All this week: Iron Man!...reruns.

(Like I may or may not have mentioned before, unless it somehow shows up this week, I haven't seen the new Hulkbuster Iron Man. There's a short list of figures I have in Marvel Legends-scale that I'm giddy about in the smaller Universe-scale, but that will doubtless be one, if that made sense.)

In Iron Man #305, Stark International is struggling with the fallout of the reign of Obidiah Stane; who hadn't been above dabbling in weapons technology like Deathlok, or the gamma bomb. Expecting the Hulk to show up and smash up the place, Tony comes prepared:

Hmm. Which does come first: the armor, or the action figure? It seems pretty obvious:

I had actually planned on doing this one quite some time ago, for a "For Comparison Purposes" post; but got sidetracked when I couldn't find the vacuum-metallized helmet for the old, 90's cartoon Hulkbuster.
Then I was going to make the point that with the possible exception of some cameo appearances in the back of Tony's armory; I believe this Hulkbuster armor has only really appeared twice. And the first one was the last page of issue #304. I'm pretty sure it's had more action figures, than comic appearances.

(That's in-continuity appearances, mind you: I do believe a Hulkbuster suit like those pictured showed up in Marvel Adventures: Iron Man somewhere.) Hell, at this point, the Hulkbuster may have appeared in more cartoon episodes than comics!

It works out all right that this is late, since I got another Hulkbuster figure! Last weekend I picked up a pack of "Handful of Heroes," little eight-pack assortments of little unpainted figures, not unlike green plastic army men (kinda) or Muscle figures. (I never had those, but if you did, yeah, that's what these are like.) Since they aren't blind packed (thank god) I was able to get a Nightcrawler one, and luckily got the Hulkbuster as well. Mild disappointment: the Nightcrawler figure has relatively tiny feet, and mine won't stand by itself. But overall I'll tell you what everyone else probably is: Handful of Heroes isn't terrible, the sculpting is probably as much as you could expect for that scale/pricepoint, perhaps a hair overpriced, cherry-pick the ones you want and hope they go on clearance.

If you poke around over at OAFE.net, they had a cartoon that I was positive used the other Superhero Squad Hulkbuster Iron Man. I found one, "Hulkbuster," but that uses the Mark I Hulkbuster. Tony would bust out a new model--which I vaguely and probably incorrectly recall looking like a power lifter from Aliens--in World War Hulk. I think that one's appeared more times, but don't hold me to that.

Page from Iron Man #305, "Green Politics" Written by Len Kaminski, pencils by Kev Hopgood, inks by Steve Mitchell.