Thanks to a little doubling up along the way, I’m already at the final boxed figure in the Marvel Legends Giant Man Wave. And that’s a good thing, because I still have the entire Rhino Wave to look at from forever ago, and the Doctor Strange Wave is starting to trickle in. What’s that? Abomination Wave? Dammit! I’m still so far behind. Well, let’s wrap up this one with a look at a very highly anticipated figure… Black Panther!

Here he is in package, a sight that I never got to see out in the wild. T’Challa was in hot demand and for a while the only way to get him seemed to be going the online route and pay out the ass for him. Lucky for me things calmed down after a short while and I was able to find him online at regular retail price. Black Panther comes with an alternate head and the last piece I needed to build my Giant Man figure.

Freed of his cardboard and plastic prison, Black Panther looks absolutely amazing. I know some people who were put off by the hyper-detailed MCU costume, but I actually quite like what they did to his Vibranium suit. It’s a big budget movie, they couldn’t have the guy running around in cat pajamas. It also gave Hasbro a chance to shine by recreating the more complex design in action figure form, and they did a mighty fine job with it. There’s no simple painted buck here, rather every panel line and texture is present and part of the sculpt. Indeed, there’s scarcely any tiny portion of this figure that isn’t adorned with some piece of detail work.

As for paint, the figure obviously gets by mostly with a whole lot of matte black plastic, but you do get some very fine silver paint apps for some of the suit’s accents, as well as the necklace. Yup, I love what they did with the necklace too. It keeps the tribal theme of the classic costume, but recreates it with a high-tech metal look. The hands are drawn up in claws, which works great for all the action poses, and the claws on his fingertips are painted too! And yes, Hasbro is still painting those numbers on the legs to make them as obvious as possible. Thanks, Hasbro!

As already noted, you get two heads with the figure, one masked and one unmasked. The masked one looks great and features more of that intricate sculpted detailing along with some more silver paint. And once again, the silver paint apps here are sharp and on point. Beautiful! I should also note that T’Challa’s cat ears are pretty sharp and pointy. They very nearly got me when I was pressing down to pop this head back on.

The unmasked head is also a very welcome treat, especially since T’Challa spent a good deal of Civil War unmasked. I think you could argue for or against whether this likeness is passable for Chadwick Boseman. I’ll concede that it’s a little soft, but I happen to think it’s pretty good for this scale. Either way, I will complement Hasbro on a solid sculpt and some very clean paint apps.

Articulation is extra important for this figure since Black Panther is quite the agile kitty. Legends was never quite going to capture the level needed for this guy to really shine, we’ll leave that for Figma or Figuarts, but what’s here is still pretty good. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, the elbows are double hinged, and there are swivels in the biceps. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, double hinged in the knees, and have swivels in the thighs. The ankles have hinges and lateral rockers. There’s a swivel in the waist, an ab crunch hinge in the torso, and the neck is both ball jointed and hinged. What’s more the joints on this guy feel great.

Black Panther could have been an easy figure for Hasbro to half-ass, had they chosen to leave out a lot of the finer details in the suit, but I’m happy to say they gave it their all with this release. He also comes pretty close to being my favorite of the wave. In fact, the jury is still out on whether I’d go with T’Challa, Nuke, or Fury as my top figure here, but it doesn’t matter, all three are excellent. I’m also happy to be adding another Civil War figure to my Legends shelf. With Scarlet Witch coming up, I’d really just like to see an MCU Vision to finish things off.

And just so that I can put this wave to bed, come on back later tonight and I’ll have a look at the Giant Man Build-A-Figure!