Mostly older stuff, these are mostly modifications of Marvel action figures
into other Marvel action figures.
The Guardsman: A Guardsman toy from the Toy
Biz "Spider-Man Techno Wars" assortment, which was really just a half-assed
repaint of a cancelled Iron Man toy, repainted to better resemble the true
Guardsman suit. Very little physical modification done, I just filled in the
holes for armor pieces, glued the elbows and knees closed and painted the
sucker. The chest is rigid plastic, so the chest lamp would have been too
hard to remove. 7/21/97
Guardian: James MacDonald Hudson, in the
costume John Byrne designed for him (as opposed to the current noseless
wonder). The base is a Quicksilver toy from the Mutant Armor line, which
itself is a modified Spider-Man figure. I sliced and filed off most of
Pietro's hair, then built the Guardian suit's helmet out of Sculpey modeling
compound. Then I chopped off the left hand and replaced it in a less dopey
pose (it was a webslinging hand with the fingers pulled in, and it looked
like the figure was trying to give you the ringer with a closed fist),
cementing it in place with more Sculpey. Next I filled in most of the joints
with Sculpey, since I was going to have to fuse them anyway to avoid having
blue plastic showing through. Finally, I used a half dozen or so layers of
white paint and two coats of gloss red to put Guardian's costume on.
11/20/97
Vindicator: Heather MacNeil Hudson, in a
modification of her Alpha Flight v2 costume. I replaced the dippy headpiece
with goggles (as I expect the comics version will soon, although I'd guess
the real article will have amber goggles...so sue me, I don't have amber
paint) and painted the maple leaf properly. The base for this project was a
Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) figure. I used a glue gun to fuse all of her
joints other than shoulders, having found Sculpey problematic in my work on
Guardian, above. And a good thing, too, because when I worked at curing the
Sculpey for her wristbands, legbands, shoulderpads and goggles, I discovered
that the plastic used in Spider-Woman's limbs had a rather low melting
point. I eventually used this to my advantage, bending the figure's arms
away from its body so that I wouldn't have to worry about paint scraping off
from fingertips sliding across the figure's legs. One detail that doesn't
really show up in the scan is that the figure's hair has yellow highlights as
depicted in the comic. 1/13/98
Captain America: This is one of the 10" Marvel
Universe toys. As it is sold, it's a particularly cruddy Captain America.
It seems to be a Fantastic Four-style costume body with a really bad Cap head
stuck on and a somewhat indifferent paint job. I made the following repairs:
added glove detail with putty, added boot swashes with putty and foam, added
chainmail texture to chest and shoulders with putty, reattached the mask's
wings at the proper angle (they had stuck out at 45 degrees!), removed about
a millimeter or so of excess chin, added a belt buckle with putty, repainted
the A on the mask properly, gave him irises (he'd had blank white eyes) and
eyebrows, and repainted the whole figure to be consistent. I couldn't fix
the overly-belligerent expression, I'm not that good yet. The figure remains
fully poseable, although the neck's a bit stiff now. 3/19/99
Daki Pez Dispenser: In the Black Panther "Marvel
Knights" comic, there's this lunatic named Achebe. At one point he starts
wearing a hand puppet called Daki which is a caricature of himself. I looked
into making a Daki hand puppet, but decided it was beyond my resources, so I
settled for a Daki Pez dispenser, made from a C-3PO Pez dispenser and a bunch
of Milliputt epoxy putty. 9/6/99
Unicorn Attacktix: The old-school Iron Man
villain, who has never really gotten any love from toymakers. Built from M02
Punisher with Microman hands and the flamethrower from the Iron Man movie
"Mk01" armor.
Rough cut: Just carved down Punisher,
swapped hands and stuck the blaster the to flattened top of his head.
Miscellaneous Gallery - Marvel
