Customs by

Mike – Minesurfer (on-line)

e-mail

ginngrr@juno.com

Web Address

none

Recipes:
Paint: All figures were primed with Krylon gray primer. Areas to be finished in bright colors were then primed again with white primer. Acrylics were used and the figures sealed with Dulcote. For shiny finishes, decoupage glue was used as a sealer.

Composite Man: Pretty simple recipe. A modified Two Face head placed on a left over Cloak figure. I added a Chameleon like antenna and switched out left hands with a Rogue figure. I was tempted to change the Rogue hand into a “giving the bird” configuration, but thought better of it. Chest emblem was decoupaged in place. All in all, I count 16 different Legionnaire traits in this one. What a mess.

Emerald Empress: The Viper figure just screamed out to me, I am really an Emerald Empress. Her lines were smoothed down and she was painted appropriately. Her Emerald Eye of Ekron is a repainted wooden ball with decoupage glue sealer for a shiny look. The cape is from an X-Man movie Magneto. Her gold rings and chords were just little items I picked up at a local craft store.

Grimbor: Made from left over parts. The head is from a Street Guardian Superman figure. The body is a Techno Virus Cable. The ponytail came from somewhere, I can’t remember where though. I want to say a Spider-man Smythe figure, but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong... AOA Sabretooth? Omega Red? I give up; it was just lying around a whole bunch of other unused plastic pieces. The chain came from a Queen Snake figure made by McFarlane I think. Some sort of Spawn demon with lots of little snakeheads and one big cobra head in the middle.

Lightning Lord: The head and legs were supplied by a KB Magneto reissued figure. The torso and jacket came from a Street Guardian Superman. Combining these figures presented a challenge in its own right. The Mags head wasn’t articulated but his waist was. I cracked the torso opened and used the sanding disc attachment on my dremel to cut the head away from the torso. The Supes figure had male pegs on the torso, which the original head and arms, were popped onto. The Supes figure was not articulated at the waist. I popped the arms so that I could remove the jacket and paint the torso. The torso was cut away from Supes’ legs. I filled the Magneto head with epoxy so that it would be solid. After it cured, I drilled a hole into the epoxy so that the head would sit snug on Supes’ peg. I added waist articulation using the same method I did for the Umbra figure, popped the arms back on and finished painting the figure. You can’t tell because of the jacket, but his chest lightning was dusted with pastel colors for kind of a blue/white lightning effect. I was pretty happy with it, until I popped the coat on and saw it was covered.

Mano: Base is a X-Men Strike Force Super Skrull. The head is a left over MMW X-Man encased in the plastic cover to Dr. Strange’s little accessory thingy. The belt was made from elastic and a snap. The kneepads are from a MMW X-Man and his gun holster was cut from a Spider-man Red Skull figure, glued onto a piece of elastic, and attached to the belt. His sword came from a huge cache of weapons that I have lying around from all of my action figures.

Persuader: The body is from an Animated Avenger’s Wonder Man. The head is from a left over Alpha Flight North Star figure. The mask is super sculpey and elastic. The belt and pouch were made from elastic and a snap. His tunic and collar were hand sewn. The hooks are cut paper clips shaped with needle nose pliers. And his axe was donated from a Lex Lugar wrestling figure.

Tharok: The body is a Battle Blasters Colossus. The head is from a Techno Virus Cable figure. The neck peg was modified to the fit the torso. His human side was filled in with putty and smoothed. A fairly painless figure really.

Time Trapper and Lori Morning: The Trapper was made from an unknown base figure. I know who it is, but that is a question to be answered later, if at all. The Trapper’s robe was hand sewn and a removable clay mask hides the face. Lori is from MMW Spat and Grovel. She could be Spat or she could be Grovel. I don’t know which one and I don’t care. I had to remove her headband with an exacto knife, small files, and fine grit sand paper. That was actually pretty tough to do without damaging her hair sculpt. I filled in her fur boots so they would look more like high top sneakers. Her shoestrings were made from pieces of thread glued into place, and her hockey jersey was hand sewn with some needlepoint type details. The “devil” symbol is a sticker I made and glued on her jersey with flexible glue.

Vaildus: What a pain in the rear. Validus started out as a 12” Apocalypse figure. This base needed heavy modifying. There was a raised ring of plastic that started on his chest that went around his head and enclosed in on itself on his back. As I was dremelling this down, his right arm fell off. When I got the raised ring down to his chest, I found out that it did not protrude into his inner cavity, which would leave me with a figure in 2 pieces. I cracked him open at this point and reinforced his front torso and back torso parts from the inside with a fiberglass repair kit. I finished dremelling down his raised ring and fixed his right arm. I filled in the big gap in his chest and back with clay and then smoothed it over with putty. His “A” belt symbol was sanded smooth and the lines between his four fingers were filled in to leave him with two big fingers on each hand. The bicep straps are elastic with snaps. The chords on his arms came with the figure. A gap was dremelled into each foot to create the fabled Validus toes. I dremelled away the top of his head and filled the lower part with clay to give his brain a base to rest on. The brain was sculpted from clay.