Custom Figures and Models

Hey!  Here's some action figures and toys I've had modified or spruced up over the past couple years...  I'll try to get some better pictures up at some point, but my first priority is becoming a better cartoonist, so:  It might be a while.  On with the show!

 

Dale Gribble

The awesome King of the Hill line shares the same problem of all the Beavis and Butt-head licensed merchandise:  No OTHER brand (or band) name could appear on the products, so, "AC/DC" and "Metallica" got changed to "Skull" and "Death Rock," and now Dale's "Mack" hat (a Deer Hunter reference, possibly deliberate on Dale's part) gets the rub as well.  Thanks to the nimble fingers and steady hand of go-to girl Celena, Dale's as right-wing a nutjob as ever.

 

Deathlok

So licensed brand names are one thing, but what about the American flag??  For some reason, it got rubbed off 'Lok here... even though it's one of the top four or five most important visual characteristics of the guy.  Maybe Toy Biz found his quasi-satirical nature unsettling, and sought to soften the blow he represents against post-Watergate America.  In fact, I'm sure that was their concern exactly.

 

Devil Dinosaur!

Oh, hell yeah.  All I even asked for on this one was that Celena paint the toy dinosaur red...  It was already just enough a lazy departure from the standard T-Rex that it made a decent Devil stand-in, I thought.  Then Celena went to work on the face, as well.  Painting the teeth sharp, the eyes expressive...  Nice work, my friend.  "Devil cries out with the frightful rejoicing of his toothsome kind!" as Moon Boy might say.  Come to think of it, a little Moon Boy sitting on his back would kinda complete the picture.....

 

Don and Bill

Yes, it's the cyborg lobster sidekicks of Gomi, the cyborg nerd from Jo Duffy and Kerry Gamill's Fallen Angels limited series!  Finding toy lobsters of roughly the right size to match the rest of my figures was a task that took the best part of two years, by the way.  All I need now is just the right Harry Potter to paint blond and put in a tiny blue jumpsuit... Ahem!  In a manly way, of course.

 

Flag-Smasher

The one customized figure that I bought outright, with no hand in its creation.  But it's Flag-Smasher!  One of the very few good things to come out of Captain America: The Gruenwald Years...  A nice ideological enemy...  And, all the better for my tastes, a super-villain dedicated to the idea of One-World Government!  What an evil, peace-loving BASTARD!

 

MODOK

The Mobile Organism Designed Only for Computing, who changed the last word in his acronym to "Killing," this figure came out as part of the Iron Man animated TV show toy tie-in.  Fortunately, they designed him to match the comic book version (unlike the Mandarin figure, but don't get me started on THAT...) but, unfortunately, he was a drab and colorless thing, with a hole in his head where his killing jewel should go.  Celena went above and beyond on this one, even finding a costume jewel that fit perfectly...  And she colored him to match the Mike Zeck drawing from his Marvel Universe profile.

 

Napoleon Brainaparte

Here's the first model I've made of one of my own characters....  The despotic leader of Space France, from one of my F. France Jericho 24 Hour Comics. All the elements of this model were found (or pointed towards) by Celena or her sister, Selah, my colorist-girlfriend.

 

The Octopus

It's the Spirit's arch-enemy, the Octopus!  Never seen, but always striking out from the shadows, his only trademark the three-lined pair of gloves!  I found the color Octopus story Will Eisner did during the... 60's?  It was sometime after the original b&w stories, I know that much.... just before Celena got to work on this one, so I could tell her the gloves were purple and yellow rather than... Well, whatever lame color combo I would've made up.  The figure is another Spirit figure (of course) but with the alternate "beat-up" head that you could interchange with the smart 'n clean one.  And the eyes are painted angry, instead of the original hurt-and-confused look.

 

The One

I'd rather not have started my custom figure collection with Rick Veitch's anti-Objectivist "superhero"...  The Midnight Mink, King Rad, Moon Mistress and Judge Jury would be way cooler...  But the character design was so simple and elegant, and easy to apply to a Spider-Man figure, the One is where we began.  With enough space to display it someday, I'd like to build the One's enemy, the Other:  A great swarming mass of humanity, with one person on top, holding a whip!

 

Selah

This is a figure put together by Selah herself at her job as an art teacher.  I like having such an accurate little model of someone...  Again, if I ever have the space for it, I think I'll try to get her to make me a whole little army of these things, one for everyone I know, love, and hate.  It just seems like something Superman might have kept in the ol' FoS....

 

 

Coming Soon:

Chris Ware's Superman
The Red Skull
Rosie the Riveter
The Thing (Fred Hembeck Edition)
The Thing (Jack Kirby's Secret Stash)

Coming Eventually:

Arseface
Gomi
Lord Julius
Moon-Boy
Metron