[Dr Kain]

My thoughts on the Hellfire Club dudes:

Sebastian & Pierce - I'm putting these two together because they are pretty much the same figure just with different heads. Overall, the sculpts are fantastic and the paint apps are solid. My only concern is with their legs as the legs seem to stick every time I try to spread them out or raise them or something. It's kind of hard to get them to stay in a pose I want them in. The robot hands are a really nice touch for Pierce, though I forget the context to them other than one hand got damaged in the fight againt the X-Men during the Dark Phoenix Saga.

White Queen - Her cape being different does warrant not pairing her and Jean together. The face sculpt is again outstanding, but I really hate how hard they made her cape. It should have been a soft rubber like they did with Storm's cape to allow her arms to spread open because as is, it/s very restricted. I love that she has the option between open hands and fists, however, it doesn't really do any good when you can't do much with her. A couple of effects would have been nice to demonstrate her powers though.

Jean - THe head sculpt is the best of the four, however, I feel like I'm going to rip the barbell disk out every time I remove it due to how tight it is on her body. Also, the spikey choker does not want to sit still, so it rides all of the up to the top of her neck and is really frustrating to pull out. Furthermore, one of her legs are loose so she can't stand up properly with the way her legs need to be positioned due to the heels for more than a few seconds. And again, the cape hinders what you can do with her arms, though not as much as it does for White Queen. I will also say I do not like the black cape as I am pretty sure it was blue in the comics. With that aside, I love that she has three sets of hands to play around with and the whip is a nice touch even though Jean never used it. The Selene head is cool, yet, it seems to sit a little too high on the neck and getting the choker to stay in place is even worse with her since her long hair makes it impossible to touch it at all compared to the Jean head. Something looks off about her as I see Madame Hydra in her facial features more than I do Selene. Still, it's a great add-on nonetheless and allows you to decide if you want to display your gang with Jean as the Black Queen or if you want to have her replacement.

The rest of the accessories are cool albeit it a tad unneccessary. I can't help but laugh that they didn't paint Magneto's helmet decoration here while they did on the actual figure, which makes me wish they were interchangeable. Oh I'm sure with a lot of heating, pulling, and scream in frustration I could swap them, but I'm not going to do that. The Hellfire Club book is fine, though the plastic appears to be really soft as I ended up making a big permenant indentation into it when I had Sebastian hold it for like a minute, so that is annoying.

Overall, I am very pleased with this set and hope we don't have to wait too long for Leland and Wyngarde. I do wish my Guardsman had shipped together with them though so I could have taken pictures of everyone at the same time. Oh well.