It’s Doctor Voodoo. He didn’t go to four years of magical medical school to be called Brother, thank you very much. I’m so timely with this review, this figure is already discounted on Amazon! Let’s do this!
I like the artwork on this box quite a bit, but it does make me wish there were a couple of cool accessories like a magic hand, more elaborate jewelry, or magic book for this version of Brother Voodoo.
Brother Voodoo comes with his staff, two sets of hands (two grip , right open and left fist) two blast effects, and Blackheart’s leg.
The Blackheart leg has sharp sculpting, so sharp that it hurt putting him together. Having him mostly together does make me wish they made him a bit bigger. I think it’s my Capcom video game training, but in my mind’s eye Blackheart is quite a bit bigger.
The staff of Legba appears to be reuse from the Book of Vishanti Doctor Voodoo and it’s nicely detailed, but I don’t love how the shrunken heads look more like demon skulls with pointy ears. I’m sure there is existing art that inspired this, but most of the time I’ve seen them depicted as more human. It might be fun to sculpt some human heads and attach them to the staff with some poseable wire. It’s cast in translucent purple so it has a glowing effect and the two blast effects wrap around the staff well to give the impression that the magic is coming from his hands and transferring to the staff.
The figure itself looks to be based on the newer Vulcan body with a new belt and cape and the old head from the Book of Vishanti version. The newer, bulkier body has a more imposing presence than the original. The cape has a nice hang to it and plugs into the back. I noticed that it would often twist askew as I was moving this figure around. The bracelets I don’t recognize, but they are a little loose, so will fall off when swapping hands if you aren’t careful. I ended up dropping one on the way from my garage shooting area to inside the house and now I can’t find it!
The green portion of his belt is clearly new with more wrapping and flow to it and the string to the skulls is now beaded. The skulls look the same, but are a bit more sharply detailed here than the original.
You can swap the cape and bracers from the older Doctor Voodoo figure from the Dormammu BAF wave onto this one if you like, though the heads don’t swap as nicely. The new one is a little tight and low on the old body and the old head sits a little high and loose on the new one.
The best part of the paint is the portrait. It looks like the same sculpt as the original to me, but the new paint gives it an entirely different quality. The skull face paint really feels like real face paint in that it fades out and the Dr. Strange meets skeleton Halloween costume symbols on the body are bulkier and more substantial which I think improves the total look. One thing I do miss is that the cape is often drawn with the diamond motif from Brother Voodoo’s original costume on the trim and it would have been nice to get that painted on this cape.
Articulation is typical legends style and all moves well except lifting the left arm is a little limited by the cape.
Overall, Doctor Voodoo is a vast improvement on previous releases even though he re-uses a lot from the original figure. Admittedly, Doctor Voodoo was very low on my list of existing Legends figures I’d like to see re-done and if they were doing another Jericho Drumm, I’d have preferred the classic Brother Voodoo look. I would have liked more jewelry around his neck and more interesting bracelets, but since I lost one of the bracelets, I might just have to customize some. In the shots below you can pinpoint where I lost a bracelet because it switches to the original figure’s gauntlets.
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