I probably own more action figures of Spider-Man than any other Marvel character. In fact, I probably own more Spider-Man action figures than any other character, period. So it isn’t very often that a new Spidey figure goes up for order that I’m really, really excited about. But today, Diamond Select Toys surprised me with just such a figure, as it’s the most comic book-y Spidey around: the Marvel Shop Exclusive Marvel Select Spectacular Spider-Man is now up for order! With the light blue costume and Peter Parker head, this is gonna be my favorite Marvel Select Spidey ever…

In their latest “Ask DST” Marvel column, Diamond Select Toys teased that we’d be seeing the first Marvel comics-based Select figure of 2016 revealed today. My head swam with all sorts of possibilities, but I was primarily thinking that we’d be seeing the first-ever Marvel Select Black Panther, Vision, Crossbones or Quicksilver figure today.

Turns out that it’s none of the above, though, as the first comic book-inspired DST figure of 2016 turns out to be a new iteration of Spider-Man, exclusive to the Disney Store and online Marvel Shop! I should probably be disappointed that the selection isn’t a unique character (and I am, slightly), but it turns out that this Spidey has plenty to offer that his predecessors do not…

The really big draw here for myself (and I reckon for many other collectors) is the comic-based interchangeable Peter Parker head included with this figure. We don’t get Peter Parker portraits very often as pack-ins, and when we do, they tend to not be all that great. This Diamond Peter Parker portrait, however, looks awesome.

Seriously, this looks exactly the way that I picture comic book Peter Parker in my head. And while the expression on Peter isn’t over the top, you can definitely see the faintest hint of Peter breaking into a grin on this figure’s face. Great stuff!

The other big selling-point of this figure is that he features the rarely-seen-in-toy-form light blue and red costume! Sideshow Collectibles was supposed to give us this light blue shade on their J. Scott Campbell maquette but blew it, and I can’t recall the last time before that that we saw this beautiful baby blue costume captured in toy form.

I much prefer the light blue costume to the dark blue, so the color choice alone would have made this a must-buy for my collection.

In addition to the interchangeable unmasked Spider-Man head, the figure also includes a “removed” (empty) mask and a camera (for scamming J. Jonah Jameson out of his money!), as well as a total of eight interchangeable hands. There’s no base included with this figure, but I think the solid number of accessories makes up for that omission.

For some reason that I cannot begin to comprehend, the back of the packaging for this Spectacular Spider-Man Marvel Select figure features a ton of artwork of Captain America. My best guess is that this is because of Spidey’s impending appearance in the “Captain America: Civil War” film. Otherwise, I got nothing.

As with all DST Marvel figures, Spectacular Spidey is in the 7″ scale (and in this case, is exactly 7″ tall), so he’s a bit too big to fit in seamlessly with a Hasbro Marvel Legends collection. He’ll look great with the increasingly large number of DST figures out there, though!

There’s a limit of two Spectacular Spider-Man Marvel Select figures per person, so sadly, it appears you won’t be able to army-build this exclusive Spider-Man figure (though I’m not sure why anyone would be army-building a unique individual anyway, but whatever).

The exclusive Marvel Select Spectacular Spider-Man 7″ figure is now available for order, and is scheduled to be released by February 29th 2016 (yay Leap Day!). This particular figure won’t be available for order via comic book shops or online retailers other than the Marvel Shop/Disney Store, so your options are limited on where to snag this Spider-Man from.

What do you think of the first comics-based Marvel Select 2016 figure? Are you psyched to get an uncommon iteration of Spidey, or are you disappointed that this year’s first big reveal isn’t a new/unique character instead?