Monthly Archives: November 2017

Gotham Girls

 

It’s funny how sometimes projects get completed without any clear plan whatsoever. From the crime-filled alleys of Gotham City: three of Batman’s most notorious femme fatales: Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Lady Shiva!

These miniatures were in the freezer bin wherein all the Heroclix models I intend to repaint and rebase currently reside. A couple of months back I was painting up some Hasslefree martial artists, and I thought a Heroclix Lady Shiva might make a good addition to the theme. I fetched her from the freezer and rebased her, intending on repainting her whenever I got the chance. No rush, you understand. Just a miniature to add to when I had some extra paint I needed to use.

Then I picked up some miniatures in a Craigslist lot that included these AD&D hyenas. I immediately thought of Harley Quinn, and into the freezer I went yet again. A quick rebasing and she joined Lady Shiva in the side pile.

Then, while playing Arkham Knight on the PS4, I thought about the Heroclix Catwoman figure who was cooling her heels in the freezer. I took her out and rebased her with this Reaper cat familiar, and off to the side pile she went.

As fate would have it, these miniatures got painted at pretty much the same pace: a dab here and there while I did other things. Then one afternoon I took them out of the side pile and finished all of them off. I added some highlights and shading to the pre-painted hyenas and the Gotham Girls were done! I’m not wild about how Lady Shiva’s raccoon eyes look, but she’s ok for tabletop gaming. Maybe I’ll touch her up a bit. I’m also thinking of adding some gloss varnish to Catwoman’s costume and whip, but I’m not sure yet.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the conspicuous absence of a certain red-headed botanist-turned-arch criminal, all I can say is stay tuned. She’ll be here soon!

 

Tick, Tock…Time to Feed the Croc!

I find the Knight Models 32mm Batman miniatures to be terrific sculpts, but they’re generally too pricey for me to justify their purchase, except in rare cases.  I caved and bought the Frank Miller Batman, for example, because I just had to have it. Same thing with Killer Croc, here.

This version of Croc is based on the Batman: Arkham series of video games by Rocksteady. In total, there are four games. Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Arkham Origins (a prequel), and Arkham Knight, which closes out the series. Croc appears in every game as a boss except for Arkham City, where he is mentioned, but doesn’t actually appear. (Technically, he doesn’t appear in Arkham Knight unless you purchase the DLC Season of Infamy, which is so good and so worth it I don’t know why you wouldn’t.) In the comics, Croc started out as a big ex-wrestler with a skin condition. He has since devolved through a half-man/half-reptile all the way to a full blown human/dinosaur hybrid complete with a tail!

This version most accurately reflects Croc’s appearance in Arkham Asylum (no tail yet), the first game in the series. Much like the game, I love the miniature, too. I posed him with a couple of reptilian friends. The one on the left is a child’s toy I got at a flea market somewhere. I’m pretty sure I got two, but I can only find one.  The other one is a large Dungeons and Dragons Dire Crocodile. I bought it for use as a Pulp monster, but when I decided to paint Killer Croc I thought it was a good excuse to paint the Dire Crocodile as well.

The Dire Crocodile is quite large. Here he is next to a 28mm Reaper Inkeeper. I built a lip of green stuff around his base and applied scenic water with an eyedropper (sayonara, eyedropper). Three days later, the water still hasn’t cured and it sticks to everything it touches. Hugely annoying. Looks ok, though. It will look better when I can add some flock/leaves to the rim of the base, whenever the “water” dries.

Speaking of huge, even scaled at the 32mm range, this Killer Croc is gigantic. Here he is posed with a Heroclix version of himself. (I’m a big fan of Heroclix for many reasons, but I think everyone seeing this picture can understand why I splurged on the Knight  version of Croc.)

And here he is with a Reaper Ogre, a Heroclix Hulk, and a Heroclix Question. (Incidentally, here are my repaints of Hulk and The Question.) The Question model should give a good indication of how a “normal” 28mm model looks next to Croc.

This is somewhat problematic. Croc is big, but he’s nowhere near the size and mass of the Hulk. From a scale perspective, I find this irksome. Doubtful I would ever use them in the same scenario, but still…

I tried to repaint a Heroclix Solomon Grundy recently, but standing him next to Croc was laughable. In the comics, they’re about the same size; so too in the Knight Models range. But mixing and matching Knight Models with Heroclix may work fine with normal sized figures, but not so well with big guys like this.

Which means I’m probably going to have to buy the Knight Models version of Grundy. And while I’m at it, their version of the Hulk. But at $35 apiece, that’s a lot of cheddar for only two miniatures.

Luckily, ’tis the season. Black Friday is in two days….who knows?

We Are the Champions

Here’s my latest team for Super Mission Force: The Champions of Los Angeles! L-R: Darkstar, Ghost Rider, Angel, Hercules, Iceman, and Black Widow!

The original Champions debuted in the mid-70’s, and to call them a lackluster team would be an understatement. Despite some interesting roster choices, the Champions never really gelled as a title or as a team. Nonetheless, I figured I’d give them a little repainting love. (Actually, that kind of happened by accident. I had painted up Black Widow and Darkstar for unrelated projects and realized I had one-third of the team. I decided to paint the others up when I could.)

Angel isn’t completely faithful to the Champions version, which is a good thing. Angel’s costume back then was one of the most hideous costumes ever to grace a superhero (look it up). This one is much better, and I am a big fan of this particular sculpt of Angel. Keen-eyed visitors to Dead Dick’s Tavern may recognize some superhero overlap: Darkstar was painted some time ago along with the rest of the Soviet Super Soldiers for my Breeder Bombs campaign, while Iceman was also done a while back. Last post he made an appearance as one-third of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

Both Iceman and Ghost Rider contained that translucent plastic I loathe so much on Heroclix models. With Iceman, it’s his whole body and the ice slide he rode in on. It wasn’t much of a big deal to just dry-brush him with white and build a base out of frosted sea-glass, the same technique I used on the Penguin and Mr. Freeze. The base took longer than the model itself. (As a side note, I’m particularly happy with the way Hercules looks. His original clix paint job was underwhelming, to say the least.)

Ghost Rider had that translucent yellow plastic everywhere on the model where there is flame. I painted proper flames on his head and bike and this is the result. Originally, I thought this model was a tad too small to be in scale with the rest, but it’s not so bad after all. (The whole time I was painting him I was humming the Rollins Band’s version of “Ghost Rider Motorcycle Hero”.) I contemplated adding a chain, but then remembered this is the original Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider, so no chain needed…which turned out to be good, since I was considering buying some spiked chains from Reaper, only to find a pack of them costs 10 bucks! A bit steep for bits I will probably only use once. I also thought about making the flame trail go all the way to the end of the base by sculpting extra flames out of green stuff, but I lack the confidence and skill to do so. Oh well.

I’m much more likely to use the individual models in games rather than basing a scenario around this particular team, but you never know what could happen!

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends!

 

I was born a bit too late for the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, although I watched it in syndication faithfully. When I was a young lad, this is what we had for a Spider-Man cartoon: Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends! The problem, of course, is that that’s a terrible title for what turned out to be a terrible cartoon, and Spider-Man’s friends were not all that amazing.

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends aired on Saturday mornings here in the USA, back when they played cartoons on Saturday mornings. It starred the voice talents of June Foray as Aunt May and the great Frank Welker as Iceman. It also featured narration courtesy of smilin’ Stan Lee. And yet, it still sucked.

The series ran for 24 episodes, and is technically the first appearance of Firestar (whoopee!).  I say it ran for 24 episodes, but I’m pretty sure my local network affiliate only had access to two of those episodes, because it seemed like they chose to alternate between these two episodes every week. I speak of season 1, episode 5: SWARM!, and season 1, episode 7: Videoman. I’ve seen both of these godawful episodes more times than I care to remember. Until recently, they were available on Netflix, but that seems to no longer be the case here in the USA.

The series had a couple of ok episodes, one featuring Captain America, Sub-Mariner and Dr. Strange and one featuring the Uncanny X-Men (in which Wolverine was inexplicably Australian). But all in all, it was mostly about Iceman and Spidey fighting over Firestar’s attentions. Kinda like if Firestar was Archie, and Spidey and Iceman were Betty and Veronica. Oh, and they had a cocker spaniel who was even more annoying than they were.

Anyway, I have had a painted Spider-Man for a while, and I recently painted up Iceman for another project. So I figured I’d paint Firestar for the hell of it. And here they are.

 

Watch out, true believers! It’s Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends!