28mm Superheroes (part 1)

Towards the end of last year myself and my two boys got back into “heroscape” playing a few games of the “marvel” variety and then slipping in some of the original sets characters as well (I bought 13 sets of the original game when they were selling them off at ‘Argos’ a few years back so we have PLENTY!!! of the hexagon game board tiles), however as these things always seem to go we soon started “tinkering” and a plan was hatched to create our own heroes rather than using the ones provided, this was then expanded so that no DC or Marvel (or any other companies for that matter) heroes could be used only heroes we had created ourselves would be used though close “proxies” would be allowed. So a Marvel heroclix “King Pin” with a bit of a repaint became “Mr Big”, and a modified “Prince Borain” from my own Dick Garrison range became “The Marksman” ,with these and a few others from various sources we were away.

Then the modifying bug really started to kick in, I started on plans to modify the Heroclix figure of “the Thing” (always one of my favourite comic book characters), I had. I’d picked up the figure at a Wargames table sale show a few years back but was never really happy with him, so a plan was conceived  that he would be cut in half and I’d rebuild his body from the waist down, boots and  tight trousers were to be the order of the day for all the members of my “superteam” and I added a vest top to cover the fact that tilting his body more upright left a bit of a gap at the front of his body , after about two weeks of hacking and sculpting the super strong “Granite” was born. He would become the first member of my super trio team “The Doomwatch”. Please note that these pictures are of the unpainted “modified” figures, I decided to paint them all together once all the members of the team were complete.

Next I needed to find a figure to represent “Migraine” the beautiful but deadly psychic able to shoot debilitating “mind bullets” into the brains of opponents. After much trawling of the internet before Christmas a few possibilities had presented themselves but I eventually went for a figure from “Copplestone Castings” cavegirl pack. Mark Copplestone does some of my favourite female figures and I’ve bought this pack before (in fact the figure in question never made into my cavemen tribe last time as I modified her slightly by adding boots sword and shield, and she became a barbarian princess !(shown left)). The first job on her arrival was to file away the fur loin cloth around her waist and carve away her sabre tooth necklace. I decided that she should have her right arm raised and her hand open in the classic “Psychic doing something” pose so off came her right arm for now. The outer sides of her chest were filed away so that I could add a cleavage for a more “contained” less “swinging free” look and her feet were filed away to points ready for me to add her boots in greenstuff. After skimming over her body and rebuilding her chest the next job was to reattach her arm in it’s new position, a little filing of her shoulder (it had been cut off just above the bicep) allowed me to take a look at what the final arm would look like, but oh no it just “looked wrong” with her hand in the position I wanted her bicep positioning was all wrong so I decided to slice he arm again mid-wrist, twist her hand round and cover the new join with a pair of gauntlet style gloves (ala’ Robin the boy wonder). I also re-sculpted her hair a bit to cover and strengthen the new join on her shoulder, and hey-presto doom watcher number two was in the bag.

The third member/s of my team have just winged thier way across the pond from the good old US of A, I say “their” as “Ghost Walker” will in fact be represented by two figures, for the horribly scarred hero will have the ability to leave his own body and travel “ghostlike” and inhabit and control other figures for a limited period of time. This means that I need two of the same figure, one will have his face and hands wrapped in bandages and a cape to represent the normal “Ghost Walker” and the other will have his head and hands replaced with skull/skeletal hands and a raged cape to represent the spirit of “Ghost Walker” in transit as it were. A search of all the usual superhero figure suppliers didn’t turn up exactly what I was after but a shout out on “The Miniatures Page” turn up the very thing on the “Armourcast” web-site, so thanks go out again to the ever helpful chaps on the TMP.

Well I think that will do for now once I have more to tell you I’ll post again so please keep checking back..

Cheers Roger.