LEGO Ninjago Magazine Issue 140: The Villain That Broke the Dragon-Form Streak
Three issues in a row, the UK edition handed readers a Draconus Form ninja: Jay, then Lloyd, then the run kept going. So what changes when the next covermount isn't a hero at all? That's the question sitting behind LEGO Ninjago magazine issue 140, which swaps the Dragon-form streak for a villain — the Earth Monster, catalogued as L0002202. It's a smaller-sounding gift than the ones either side of it, and for a certain kind of collector it's the more useful one.
Cover art for LEGO NINJAGO Magazine Issue 140. Image via Mags Direct / Immediate Media, under licence from the LEGO Group.
A Monster Where the Run Had Been Making Heroes
The Earth Monster belongs to the elemental creatures introduced in NINJAGO: Dragons Rising Season 4 — the same bracket as the Acid Monster, and part of the wave of antagonists the ninja spend the season fighting rather than joining. That's a real structural difference from issues 138 and 139. Those gave you the ninja in a new form. This one gives you something for them to fight.
Collectors who assemble display scenes rather than rows of figures tend to run into the same shortage: plenty of heroes, almost no opposition. Magazine lines skew heavily toward the recognisable faces because that's what sells a cover to a nine-year-old. A villain covermount is comparatively rare, and it's why this issue holds up better on a shelf than its position in the run suggests.
Design Notes: Horns, Pincers and Five Pieces
The figure is catalogued as njo1030 and arrives as a five-piece cover-mounted pack — a paper bag rather than the older foil format the line has been phasing out. The build resolves into a single minifigure, so there's no mini-model padding the count.
What you're paying attention to here is the moulding rather than the printing. The Earth Monster uses a horned head element and pearl dark grey pincer hands in place of standard minifigure hands — the sort of substitution that changes the silhouette entirely and makes the figure read as a creature from across a room. The same character turns up in Season 4 retail sets, but the magazine version is a standalone route to it that doesn't require buying a box.
What Else Is Between the Covers
Underneath the covermount, issue 140 runs the format Immediate Media has held steady for years: a self-contained NINJAGO comic strip, a double-sided pull-out poster, a sticker sheet, and a block of puzzles, code-breakers and character activities aimed at the current cast, plus competitions to enter.
The comic is the part most people underrate. These strips aren't collected into graphic novels, aren't reprinted, and don't get posted online — so an intact copy is the only realistic way to read them a few years from now. It's a decent argument for keeping the magazine rather than tearing the gift off the cover and binning the rest, which is a more common habit than collectors like to admit.
The Collecting Case for a Villain
Here's the buyer's-guide angle we'd actually give a customer. If you're building a complete run of the UK edition, issue 140 is a gap you'll notice — the numbering doesn't care whether the gift was a hero. If you're building a display, the Earth Monster earns its slot on scarcity of type rather than scarcity of print: antagonists from this season are simply harder to source loose than the ninja are.
And if you're buying on availability, this is the interesting one. Issues 138 and 139 have already cleared through the main UK single-copy stockists. Issue 140, at time of writing, is still listed as in stock at Mags Direct — which won't stay true indefinitely, because newsstand distribution pulps unsold copies rather than warehousing them. Surviving supply is whatever collectors and specialist sellers deliberately held back during the on-sale window earlier this year. That's the mechanism behind why LEGO Ninjago magazine issue 140 and its neighbours get scarce faster than their release dates suggest.
One practical check before you commit second-hand: decide whether you want the figure or the issue. Loose Earth Monster minifigures circulate on their own and are easy to identify from a photo. A complete copy — magazine intact, pack sealed and still attached to the cover — is a meaningfully scarcer object, and sellers routinely photograph the figure while describing the magazine.
Where to Pick Up the Trail
Start with our LEGO Ninjago collection to see what's currently on the shelf, then work through the wider LEGO magazines archive for other UK-exclusive issues worth closing gaps on. If importing these is new territory, our LEGO Ninjago Magazine guide covers how it works and what to expect when it lands. And whenever a listing for LEGO Ninjago magazine issue 140 turns up, ask for one photo showing the pack still fixed to the cover — that's the version worth paying attention to.