My apologies for the large gap in New York Comic Con coverage! I had braces put in this week, and what I thought was going to be a minor irritant ended up sidelining me for days. Alas. But I’m back now, and looking to fill in the NYCC blanks with the last of the Marvel Legends Hasbro brought along to the show: the previously-announced 2019 Marvel Legends Spider-Man Kingpin Series!

I was about to move on to discussion of the Diamond Select Toys and Sideshow Collectibles showings from NYCC 2018, when I realized there were still a handful of figures at the Hasbro Press Event I hadn’t talked about yet at all: the ML Kingpin Wave.

While the figures displayed at the event had been shown at SDCC 2018, this was my first chance to pose and touch them to my heart’s content. Let’s take a look…

The high point of this wave—by a landslide—is the Marvel Legends Kingpin Build-A-Figure.

Kingpin’s bulky body proportions are dead-on perfect for the character, and his diamond-topped cane is stellar. This body also works shockingly well with the upcoming Shadow King head coming with Professor X.

While I really dig the stoic head on this Kingpin BAF, the open-mouthed, angry head with raised eyebrows is perfect for an infuriated Wilson Fisk. While I wanted a Netflix Kingpin more, there’s no faulting the excellence of this comic-based Kingpin figure.

The rest of this wave… is a little bit less desirable. Marvel Legends Black Cat makes a return in her modern Marvel NOW costume, but this costume is far from popular with mainstream fans.

Sad as it may be, the yellow cat-eyes costume has just never caught on fandom. Black Cat merch always seems to sell well, but I have a bunch this won’t be as much a hot-ticket item as we’re used to.

Felicia Hardy isn’t coming alone, though—her costar from the now-cancelled “Silver & Black” movie is also in the wave: Marvel Legends Silver Sable!

Hasbro has never tackled Silver Sable before, but she has been released as a Minimate, a HeroClix figurine and a Toybiz figure in the past.

I legit can’t remember the last time I read a great (or good) Silver Sable story, but I am looking forward to a super-articulated Legends figure of her.

Not at the Hasbro Press Event, but announced during a New York Comic Con livestream, it’s Marvel Legends Night Thrasher! I was shocked to see the tumbleweeds rolling past hype-wise when this figure was announced, as I’ve got great memories of Night Thrasher from the original New Warriors series. He looks terrific, though I fear he’s destined to peg-warm.

From Dan Slott’s “Go Down Swinging” final arc of Amazing Spider-Man, we’ve got Marvel Legends Red Goblin and Modern Symbiote Spider-Man.

While I’m a hardcore Black Costume Spider-Man fan, this new stylized Symbiote Spidey is really leaving me cold.

I feel like this particular costume looks more silly on Peter Parker than it does badass. I’ll buy it—because I’m not going to do without that Kingpin Build-A-Figure—but this is one of the lesser-appealing Spidey variants in quite some time.

Red Goblin is a bit more tantalizing to me. I mean, hey—it’s Norman Osborn with the Carnage symbiote. What’s not to love, right?

In person, I don’t especially like the way that the Red Goblin “mask” is designed to show the human head underneath, unfortunately.

I asked the Hasbro team if the development work to put a large tail on Red Goblin could be carried over to a Squirrel Girl, but the team played coy with their answer. Keep dreaming, Doreen fans!

Finally, we’ve got the “Into the Spider-Verse” Marvel Legends two-pack of Miles Morales Spider-Man and Spider-Gwen. This set has actually appeared already in some parts of the world, but I don’t believe it’s been spotted anywhere in the United States yet.

This set is a 100% repaint, but is fine for those who missed the first releases of Spider-Gwen and Miles. I think the Gwen Stacy head is still not lively and attractive enough, but otherwise this duo is “fine”. Nothing for those who have the originals to get excited about, but certainly nice to have in mainstream circulation.

The Marvel Legends Spider-Man 2019 Wave 1 figures should be up for order in late 2018/early 2019, and are scheduled for release in Q1 2019. This is the first Marvel Legends wave of the year, so hopefully stores will order plenty and building Kingpin will be a cinch. (Hopefully.)

We somehow still haven’t seen every figure in the series, but what do you think do the Kingpin wave so far, Marvel collectors? Will you be buying all the figures in this set to build Kingpin, ordering a completed Kingpin off the aftermarket, picking and choosing your favorites, or skipping this wave entirely?