, it makes it even more apparent just how lacking this figure is.

His display base is a lot of fun and makes a good prop for any shelf display, but it's pretty telling when the coolest part of a figure is the accessory he comes with. If you are looking for the best possible Spider-Man figure out there, definitely look elsewhere. If you're just wanting one that's in scale with your other Marvel Select figures and don't care about articulation, then you might not be bothered by the flaws in this. Since reviews are subjective, I can only give you my opinion, and I really would recommend not picking this one up.


FINAL SCORE: 1.5 / 5


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