While Avengers Infinity War will go down as one of the most legendary superhero team-up movies in history, it didn’t just feature many beloved existing characters interacting—it also introduced some significant new villains to non-comic book readers in the form of Thanos’ Black Order. Proxima Midnight was the sole representative in the first wave of Infinity War Marvel Legends, but she’s got some large help now. The Marvel Legends Cull Obsidian Build-A-Figure is on the scene and selling for $60+ on the aftermarket: is it worth building this big boy?

While MCU-only fans were just introduced to the Black Order this spring when the Avengers Infinity War movie hit theaters, Marvel comic book readers have been familiar with the group for several years now.

While the membership has changed a bit over the years in the comics, the “core” group that appears in Infinity War has remained the most memorable iteration—including the subject of today’s review, Cull Obsidian.

Originally called “Black Dwarf” in the comics, Marvel Studios changed the name of the character for obvious reasons. But while he’s only called Cull Obsidian in the movies, this figure looks like a clear mashup of the comic book and movie designs of the character.

Even with just a brief glance, you can see that the costume on this figure isn’t even close to the uniform that Cull Obsidian is wearing in Infinity War. But while the costume has a closer likeness to the comic book version of the character, his “skin” color is the dark brown/green color from the movie and not the gold/orange color the character has in the comics.

The action figure itself is pretty great as a generic alien warrior, but I’m not fully satisfied with him as a Cull Obsidian/Black Dwarf, as I’m not crazy about him not being a close match to either version of the character.

There are two main “add-on” costume pieces on this figure: a piece of shoulder armor on his right shoulder and an armored loincloth around his waist. Both pieces fit rather snugly and without hindering the articulation in the Cull Obsidian BAF much—although his legs were prone to popping back off of I tried to push them forward too much.

As you would expect from the biggest and baddest powerhouse of the Black Order, the ML Cull Obsidian BAF stands an impressive 8”+ tall and weighs around a pound. He’s got a nice heft to him, and can hold up smaller figures like Infinity War Black Widow without breaking a sweat (if toys could sweat—which they can’t).

Although Marvel Legends Cull Obsidian is a pretty bulky guy, he’s still got a respectable amount of articulation build in, including:

• Ball-hinge neck, shoulders, wrists, and feet
• Ball hips
• Swivel biceps, waist and thighs
• Hinge elbows
• Double hinge knees
• Ball-jointed upper torso

The best part of the entire sculpt on this figure is probably the head, which looks wonderfully alien and grotesque, while also featuring probably the best paintwork on the whole figure. I would have preferred a more ferocious and less stoic facial expression, since Cull Obsidian is a pretty aggressive guy, but the head looks awesome nonetheless.

Paint-wise, I’m of two minds with this figure. While the paint that’s here on this Cull Obsidian BAF is well-done, I think that overall the paint deco on this figure is pretty sparse and basic. To me, Cull Obsidian’s armor would look much improved with a dark wash, while his scales don’t look as impressive as they could being primarily just unpainted plastic.

While last year’s Gladiator Hulk Build-A-Figure suffered from some pretty embarrassing “limpy hammer”’issues, that’s not going to be the case with Cull Obsidian’s hardware. Cull’s hammer is totally stiff and rigid, and doesn’t seem likely to start drooping any time soon. (And yes, I know how dirty that whole paragraph sounded.)

I had a few troubles getting the hammer into Cull Obsidian’s hands, which are also made of a rigid plastic that I had to pry apart a bit to insert the hammer. Once it was in, though, it wasn’t going to fall out easily. (I do think an axe would have been more appropriate as a weapon for this character than a hammer, though.)

Overall: The Cull Obsidian Marvel Legends Build-A-Figure is beautifully sculpted, suitably big and bulky, and very cool visually. Even so, the character design Hasbro went with for the figure won’t appeal to everyone, his hammer-wielding poses are stifled by a lack of better arm articulation, and he could use some more paint shading. As a large and imposing alien I think this figure is really neat, but it just doesn’t feel like a definitive figure of this character to me.

GRADE: B-