[Mordiganne]

The Universe is expanding.... (pics to follow in next post)

Picked up a few new things for collection purposes. Added the new Quasar and Morbius (that I already customized). The Machine Man and Iron-Man pack I got because the head for Machine Man by itself is $8 and the two pack was $10. Just made sense since I have a Machine Man custom slated anyway. Lastly picked up a Fury/IM pack during a random stop at a TRU. The Iron-Man was kind of crap and was going to be tossed when I decided to paint it and see if I liked it any better, and in fact, I do. That red plastic was hideous but the glossy red paint job really makes the figure pop. I wish I had a before shot of Iron-Man to show how much better this looks having painted over that gaudy red plastic. So I've now decided to keep this guy and add him to the collection as a custom figure. Magneto is there because, as I've mentioned before, I'm OCD about my customs and while his cape was 'ok' it was bothering me. So I cut out space for the metal retaining ring and fit the cape onto it so that it all fits together properly. Now he's all set and ready to go back into the collection. So, anyway, onto the rest...


Captain Britain - I avoided buying the Hasbro made version of this Captain Britain for years because I always felt it was just way too small. I ran across him for a good price on Amazon and picked it up on a whim and yeah, it's still way too small. Captain Britain is a tall and built character. The figure Hasbro made had the buff part right, but they put him on stumpy legs making him shorter than most of their other figs. That just wasn't going to work for me, but I still wanted to have the character in this outfit, so it was time for a custom. The head from the retail figure is really good so I just needed a body to compliment it. He was easy enough to put together, ironically using the entire Captain Britain body from the comic 2-pack with Spider-Man (who became another custom in this batch). This is one of the few figures I've made who's custom body parts came entirely from the character that I was making a custom of. The only thing that really sucks about this body is that the upper torso is almost always permanently tilted to one side or the other. There's really no good way to fix it that I know of. I suppose I could crack open the torso and see if there's a reason why it's tilted like that, but since it's a problem on virtually every figure that uses this body mold I'm chalking it up to a factory defect and calling it a day. I added in the Hasbro fig and stuck on a head - painted Steve Rogers which I'm using as an unmasked Brian Braddock - to show just how stark the height difference is between the two Captains. I don't particularly like the black patches on his shoulders, so don't think I'll add them anytime soon, if at all. So, the good Captain is, at the very least, finally fitting of his stature and not a buff midget.

Thor - I've said before that I'm a Thor fan. As such I've been disappointed with most Thor offerings from Hasbro. They either weren't big enough (MU classics) or outright puny (movie figs). So he's long overdue for a redo in an appropriate scale for the character - though the modern MU Thor is still top notch! While putting him together I realized that, other than Hercules, there's no heroic characters on this buck. Thor is my first heroic custom character on this buck, too. Just found that interesting. Maybe I'll make Wonder Man on this buck. But I digress... Having an appropriately scaled Thor is an essential for my collection. Now I have one. I had to use the head from the Avengers box set - given a new paint job - until I find a better head since this one, while a great sculpt, the face is really flat looking. I left the cape removable by drilling holes into the back - I want to make a swap out "wind-blown" cape eventually. I had to do some work with Mjolnir also. The little loop they had on the hammer was ridiculous. I cut that off and did a swap with a modded strap from Herc's mace. Unfortunately I attached it wrong so had to cut off the entire handle, turn it to the position I wanted, and reattach it. I had to do some serious modding to his legs to get everything to fit together right. Sculpted belt, boots and vinyl knee/shoulder guards later and Thor is ready to join Odin on the shelf. Now I just need to get some lightning effects for him to display with. Also need to make customs of Beta Ray Bill and Masterson Thor in this scale.

Executioner - Excuse me...Excuse me! Did somebody call for the Executioner!? I've put off making this guy because the Hasbro one is still out there - though unproduced. And now that I've made this guy I fully expect to see him come out from Hasbro... just to spite me! However, since there's no telling when/if Hasbro will put theirs to market, I decided to just make one. Along with Thor this guy took the longest to complete. A good deal of sculpting went into this figure and I took a little extra time on him, and Thor, because I really wanted to do them justice. This isn't one of my "retail series" figs, I just made him another axe because I have several from customizing Ares figures and wanted to make an homage to his powered up axe from the EMH cartoon. So, he has another axe option depending on how I want to display him. I was going to do a custom of the Enchantress to go with him since the retail figure is fugly, but opted to make a better Thor first. I'll get to Enchantress eventually.

Tarantula - Even though I'll forever be a huge X-Men fan, I have to admit that Spider-Man has some of the best villains around. Venom, Electro, Sandman, Rhino etc... so many iconic bad guys that have helped make Spidey's life a living hell. And then there's Tarantula... Tarantula is not quite as popular as most of Spidey's rogues and I think there's a good reason for that. He kind of sucks as a character. I can only vaguely remember one comic that had him in it and if I remember right he got beat up pretty quickly. Still, I wanted to knock this guy off the list and get him added to the collection. He was actually fun to make. The spider design is interesting - went with a Bagley design - and was a bit of a challenge to paint. I used the Spidey from the comic 2-pack I picked up to make Captain Britain with and a painted twist tie - flexible - for the bandana ties. He came out well. So this lame character can join the rest of my Spider-Man rogues.

Black Cat - Although it hasn't aged well, one of the elements from the 90's Spider-Man cartoon that I really liked was the Black Cat getting her powers from a derivative of the Super Soldier Serum. I also liked that when she was in "Black cat" mode she grew in size, stature and strength, making her a stark contrast to Felicia Hardy rather than just an outfit change. Plus, I've always been partial to this costume and that's the character I wanted for the Spidey collection. So with that in mind I put her together on a Valk buck. The first custom I made for her was pretty bad so I put together this one and broke down attempt #1 to make a new figure out of. Black Cat makes for a very easy custom since there's only a little sculpt and lots of black paint. I'm not real happy with the head, but it'll do for now until I can cobble together a better one.

Black Widow - The Black Widow is the second "spider" in this batch. Even though her black jumpsuit is the standard outfit for the Widow, she also wore this gray outfit in many iconic storylines. As such I also consider it an iconic look for her so wanted a figure for the collection. Most notably she wore it during one of Daredevil's classic storylines where they took on the Hand (DD #185-190). This story was partially adapted for the Daredevil Netflix show (season 2) - along with several other Frank Miller stories. Obviously Widow wasn't in it given that she's in the movie portion of the MCU so her role was adjusted to fit Elektra. Too bad they don't produce comics of that caliber anymore or I might still buy them. But I digress...Black Widow was really easy to make since her costume is all a single color (with a Nomad head) but fashioning her collar took a bit of effort. You wouldn't think putting on a tiny collar would be that hard, but believe me, attaching that little piece of vinyl was more difficult than it should have been. She could either be displayed with or without her Widow Sting gauntlets and still be true to character design, so I cut them to make it easy to pop them on and off without having to take off the hands. Nice to have Widow in this outfit. She would fit with the Avengers, but I'm going to pair her up with my DD's in tribute to their classic partnership.

Psylocke - Two Braddock's in one batch. I've never been a big fan of any of Psylocke's outfits. Actually I'm not that big of a fan of Psylocke in general. However, I needed her in this one to go along with the rest of the outback team. I might give her some "casta-spella" hands, as I call them, eventually, but that's not a necessity for this custom. She was simple to put together. Sculpted the hood which was a bit of a challenge to get the shape without having it collapse. I also had to remember that she's supposed to have a full head of hair under it. I only sculpted the front part you see in her art panels though it's hard to see in the pic. Really only her butterfly power effect provided some difficulty. Did the best I could with that one, but might look into making a new effect that's not so...crappy. Anyway, my outback X-Men team is now complete!

Morbius - I've never been the biggest Morbius fan, so he was not on my radar at all. Never really came across him back when I was reading comics so only knew him from the Spider-Man cartoon where he quickly got on my nerves as a kid. So while I was content to not having the character in my collection, I decided to pick up the figure anyway. Right off upon opening the package I knew that Morbius was going to be customized. The base figure is terrible and as everyone agrees the body is a travesty. The body was easily fixed, and fortunately the head was salvageable along with the collar - both repainted. The wings were a waste though. The one I made is twice the size of that puny thing. Although I like the way the paint job came out, I really think cloth would be better for his wings. Have to look into that if I can find the right material. Lastly once the Hasbro version drops in price I'll pick up another to make a swapout head with a bloody mouth.