Wave 3 - Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)
Hal Jordan is the second man to bare the name 'Green Lantern' in the DC universe, but he is arguably the most famous Green Lantern of them all. A founding member of the Justice League of America, a patriarchal mentor and superhero, a galaxy-spanning saver of lives and worlds, Hal is one of DC's greatest and most storied characters.
Hal Jordan's brush with greatness came when an alien member of the Green Lantern Corps - Abin Sur - crash-landed on Earth. Dying, Sur sought to bestow his ring and its great power upon someone who was pure of character and possessing the strength to overcome great fear - stalwarts of the Green Lantern code. Young military test pilot Hal Jordan just happened to meet these criteria. And, so, the second Green Lantern was born.
As a member of the Green Lantern Corps - a galactic peacekeeping body that unites great heroes from many planets to serve together to protect space from evildoers - Hal is in possession of a green power ring. The ring is charged with cosmic power from - you guessed it - a green lantern. A bearer of a power ring possesses the ability to create a hard light construct of anything he or she can imagine. The true source of a Green Lantern's power is not in the ring itself, but in the heart and mind of he who wears it.
Throughout his nearly fifty years as one of DC's premier characters, Hal has undergone several dramatic changes. He has loved and lost love. He once retired from the Green Lantern Corps only to later resume duties. He was at one time overtaken by the evil Parallax entity and became one of the galaxies most insidious villains. He died, only to be resurrected as the super-powerful Spectre. And, then, of course, he came back to Earth as flesh and blood to resume his duties as the Green Lantern once again.
Like all other members of the Green Lantern Corps, Hal is capable of creating green light representations of any object/device he can imagine. He is able to fly at high speeds, lift heavy objects (with his ring's light), survive in space for extended periods of time, and project energy beams.
Sculpt: Green Lantern reuses the now very commonly seen DCUC "standard male" body that has been used on most of the conventional male characters so far in the line. Body reuse in this line doesn't really bother me, so long as Mattel and the 4H produce enough "bucks" of varying size to not have every single character be exactly the same height. For Hal Jordan, this body works since Hal is generally depicted in comics as a pretty big, beefy guy. Hal's face sculpt is unique and is a strong representation of the character.
Paint: Hal doesn't really benefit from much paint shading. The green lines on his costume detailing are tight and crisp and there is very little bleed or slop. His face, unfortunately, is unpainted flesh-tone plastic which leaves him looking a little "plasticky". The paint on his mask is hit or miss. I've seen one Hal with a strong, tight paint job here and another with a lot of paint miss and slop around the face mask. So inspect these if you have the opportunity before you buy. Hal does also have some highlighting in his hair to pull out the texture there and his power ring is well painted on his fist with a rich, emerald green.
Articulation: Green Lantern gets the standard DCUC articulation model. Since his costume has no obtrusive details, he gets the maximum range of motion from his 25 POAs.
Accessories: Hal Jordan comes his actual green lantern for recharging his power ring as a pack-in.
Quality: The quality of figures in the DCUC line has been very high over the first two waves, but with Hal and this third series the paint is starting to feel a little more sparse and the plastic quality seems a touch softer. This soft plastic yields a lot more "warpage" of joints given how their limbs are bent and wedged into the package. My Hal has a pretty badly misshapen right arm due to the way he was packaged. Overall, though, he is still a solid figure and one of the best versions of Hal Jordan ever made in action figure form.
