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GAMBIT (Mutations & Monsters)

Or, as I like to call him: GUMBO.

Of all the core X-Men, Gambit is possibly the last one to straight-up fight a Sentinel. That’s one reason I never really liked the humongous robot’s hand on this sculpt. I also hated the way it took up so much room in my tackle box. So here’s what I did instead:
  • Used a combination of a stout exacto knife and brute force to snap the hand off the base.
  • Worked Gambit off the hand.
  • Glued Gambit’s feet to the dial base.
  • Cut the excess centimeter or so of his quarterstaff so he’d sit flat on the table.
The results:

Completed mid-2008.

Svelte enough to fit my overstuffed ‘clix box and yet still somewhat acrobatic-looking.

Next week: I finish what WizKids left undone.

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UGH! I knew I was forgetting something yesterday…my customary Monday modification article!
Lesson learned: To do lists are my friends. MAKE THEM!!! :)

GIANT-MAN (Mutations & Monsters)

Yet another version of the many-alter-ego’d Dr. Henry Pym in Heroclix, this one is an alternate-Earth Pym turned into a zombie.
I hate zombies on principle, pretty much. I don’t get what the fascination with them in certain circles is. But the fascination exists, and it has invaded HeroClix on numerous occasions.
This clix version has possibly the most gruesome sculpt in the game.

He's holding a dismembered hero in his arm and has one of those members in his mouth. That's just not even CLOSE to being right.

Hey. Black Panther is one of my favorite characters! I’d almost get rid of this figure just for that, but the dial is pretty playable. So here’s what I did instead:
  • Removed the arm from Giant-Man’s mouth.
  • Removed the BP figure.

Completed early-2008.

OK, so he’s got a gaping hole in his chest. So what? HE’S AN UNDEAD ZOMBIE. I’m over it. :)
Next Monday: Speaking of dismemberment, next mod features a “hand-ectomy.”

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DRAGON MAN (Avengers)

Anyone who’s ever played this figure knows what the problem was. The darn thing’s too top-heavy to stay upright and the flight peg, too under-manufactured to stay on the stand!
Because Dragon Man’s trade value is so low, I didn’t mind making a change:
  • Cut him off the oversized flight base.
  • Broke off the flight stand.
  • Glued his feet to the dial.

Completed late-2007.

Now, at least, he’ll stand up straight, even though I still never play the guy. But one day I will, just because of this comic. ‘Cause y’all know how much I like Power Pack.

Next Monday: The most eviscerating mod ever.

Next post: RELOAD.

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FALCON (Avengers)

Despite the fact that the sculpt is absolutely comic-accurate:

from "Ultimate Nightmare" #2.

…I’ve never liked it. And why would I? This is a character whose only power is flight and the sculpt is of him crouched on the floor…
…in mid-air.
Um…really?
Emboldened by my successful re-position of Danger Room Storm’s cape, I attempted a similar approach with this piece. Here’s my process used:
  • detached the wings off the extra-large flight base with exacto knife.
  • using the same knife, cut away the fight base until only the flight peg remained.
  • put figure in hot car to increase malleability.
  • resculpted in new position and run under cold water to set.
  • placed in freezer to fully set.
The problem, I found, was that the crouching position was the real issue, and no amount of hot car time would stretch those legs out. The result:
…this total “bleh” of a mod completed mid-2007. Well, they can’t all be resounding successes, and I’m not hiding the failures in this series!
Next: making a resounding success from a manufacturing error.

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Rookie SHAZAM (Origin)

Mildly (or wildly) inappropriate joke-quote here.

People called this the NAMBLA sculpt. While I think those people are either a bit overreactive, it’s not hard to see why they might make such a comment. It is a little bit…disturbing.
More to the point for a comic book continuity nerd like myself is that Billy Batson the human boy doesn’t fly until he transforms into Captain Marvel, the “Shazam!” half of the sculpt. And it’s not like there wasn’t precedent for a proper sculpt.
Yeah. So here’s what I did to fix it for myself:
  • Used an exacto knife to cut Billy Batson off the sculpt at the feet.
  • Glued Billy to the dial base.

Now it's right.

Completed mid-2007.
Simple. Now when I play R Shazam, I don’t add the Shazam half of the sculpt until I push him to the powerful clicks. It’s more fun that way.
Next Monday, I attempt to make another character who flies actually look like he’s flying.

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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.

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EMERALD EYE OF EKRON (Collateral Damage)

Original look.

As the name indicates, this LE version of Emerald Empress represents the Eye itself and not the woman who wields it. I wanted the sculpt to represent that.
Here’s how I did it:
  • Cut the Eye off her hand.
  • Got a Green Flame/Fire figure from the same Collateral Damage set.
  • Cut Fire’s leg off at about mid-calf (in a “V” shape to give the Eye a better space to glue in).
  • Glued the Eye to the leg with modeler’s glue.
Completed mid-2006.
I have to be careful with this mod — it’s broken a few times. Perhaps I’ll use a more flexible glue to bond it together next time. Despite its fragility, this was the first major customization I ever did, multilating two figures to do it. I don’t regret it one bit — this is just cool, yo.
This also emboldened me to attempt an even more ambitious mod that I’ll highlight next time.

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STORM (Danger Room)
A pretty solid if dirt-cheap representative of the X-Men’s weather-wielding demi-goddess, DR Storm’s sculpt is just OK.

Yah. OK.

Quite bland compared even to the X-Plosion version (using the unfortunate X-treme X-Men costume):

Nope. Never liked this outfit.

This mod idea came pretty much by accident. After leaving a figure in my hot car, I noted how it just all but melted. That got me wondering if I could reposition DR Storm’s cape to something more like I remembered from the late-1980s comics she wore the outfit in.
Here’s what I did:
  • I put the figure in my car for about 15 minutes to a half-hour and, sure enough, it softened nicely, becoming quite malleable.
  • Ran cold water on the figure once in the desired position.
  • Then I propped it upright in my freezer to let it set in the new position:

Dynamic. Although she still has that occasional bend at the ankle. :)

Completed mid-2006.
This is still one of my all-time favorites — a simple, elegant mod that will need no judge approval in tournament play.
Next: While this mod used zero subtraction to the original sculpt, my next mod subtracts nearly ALL the existing sculpt! Be here next week!

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I’ve never been a HeroClix completist — that collector who wants to own every piece in the game. Every so often I like to rotate out older, unused pieces to make room for fresher stuff. But some characters do make my permanent collection, and sometimes I decide to mod those to better match the comic book character they’re based on. Here’s an early example:

EXPERIENCED STAR-SPANGLED KID (Legacy)

Unlike my earlier mod of Rookie Dove (Hypertime), this one wasn’t because of manufacturer error. Rather, it was my own desire for a comic-accurate figure. The actual Star-Spangled Kid figure looks like this:

Nice enough sculpt, but...wrong.

But this is her from the comics:

No rod, no flight.

She didn’t use the staff until she actually became Stargirl, as reflected in the Veteran version of the character:

Have rod, will fly.

Therefore, since I was at the time a huge JSA fan and figured I’d never want to trade or sell this piece, I decided to simply use scissors and an exacto knife to remove the staff.

And, thanks to the cramped quarters of my storage box, she's bent forward as though she's running!

And thus my inner continuity nerd was satisfied. (That was the good news. The bad news was that another character also had a big difference in appearance between his Rookie, Experienced and Veteran versions, and making that mod would tax my nascent skills and perseverance to the extreme. But that’s another story for another time well down the road.)

Next time: my first — and only — non-subtractive resculpt.

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Welcome to a new feature here on HeroClixin’: My Custom Mods! Each article will detail in brief my process in doing the mod, proving that you don’t have to be an expert sculptor or use a lot of Green Stuff to make your pieces your own! (A caveat, though: I did minor in Art in undergrad. But I was a drawing specialist. Painting was the class I nearly failed!)

Without further ado:

ROOKIE DOVE (Hypertime)

One of the first mods I attempted was based on a manufacturer’s error. R Dove has the Boot speed symbol, but the mass-produced figure ended up like this:

NOT a flier at this stage in her career.

Leading to this errata in the Errata & Clarifications document (now known as the Player’s Guide):
“#088 Dove
This character does not fly; it has Leap/Climb (but not on the first click). Ignore the flight base on this character.”
Well, I decided to make it right. Here’s how I did it:
  • Carefully, but firmly, I snapped off the flight base.
  • Then, if I recall correctly, I snipped off the excess peg from the figure’s foot to give the glue a wider surface to bond to.
  • Finally, I used modeler’s glue to fill up the space where the flight stand had once sat and held Dove’s foot there until the bond set in about 2.5 minutes or so.
  • Propped it up so she wouldn’t sag (much) until the bond fully cured.

Now she's right! (If a little blurry.) :)

The result is a non-confusing Rookie Dove that, despite being stuffed in my cramped tacklebox for the past 5 years and being an early mod, has never broken. WIN!
I later performed an identical mod on ROOKIE ALETA in Supernova, who had an identical manufacturing error and resulting errata. The modification process was also the same, though I believe I have broken and had to repair this figure once.

Still a lot sturdier than she looks!

Next week (as I intend to make this a weekly feature showing up on Mondays in homage to an old feature on blogroll champ HCRealms.com) I’ll show off another early mod even simpler than these. Hope you’ll check it out!