ZKJ.Brick's The Atom and Doctor Light! (Patreon)

Can you guys believe it! It’s another new brand on the scene! ZKJ.Brick popped up around late last year, so I thought I’d check em out!

[disclaimer] From what I understand, ZKJ is the printer, partnered with pick1e.bricked (the designer). Though by all technical names sake, this was only listed as a ZKJ fig through all resellers I saw, so that’s what I’ll refer to them as going forward. Pickle is a great fig designer and to see their designs finally printed “for real life” is an absolute treat! Especially considering they’re primarily comic-based figs, and characters we’ve not gotten before!

Now! On to the review!

I mean come on it’s been decades (yes, literal decades) since folks have been printing custom DC figs and it’s only just now that we’re getting a Pad Printed Atom fig?! That’s nuts!

Sure! While it’s not Ray Palmer's Atom, Ryan Choi’s Atom will do just fine! It certainly beats my old cruddy figbarfed one using a Captain America head! 😆

I should mention that these two had some great (and not so great) prices… $50 for a nice Pad Printed Atom plus a custom second head! Good stuff!

But uh… $40 for a UV printed Dr Light (that wasn’t advertised as UV) …not so great!

At the time I was under the impression that both these figs would have been Pad Printed, but this Dr Light falls very short for me. While again, a really nicely designed fig - mostly a ripped design from the  Lego Batman Villains video game - it’s really all about that nice headpiece. Unfortunately the UV that swiftly kills all the fun!

As soon as you pass that headpiece it’s all downhill. I mean I’ve seen some good UV in my time, but this is not it. Just the thickness alone with all that ink on the head, ya can’t get that helmet off!

It was so tight on the head that I actually popped the fin out it trying to remove the piece 😑

Man, that UV print quality is so bumpy and speckled that it honestly makes me wish I saved my money. I don’t generally purchase UV figs, and this is a perfect example of why. The heavily surface-blasted ink layer for the face leaves him looking speckled and difficult to photograph in most lighting situations.

But again that headpiece though? Ten outa ten! Top tier stuff! (if you could remove it) Then the torso jumps down to like a 5/10 with the design doing most of the heavy lifting, then the rest is just mid at best.

I mean c'mon, the sides of the legs weren’t even printed! Ya turn the fig around and it’s all blank! Why even print on the back of the torso at that rate?

I basically paid $40 for a hat that doesn't come off.

Idk… that’s what ya get for being one of the first customers for a new brand! They gotta learn to iron out the kinks and work on their branding a bit more, develop their design and production values. As their second fig, The Atom is a sure sign of their already improving direction (I hope).

Honestly, if Dr Light was pad printed and came with solid black legs to cut down on their production costs, I’m sure I’d have some different opinions about it! 🤷🏻‍♂️

But hey! I’m not deterred by the ZKJ brand yet! They’ve got a cool series of Green Lantern figs on the way that I’d like to shoot with some MrJ GL figs I’ve had sitting around, so keep an eye out for that in the future ;)