Prowler

What an upgrade! Equipped with an armored suit and gadget-filled wrist gauntlets, Prowler pursues his enemies under the cover of darkness. Wow, Into the Spider-Verse made the Prowler into a scary character, didn't it? In the comics, he was kind of a goofy character with an unintimidating design, but the movie turned him into a villain you'd actually be frightened to see coming after you. Talk about the animation's groundbreaking technology and style all you want, making a single human being anywhere care about the Prowler has to be its number one underdog achievement. And it's not just a question of changing the guy inside the suit from Hobie Brown to Aaron Davis, either. Part of it, at least, is the costume. It's not drastically different from the comics' version, but the colors are a lot better. We still get a lot of purple, but instead of pairing that with bright green, Aaron has chosen black and a dark indigo, colors that would help him, y'know, prowl around in the dark. He still has that weird, undefined symbol on his chest, and his cape has pointed shapes along the top and bottom edges. His boots and gloves are new pieces: the boots are extra chunky, with pink piping around the soles are large circles on the ankles, suggesting some kind of energy is helping prevent injury. the gloves extend all the way up the forearms, with piston-like tech all around the sides, but while we do get all the armored claws he wears, we don't get alternate hands with the fingers splayed. Why not? Why is that always skipped? And speaking of always skipping this, this is yet another Marvel movie villain who doesn't come with an unmasked head. In this case, maybe they were concerned we'd notice how different his head is shaped as Prowler vs. when he's Aaron Davis. The black patches around the eyes are sculpted in, and the area over the mouth looks like stretched cloth. Prowler is built on the same body as Shatterstar, so his clothes can look like clothes rather than a body. That means he has swivel/hinge ankles, swivel boots, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, a swivel waist, hinged torso, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, a hinged neck, and balljointed head. The wrists go thumb-to-pinky instead of the normal direction, so you can't even fake having him brandish his claws. C'mon! What are you doing, Hasbro? The cape is a new piece, and plugs into his back, but it will just stick straight out if you bend him too far. It's extra stupid that Prowler doesn't have any extra hands, because even the Build-A-Figure does! And an accessory! Stilt-Man will either be able to have a fist or a hand capable of holding his brown briefcase once you build him. Miles' uncle Aaron was Prowler in the Ultimate Comics, so the movie wasn't pulling that out of nowhere. He's "died" a few times, both in the Ultimate universe and after being transferred to the main one, but since the Powler identity is already taken in the 616, he's had to go by other names. Still, the comics could do worse than to adopt some influence from Spider-Verse. -- 05/13/21

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