[En Sabah Nerd]

My AoA Magneto and Iceman were delivered from Amazon. I ordered Rogue at the same time as these two but for whatever reason her current delivery estimate isn't until the end of the month, although I am reasonably confident it won't actually take that long. Magneto is a nice solid figure, the only new parts are his heads and the cape/shoulder-pads piece since everything else is borrowed from a couple of the previous releases. I've just always really liked his AoA design for being similar to his default look but having those key distinctions so I already knew I'd like this toy. In hand I am really impressed by how much better the non-helmeted head looks than it did when revealed and it does capture his appearance from the source material, but there's a part of me that just thinks Magneto isn't Magneto without the helmet so that's how he's going on the shelf. I'm not really getting a strong magnetic power vibe from giving him the flame energy pieces in purple though so that's a semi-weird inclusion but on the other hand they look good on Dr Doom so they're just free extra bits as far as Magneto is concerned.

Iceman was probably my least looked-forward-to figure in this wave but that really speaks more to how much I want the wave overall. Right out of the box Iceman is a much nicer plastic quality than the gummy Juggernaut wave figure (I skipped the retro version so I don't know how that one felt) and he just looks nice. I do think the translucent blue should have been lighter in color like the original digital render but with the white frosted paint effects applied here and there the point is still made that he's supposed to be a frozen-water person. They seem to have taken a lot of influence for the figure from his appearance as the Sinister Iceman in Uncanny X-Force, the head is ripped straight from those comics, but that works pretty well for me since he didn't really do much in the original series and wasn't given a whole lot of character until they revisited him in UXF. I think then the inclusion of the cleverly redone Carnage hands works well with that Sinister Iceman motif but I don't exactly remember if he ever did that in the original or not. One note I have that isn't about the figure is the write-up on the back of the box. I know they aren't writing those for all the "die-hard fans," we don't need any help on knowing who these characters are, but referring to AoA as a "dystopian future" is blatantly wrong since the entire story is just an alternate present. The past was altered for a different "today," not some horrible off-set incident that ruins "tomorrow." Nitpicky, I know, but I wanted to say it.