Black Lightning is a character receiving a lot more attention in the comics as of late, as a Justice League member and major player in things like Final Crisis. It's no surprise to these him come out as a toy in his modern costume give his personality. As far as the figure goes, it's a decent attempt, but it's marred by serious quality issues like broken legs and wild paint problems.

Sculpt

  Black Lightning is following the standard of series 5, which is to say that he has a super basic body sculpt with a unique head sculpt. He's using the thinner male Four Horseman buck which definitely looks great for what it is, but we've been seeing a lot of it, and it's just so simple. It works for the character and looks good with his costume too. This new head sculpt is also pretty basic since Jefferson is bald and wears a mask covering his eyes. yet it still looks good. They managed to get good details into his face and he really does look the part. The mask is sculpted well enough with slightly protruding goggles. I kind've wish this figure had at least one fisted hand instead of useless open hands since he isn't an acessory driven character.

Sculpt Score: 6 / 10 - Standard body sculpt that looks fine, not spectacular, good head sculpt, closed hands would be nice.

Paint

The paint on this figure got the idea right but can't manage to deliver. For instance, the colors look great and all complement each other well. The problem is that the yellow lightning outline on his chest has some questionable applications with blue bleeding into the yellow line, jagged edges all over, varying line thickness. Maybe I'm just being picky, because it looks okay from far away, and here I still think they could've done a much better job. Similarly, his black has a huge mismatch problem across types of plastic. Any softer plastic is a much shinier black than the harder pieces of his chest and upper thighs. It's really obvious how much his lower legs shine while his thighs are very matte and it's quite distracting. It almost looks like he's wearing leather knee-highs (more power to you Jefferson). There is also some crazy chipping, which may actually be through the plastic, on his abdomen and right foot. It looks like somebody took a flat screwdriver and cut chunks out of him.  

Paint Score: 4 / 10 - Good color choices but really poor implementation, shoddy lines and details, color and texture mismatch across plastic, chips all over the figure.

Articulation

Jefferson's articulation model is just fine, because it's the DCUC standard I love so much. It's got enough points to make dynamic poses happen without ruining the appearance of the sculpt. Similarly each joint is totally unobstructed and worked pretty well right out of the package. That is except his hips, which were both totally fused and resisted any front/back movement. I tried the much suggested freezer trick, but alas, both legs were too well 'stuck' and I just managed to twist both off with the effort of a gentle breeze. So, the Black Lightning you see in the picture has both of his hips superglued in a static vertical position. No one should have to deal with broken joints like this which now limit his poseability enormously. I will probably end up buying another figure since this one was pulled out of a trash heap behind the factory before being shipped out.

Articulation Score: 5 / 10 - Great articulation model with full range of movement. Two broken hips that had to be glued back on.

Fun

Black Lightning is a pretty cool character that used to have a lot of inherent 70s style. They've since toned him down to less offensive degrees and he's a little less fun. Everybody loves lightning and electricity based powers, the problem is that Jefferson doesn't include any accessories to show these off. Putting Series 2 Superman Blue's energy effects in would have been perfect, and they couldn't be too expensive since they were already tooled. There's not much else that's fun in this design except his articulation. He could be more fun, but they really limited him. He doesn't include any action features or anything else to help. Your figure breaking instantly isn't fun at all and drops this score too.

Fun Score: 4 / 10 - Fun character from ages past, no acessories to highlight that fun, good articulation is always a blast, except when legs snap off.

Value

Black Lightning is an average sized figure at an average price of $12. That's reasonable anymore, especially since he includes a big hunk of a build-a-figure Metallo. I would have no problems paying $12 for him again (and I probably will) even without acessories. That is, if the next one I buy doesn't break. When you're taking a risk everytime you buy a figure that something will break or be assembled incorrectly, the value drops quickly. I can't rightfully say he would stand up to play as a durable hunk of plastic, because I know he wouldn't.

Summary

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Overall Score: 50 / 100 - This is a Fair Toy

Black Lightning barely escaped the lower half of the scale because he isn't a terrible value thanks to the collect and connect piece and he has a decent sculpt that fits the character. On the other hand, he's not all that much fun, his paint suffers from a lot of problems, and his articulation breaks pretty easily. If you can find one that doesn't break then Black Lightning would make a pretty solid entry into the DC Universe Classics line, but I have to judge based on the figure I have, and this one is falling apart, so sadly he just barely makes the grade as an acceptable toy.

-The Articulated One