Deadpool and Taskmaster (Comic Pack)

Height: Deadpool- 10cm. Taskmaster- 11cm.

Articulation: Deadpool- 24 points total- ball-jointed neck; 5 points each arm: universal joint shoulder, universal-joint elbow, wrist swivel; mid-torso ball joint; 6 points each leg: universal-joint hip, double-joint knee, universal joint ankle.

Taskmaster- 24 points total- ball-jointed neck; 5 points each arm: universal joint shoulder, bicep swivel, hinged elbow, forearm swivel; mid-torso ball joint; 5 points each leg: ball-joint hip, double-joint knee, calf swivel, hinge ankle.

Colors: Deadpool- Molded red, silver, tan, and black. Painted black, silver, red and white.
Taskmaster- Molded dark blue, white, orange, black and dark brown. Painted white, orange, dark blue and bone white.

Accessories: Deadpool- Pistol, Katana x2, Knife.
Taskmaster- Pistol, Bow, Shield, Sword.

Release Data: Released August 2011 at an MSRP of $14.99.

Author: RAC

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Desperate to repair his reputation as a master mercenary, Deadpool challenges one of the most dangerous fighters on the planet to a no-holds-barred fight to the finish. With a captive audience watching from the sidelines, Deadpool tackles the Taskmaster with both hands and feet literally tied together.

Rerelease of a popular, oft-scalped anti-hero/villain and first release of a popular villain.

...huh! I wonder why this set is so hard to find...?


Deadpool

I'm not sure what can be said about Deadpool that hasn't been said already. I do appreciate humor of the fourth-wall-breaking kind, and this is what Deadpool does. I mean, this is the character who can beat you to death with his lifebar in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which would justify his existence right there absent of all else.

Even if you got the X-Men Origins Wolverine version (which I didn't, but I did some research), there's a lot new here. Most notably a new head sculpt, and a new, less obstructive harness to help the figure match the art in the comic. This head has smaller circles around the eyes, and the expression is great- you can tell he's got one eyebrow cocked under the mask, and Deadpool should be as expressive as possible. The new harness isn't a giant, bulky Y-harness like the XMO version, but an H-harness which is not connected to his pouchy belt with the logo buckle and scabbard for the included knife. It's not entirely accurate to the comic, as the comic shows a small red piece similar to the one on the Y-harness. I assume it's a smaller, more efficient teleporter. (On a side note, I love when people use the Lazer Tag Star Sensor in their Deadpool cosplay.) Oh, and also the comic version is a shoulder-holster, and there's no gun or holster on the harness. Oops! At least we can't blame the original designers here, unlike with Commander Steve. But the important thing is that it both looks better and doesn't impede torso joint movement the way I understand the original harness did. The original harness also had huge, bulky comic-Leonardo style sheaths for Deadpool's katanas. This one has a couple of small, sensible toy-Leonardo style slots on the harness. Much better-looking, although the katanas do intersect with the knife on the belt. To complete the storage, there's a holster molded onto his right thigh for the pistol- he can carry every piece of equipment he comes with without using his hands.

Paint is largely clean on my copy of the figure... except on his right foot, where the black paint on the soles of his boots has smeared. Considering you could write that off as dirt on his boots, I'm not bothered by it. It is kind of a shame that his hip-joints aren't painted, but even if this type of joint were painted, it wouldn't be painted for long thanks to friction. No real choice here. I've got some concerns about the red plastic- it doesn't feel soft, but it does seem to have some problems. The one ankle seems to be deformed, and the opposite knee joint is weak. So I'd advise treating yours gingerly, but so far it's fine.

We're talking Movie-series style articulation here. The head is technically a ball-joint, but practically speaking a swivel, and the plastic seemed to stress when I tried to pop the head off, so I'm leavin' that alone. The shoulders swivel fine and get well above the shoulder level when raised to the sides. The elbows are universal joints, but swivel is mitigated by the defined elbow in back. I wish they'd quit that. The elbows get almost a 90-degree bend but not quite, and wrist swivels. Deadpool has his right pinky extended, as his etiquette demands when firing a handgun. The torso joint tilts a little bit, and oddly it locks in the full upright position complete with audible click when you move it again. Torso swivel is fine. Swivel is also fine on the hips on both sides, which I'm not sure if I should attribute to materials or design. Either way, they're the easiest-to-adjust movie-style hips I've dealt with in ages. The knees get a decent V-bend, and the ankles swivel fine and tilt respectably. The one I'm pretty sure is warped tilts beautifully, but I assume that's a fluke.


Accessories

-Pistol

Possibly the worst handgun accessory I've ever had. It's made of an extremely soft plastic, or possibly some extremely tough licorice, and came pre-warped in the package, and is so small he can hardly fit his finger in the trigger guard. Time to go to my GI Joe parts box and see what fits that holster!

-Katanas

They fit the hands better and are made of a much more rigid plastic! ...so rigid they'll probably remain warped, as they were when I opened the figures. Drat. But they're not bad if you get a straight pair. Might be time to raid a couple of the several dozen Snake Eyes swords any GI Joe buyer inevitably accrues...

-Knife

Detail is fair but not great, and it fits the hands well. The trick here is that the scabbard on mine was slightly deformed so it's damn hard to get it in and out of the scabbard. Still, it's probably the least problematic weapon here.


Taskmaster

Taskmaster is one of those "powers of the whole team" villains like the Super Skrull or the Mimic but with a twist: while those characters both mimic superpowers and their usual downfall is not having the experience or control that the original user has, Taskmaster has "photographic reflexes," which allow him to copy any human being's physical movement after seeing it only once. So yeah, he's Goku. Besides being a mid-level supervillain he also works as a trainer for pretty much anyone who'll pay, instructing anyone from hired goons up to training US Agent to mimic Captain America's moves. The drawback to this is apparently that remembering all these moves takes up a bunch of space, and so he apparently has someone working for him to keep track of his entire life because his regular memory is shot.

Visually he's pretty neat-looking, with a substantial white, blue and dark orange/light brown, all topped off with a hood and a skull mask. He also carries a slew of weapons: as a figure, he's got a bow and a quiver of arrows for mimicking Hawkeye, a shield for copying Captain America, a pistol and a sword... because he has a pistol and sword, I guess! And like Deadpool, he's got a pouch-covered belt with his personal logo on it. (But he had pouches way back in 1980 before they were cool.)

So, he looks great with a small exception I'll get to in a minute or two. The bad news comes in with the fact that to offset the cost of all these accessories, he uses the version 1 Marvel Universe body, like the Iron Man from the Secret Wars 2-pack I reviewed last year. No thigh swivels, even! Damn. On the upside, he's not as scrawny-looking as the Iron Man figure was, so at least he's visually fine. The one major exception to his good looks is a bit of a giraffe neck; it's a couple millimeters longer than it probaly should be. The cape tends to slide up to meet the base of the hood, which is... sort of good, I guess? It leaves a noticeable gap between the cape and the torso, but I suppose that looks better than his neck sticking up with a disconnected hood on it. The other minor issue is some paint-plastic matching on both the orange and the white parts, but it's worst on the upper arms where a painted orange piece connects to a molded orange piece.

For as high as the head sits, it doesn't gain any extra tilt for it. It barely tilts at all, though it swivels fine. The shoulders swivel as well as they can with all the hardware you have to manuver around and swing 90 degrees out to the side just fine. Bicep swivel works fine, and the elbow gets 90 degrees, which is pretty much acceptible. Because of the long gloves, the swivels are up on the forearms here, and work fine. The torso joint is probably one of the better ones I've seen, with enough range to actually make a noticeable difference in posture. The legs, for their lack of thigh swivels, have pretty good range at the hips, and the knees fold the legs over as well as the cuffed boots will allow. Those boots swivel, at least, which is nice. And the ankles have a pretty good front-to-back range, though they're incredibly loose. Good thing he has that cape to help hold him up. But overall I think it does a bit better than the Iron Man body despite using the same articulation model.


Accessories

-Pistol

For the most part, it appears to be a Mauser c96 with scope and extended magazine. Also something on the barrel which doesn't seem to be anything real you can attach to a Mauser- though it does make it look more like a Star Wars blaster. That's because the Star Wars guns were modified C96s. It fits the holster snugly, which is great because it doesn't fit his hands at all. Sadly, I think any Star Wars equivalents I may have would look off and not fit the holster, so he'll just have to stick to using his

-Bow

which fits either hand snugly. It's about 2/3rds of his height- don't think that qualifies as a longbow, but someone more versed in archery is welcome to chime in and prove me wrong. It's not strung, which is fine since the arrows are all molded into the quiver, which is why I haven't counted it as an accessory. There's no official place to stow it, but it tucks under the cap and quiver strap acceptibly if you want him to switch to his

-Sword

which looks good, fits the scabbard very tightly, and isn't warped at all, and is also way too small for a solid grip. Did Tasky have smaller hands in prototype, or something? And finally we have his

-Shield

Which is obviously a reuse of a Captain America shield because the pattern is painted on and there are sockets for where Cap had the straps that let him sling his shield across his back. There's a small folding C-clamp that attaches to Taskmaster's wrist; it doesn't need to fold for his use, and I wish it didn't. It'd pop off a little less easily when you're trying to attach the shield. But it's perfectly useable, unlike the gun or the sword.


Comic

The comic included is Cable and Deadpool #36, which is a decent comic set during Civil War. (The Marvel one.) Deadpool springs Taskmaster from prison and then uses him in a demonstration to try and rebuild his damaged reputation. It's not the most fun Deadpool comic I've ever read, but it's decent, especially for free. And they do something comics should do more: they go ahead and spell out exactly what's happening on page one. It's called "setting up the story for new readers," and makes it particularly handy as a comic pack story. There's some blood in here I'd lay good money has been recolored black, but oh well, free.


Closing Remarks

Deadpool and Taskmaster each have a few issues- largely accessories issues. But neither one sinks the figure, and with two desirable characters for possibly slightly less than a pair of individually-carded figures go plus a comic, it's a decent deal. Both figures are Good in their own ways, so that seems a fair rating for the set as a whole. It's worth picking up, assuming you see one.

-RAC