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.
In March 2011, Mega Bloks released a blindpack set of Marvel figures. Of the
first eight packs I grabbed, seven were regular Iron Man. D'oh. So,
of course, the only rational response is to repaint them. I dyed one black
and then painted it black and chrome as the mysterious sixth ranger
(TetsuBlack, secretly Ezekiel Stane, who initially sought revenge against
Tony Stark for his father's death, but then teaming up against the
Mandarin). The others got metallic red coats and then accent colors (even
the one that looks unmodded is in fact fully painted over). TetsuGold is
Tony Stark, TetsuPurple is Bethany Cabe, TetsuGreen is Happy Hogan, TetsuBlue
is James Rhodes, and TetsuPink is Pepper Potts. Weapons all taken from Lego
figures. TetsuBlack has a chromed knight's sword, neither pic has a good
angle on it.
7-11 Destroyer: A straw-topper
I picked up while in Boston on a job interview. Once I saw the movie and
noticed that the movie Destroyer is all shiny (the comics one is dull metal,
which the straw-topper does pretty well) so I chromed it up. I also added
some panel line fill to simulate the "internal furnace" effects the movie
Destroyer exhibited. I briefly considered sticking this on a
Monsterpocalypse base, but ended up deciding against it. May 2011.
Atomic Skull: More or less the
Silver Age Atomic Skull from DC, an old Superman foe. After getting several
extras of the Red Skull and Thor blind-bag Mega Blok minifigs, I decided to
make something with them, and came up with this neon-colored horrorshow. And
with the leftover parts I made Office Space
Thor. October 2011.
Armored Magneto: Combined
pieces from a Mega Blok Magneto and a Halo minifig, then painted it up to be
more unified. Consider it a Nu52 style update. December 2011.
Refrigerator Magnet Agent
Coulson: A blind-bag collectible Agent Coulson "Chibi" with a hole
drilled in his head, a magnet inserted, and the paint touched up. May 2012.
(Years later I realized that he had essentially been "fridged" to motivate the
Avengers.)
Killgrave: A Tenth Doctor figure
repainted in a purple suit as Killgrave from the Jessica Jones Netflix series.
February 2016.
Miscellaneous Gallery - Marvel
