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ROBIN (Arkham Asylum)

Just like the Robin half of Mod #12, the underside of the Boy Wonder’s cape was unpainted. In this case, the cape was even bigger and the omission all the more egregious. Here’s how I fixed it:

  • Painted cape with yellow acrylic.
  • Added another coat.
  • And another.

Not bad; I'd gotten better paint this time around. Completed late-2009.

Next Monday: A good old sculpt on a good dial gets a second life as an even better sculpt on a horrible dial. And that’s before I get my hands on it!

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ANGEL (Danger Room)

Strangely, Angel was the one X-Man that really caught my attention the first time I encountered the character in the episode of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: “A Firestar Is Born.” http://www.youtube.com/v/EF0rH2541Ew?version=3

But apparently (and as usual), my appreciation for a character without sooper kewl powers was a minority one. Angel was revamped into this garish Wolverine clone with metallic wings:

While I admittedly enjoyed the change because one of my longtime favorites was finally getting some respect, I was even more glad to see this cover several years later:

This was the version of Angel, then, that was current when the Danger Room set was conceived. (Or was it? I think his skin color had finally been changed back from blue to flesh by mid-decade.) But I wanted something more like the Angel of my youth. Even besides the blue skin, his feathers here are too dark. So here’s what I did:

  • Painted face to flesh color.
  • Painted wings with a translucent white acrylic wash.

I always preferred the red costume to the blue one, though, so I left that alone.

Completed mid-2009.

Next week: Fixing yet another WizKids production error on yet another bird-related character.

Next post: The first of one of those promised Atlantis battle reports.

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Unique NIMROD (Fantastic Forces)

Or is he Pepto-Bismol Man?

OK, yes, it’s true that Nimrod has always had a slightly pink shade:

And yes, in his then-recent appearances, that shade was being colored a bit more deeply pink. But come on, now! It’s plain that he’s 95% shaded white, not pink!

What makes it worse is that he’s almost correct on the actual set poster! (Couldn’t find a scan of it, though.) He’s translucent white except for the dark pink details of his face and chest.

When I finally got a Nimrod, I wanted to strip the pink paint off. But I feared getting some on the base details and accidentally stripping those off as well. There was also no guarantee that he was actually going to be the neutral color seen on the poster. So I chose to attempt a repaint instead:

  • Painted over main pink body with white Testors enamel.

Completed mid-2009.

It’s not a complete success, as I got fingerprints on it and never achieved the even coverage I sought. But it’s still a darn sight better than it was, and I suppose the fact that some of the pink still shows through is more character accurate than my original intent.
Next week: Another character painted white. But in a different way.

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Huh. I was certain I hit “Publish” on that Runaways article I promised for last week, but it didn’t happen, I guess. Now it’s time for another Monday mod article, so the Runaways will have to wait until Tuesday.

WINTER SOLDIER (Avengers)

Nice that they painted him in his Bucky costume colors. The trouble with that is, well, he never really wore his Bucky costume colors as the Winter Soldier:.

That's blue-black leather, yo.

I like my clix sculpts a lot more comic-accurate than that. So here’s what I did:

  • Painted mask with solid black acrylic paint.
  • Painted blue clothes with a translucent black ink wash.

 

Completed mid-2009. Simple and the thing looks WAY better.

Next Monday: Instead of painting one near-black, I go completely the other way.
Tomorrow: The Runaways!

Later this week: I actually never finished my Event Dials series, leaving the final (?) two — Warrior Madness and Atlantis Attacks from Hammer of Thor — unexamined. I rectify that oversight.

And, speaking of Atlantis…

By Friday: A look at every extant figure bearing this keyword, including Aquaman from the soon-to-be-released Brightest Day action pack!

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Sorry again for blowing my deadline last week! To make up for it, here’s a double feature of girls from the 2007 AVENGERS set who got makeovers.

First up is the big girl I promised: Stature of the Young Avengers.

She doesn’t look really great in photos. Even in hand she’s not so glamorous. Maybe it’s because she’s part of a fairly exclusive club of HeroClix sculpts based directly on an image from the comics.

 

Seriously. Hold the Stature figure at this same angle and you'll see it for sure.

 

Wonderful art by Jim Cheung from Young Avengers # 5 or 6 or something. But what looks great in Cheung’s 2D style wound up looking less-than-glorious in 3D. And besides, the costume’s wrong. By the time she chose the Stature codename (over Ant-Girl), she was wearing this:

…and has been ever since. So here’s what I did to make this big girl right:

  • Repainted her costume details with acrylic paint. Specifically, I swapped her suit’s color palette: red to black and dark-blue to red.

Completed early 2009.

Simple, huh? :) A nice side effect of the mask is that it covers up those unattractive-in-3D furrows in her angry brow.

___

Stature wasn’t the only chick in AVENGERS to need work on her face. Here’s the original look of Super Rare WASP from the same set:

 

I call her Crash Test Dummy Wasp.

 

Terrible, huh? Doesn’t look a thing like this little beauty.

It was only made worse by the announcement of the then-new 60-figure sets made that spring. The brand manager at the time declared that Super Rare figures would be of markedly higher sculpt quality than the other rarities. Common rarity pieces in particular would be cheaper, lower-quality single-mold pieces.

In reality, though, all four of the “old-school Avengers” characters in the set — Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Wasp — are cheaper, lower-quality single-mold pieces despite their Super Rarity. (I’m convinced they were intended to be Commons but got moved to the Super Rare slots late in the game.)

Anyway, Wasp is by far the worst of the lot, both in playability and sculpt quality. So when I lost her sculpt in the washout that also claimed my original Aquaman mod, I wasn’t too perturbed…I knew I could get a replacement for just a few bucks.

And I did shell out those two bucks because I’d always intended to give Janet Van Dyne a proper face:

  • Painted in eyes, eyebrows, lipstick with acrylic paint and drawing ink.

 

Photo by Antonio Cade.

 

 

...and my photo.

 

These pictures don’t do her justice at all.

Next week: One more AVENGERS Super Rare repainted.

Next post: Either a Runaways battle report or DC Alternate Team Ability cards with art!

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Rookie MISTER MIRACLE (Origin)

This sculpt, different dial.

The REV set of Mr. Miracle was a good representation of Scott Free of the New Gods. But I would have preferred that the Rookie be  Scott’s Earth-born protegé Shilo Norman.
Here’s what I did:
  • Removed cape portion of sculpt (it seperates from the main body).
  • Filled in resultant gap in back with some hobby clay-like product I can’t recall. It wasn’t anything like Green Stuff or actual sculptor’s clay…I don’t recommend it. But it did this job.
  • Used a needle file to shave down details of Mister Miracle’s sculpt that are not reflected in the Shilo Norman version of the costume.
  • Painted in the new colors using acrylic paint.
Completed late-2008, in time for use in my Seven Soldiers team.
Next week: a big girl gets a makeover.
Next post: More DC cards from The Brave & the Bold with art.

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Apologies for the lateness of this update, readers. Although I’ve got a bunch of mod articles in the can, I seem to have forgotten to upload (or forgotten where I uploaded) two of the photos for this extra-large Skrull edition of My Custom Mods.
In Secret Invasion, a bunch of characters got both human and Skrull dials, but the sculpt itself was either human- or Skrull-looking, regardless of which dial it had. So, upon deciding I wanted to retain each figure, I decided to repaint their respective sculpts to fit the dials.
But, I soon found out, it was often a bit more involved than simply mixing in the right ratio of white, yellow, red and brown acrylic paint for the flesh tone I was seeking.

Human YELLOWJACKET (Secret Invasion)

Here’s what I did to make Yellowjacket human:
  • Used a needle file to shave down his big Skrully chin.
  • Painted his black mask a bit more (down to his upper lip), covering his eyes.
  • Painted the rest of his exposed face in a (human) flesh tone.
  • Painted in new white eyes on his mask just below the originals.
  • Painted in a new mouth.
  • Painted over the Skrulls team symbol on the dial base.

That's a human Pym, there.

Completed late 2008. Fixing him was more complicated than I anticipated!

Human MS. MARVEL (Secret Invasion)

  • Used a needle file to shave down her Skrull chin a little bitty bit.
  • Painted her exposed skin to a flesh color.
  • Painted in gritted teeth in her previously wide-open mouth.
  • Painted over the Skrulls team symbol.
Completed late-2008. Surprisingly simple to be so dramatically better-looking :).

Skrull DUM DUM DUGAN (Secret Invasion)

The lone human-appearing version of the Skrull sculpts, Dugan was the simplest of all to alter:
  • Painted his flesh green.
  • Painted over the SHIELD team symbol.

Completed late-2008.

Human ELEKTRA (Secret Invasion)

  • Used a needle file to shave down her big Skrully chin.
  • Painted her exposed skin to a flesh color.
  • Painted in eyes and red lips.
  • Painted over the Skrulls team symbol.

She's better this way. (Actually, I may have taken and uploaded this pic before painting in her lipstick.)

Human CAPTAIN MAR-VELL (Secret Invasion)

  • Used a needle file to shave down his big Skrully chin.
  • Filed down his pointy ears, but not completely.
  • Painted over the tops of the ears in yellow to match his hair.
  • Painted his exposed skin to a flesh color, including the bottom half of his ears.
  • Painted in white eyes on his mask.
  • Painted over the Skrulls team symbol.

Now THAT'S a human Mar-Vell — er, wait. He's actually NOT human.

Completed late-2008.
Next week: another alien made tackle-box friendly.

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This week, the highly anticipated Web of Spider-Man expansion set releases, featuring a bunch of new Spidey-related pieces. It’s fitting, then, that this week’s featured mod is of the until-now-most-recent Marvel Universe version of the marquee character:

SPIDER-MAN  (Secret Invasion)

It's like a toy found in a "Happy Meal."

In fairness, this isn’t a bad sculpt. It’s inventive, even striking, and certainly outside the norm. It’s also widely derided as the “Happy Meal” Spider-Man for its super-bright colors, slightly oversized feet, head and hands (not dissimilar to this toy for the under-4 set).
Plus it’s cumbersome to fit “McSpidey” here into my over-stuffed clix box.
So here’s what I did:
  • Cut Spidey’s feet off the pole with a hobby knife.
  • Sawed the pole off the dial base with several knives. It was difficult.
  • Colored the cut mark on the dial black with a permanent marker.
  • Painted over the red parts of the costume with a heavily watered-down black acrylic paint wash. This would fill in the web design on his outfit with black and slightly darken the too-bright red. I used a Q-tip to sop up excess black paint.
  • Using super glue and modeler’s glue, I glued his feet to the dial.

Still a bit silly-looking, but it fits in my box now!

Completed mid-2008, this is a Spider-Man I’m not ashamed to field.

Next Monday: SKRULL INVASION!!!!!!!

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IRON MAN (Secret Invasion)

I’d like to say this mod was all my idea, but I can’t.
At all.
Here’s the original:

Also known as the Robert Downey Jr. sculpt.

Neat, unconventional sculpt. In fact, the sculptor revealed that he was under instructions from Marvel to specifically do an un-helmeted Iron Man sculpt.
But someone on HCRealms.com thought it’d be neat to put his held helmet on instead of his head, and did. It looked simple enough to do, and I’d done more radical mods already, so here’s how I proceeded:
  • Cut Robert Downey Jr.’s head off with a hobby knife.
  • Carefully cut the Iron Man helmet from the left hand.
  • Used a heated push pin to poke a small hole in both the neck stump and the corresponding point on the helmet.
  • Stuck a straight pin in the hole, then cut it off about 1.5 mm above the neckline.
  • Glued down the new head and swiveled it to a new facing position.
  • Painted the left side of his head and left hand where they were once joined together.
  • Painted the eye slits, chest unibeam and palm repulsor in white.

Completed mid-2008. Photo by Antonio Cade.

Again, not even remotely original; there are probably a dozen other guys on HCRealms alone who did the same. But it’s among my mods, so here it is.

Next Monday, I bring another Marvel icon down to earth.

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Experienced AQUAMAN (Icons)

After the success of my Emerald Eye of Ekron mod, I decided I now had the experience I needed to take the plunge into customizing this:

based on his then-current Vet incarnation.

into this costume from Aquaman’s 1990s pirate look:

"Arrrrrrrh!"

As Icons Experienced version is the only Aquaman with the range representing that extendable harpoon, my inner continuity nerd compelled me to make the sculpt match. That Aquaman is one of my absolute favorite DC characters didn’t deter me, either. :)
Here’s what I did:
  • Cut off the blue hand.
  • Worked off the head of a Hypertime version of Aquaman (it’s a separate piece from the main body).
  • Used an exacto knife to shave the long hair from the Hypertime head so that I could put it on the Icons sculpt’s head like a wig.
  • Glued the “wig” onto the Icons head.
  • Cut off the harpoon from the Hypertime sculpt.
  • Glued the harpoon to the left arm stump.
At this point, the sculpt was looking pretty good! I only had to paint his torso in flesh and silver, and paint on his beard. But I shelved the whole thing for well over a year as I dealt with more pressing issues.
Then, as I was about to resume the project, a water pipe burst in my bathroom and spewed high-pressure water in my little house for hours on end, soaking my carpet, collapsing my ceiling and attic insulation and essentially rendering my home unlivable for the next several weeks.
The Aqua-mod was somewhere in that mess and was swept away by the cleanup crew.
(Ironic…Aquaman done in by water.)
So I had to start all over after I got the replacement equipment, long after things settled back to normal for me.
Here’s how I re-did it:
  • Used a black Sharpie to color in the dark part of his two-toned pants.
  • Cut off the blue hand.
  • Worked off the head this time. (It’s a separate piece from the main body.)
  • Worked off the head of the Hypertime version like before.
  • Used an exacto knife to shave down the neck peg so the Hypertime head would fit on the Icons torso.
  • Used a needle file to shave down the raised collar on his neckline.
  • Glued on the harpoon again. This time I inserted a bit of a straight pin to  strengthen the glue-job, a trick I learned doing a much later mod I’ll share well down the line.
  • Repainted the torso to a flesh color with acrylic paint.
  • Glued on the Hypertime head.
  • Painted on the gladiatorial half-armor using Testors silver enamel.
So, from a project begun in 2007, destroyed in 2008, restarted and completed in 2009, in 2010 I present:

Looks great. It would've been much, much simpler to just put the Hypertime Aquaman on this dial. No regrets, though.

Next week: a most simple fix to a most disturbing sculpt.