Black Vulcan is one of the characters created for the Superfriends cartoon that, unlike El Dorado, I actually do remember. The story behind the creation of the character is actually kind of interesting. Black Lightning creator Tony Isabella has stated in interviews that DC did not want to pay him his royalties for the use of Black Lightning in the Superfriends show and Hanna Barbara didn’t want to pay more for the character so they basically ripped off Black Lightning and called him Black Vulcan for the show. I’ve heard that story a few times from Isabella, though I’ve never heard the DC/Hanna Barbara perspective on that.
Accessories
Black Vulcan comes with two clip on electricity effects and Collect and Connect Apache’s Chief’s right leg. The effects look to me to be the Electro effects from Superman Blue/Red recast in clear yellow plastic. I’m pleased to have them as I had wished the DCUC wave 5 Black Lightning had come with them.
Sculpt
Looks like this guy is on the medium build base body with the only new bit being the head sculpt. The head sculpt looks pretty dead on to me for the look of the character in the cartoon. It’s interesting to me looking at the prototype shot on the cardback it appears that he was sculpted on the larger build body and with fists. I think medium looks fine, but I wonder what motivated that change. I think I would have preferred the closed fist sculpt for electro-blast’n poses and obviously two-fisted smackdowns.
Articulation
Black Vulcan has the usual DCUC articulation with a ball jointed neck; swivel hinged shoulders and thighs; bicep, thigh and wrist swivels; and single elbow, ab, ankle and knee hinges.
Paint
Paint on mine is a little bit dodgy on his main yellow chest symbol, but mostly okay. It looks to me like they may have misaligned the paint mask a bit when they were painting the bolt on his chest. I love the metallic yellow on the mask ‘ears’. It’s a nice touch to differentiate them from the yellow in the costume and make it look like a different material.
There is also the issue of his neckline. In the cartoon most often and in his ‘model sheet’ Black Vulcan is shown with a V neck collar along the lightning bolt design around his neck. On this figure they decided to paint the whole neck black. The prototype matched the TV show art, so I think it might have been an error, but they did do this on the JLU figure as well, so perhaps they chose this look prior to production start but after the prototype build. I think I prefer this version of the costume.
Overall I dig this figure. He has the electro effect that I was missing from Black Lightning and I actually have grown to like the crazy design of his mask wings.
Turnarounds
Thanks again to Fwoosher TRS and ethanstoys.com for making this review possible.
Previous DCUC Wave 18 reviews
