Big Bang - Dr. Weird

For Halloween I thought I'd post Big Bang's answer to DC's Spectre and MLJ's Mr. Justice (see earlier post) - Dr. Weird. He's a supernatural being who can sense strange forces at work and move to deal with them. In one such instance (Big Bang No. 3) he enlists the aid of the Knights of Justice and the Round Table of America from two different earths in order to stymie a plot to destroy both worlds. A portal has been opened between the two worlds thet, if not closed, will result in the two earths colliding. Sounds like a pretty bad day for all concerned, doesn't it? Dr. Weird holds the portal at bay while the heroes from both earths race to foil the perpetrator. Guess who that turns out to be? The bad guy is an intelligent chimp named Dr. Binana (remember I don't make these things up) with delusions of disaster. How very out of the Marvel Family is that!!?? At any rate Dr. Weird has saved the day, along with the other heroes and everything will now be fine until the chimp breaks out of the zoo again. Dr. Weird was made using a Toy Biz Silver Surfer and attaching a couple of plastic circles as ear pieces I hole punched out of plastic sheet. The cape is from a Toy Biz Doctor Doom.

Kingdom Come - Goblin Lord

From the land of really obscure characters I present Goblin Lord from the Alex Ross/Mark Waid special mini-series Kingdom Come. This series, set in an alternate future, has a whole host of really obscure and unique characters in it, which is probably what attracted me to it in the first place. At one point the heroes round up all the bad guys on the earth and imprison them in a Gulag for the good of all mankind. They break out of course but that's half the fun, isn't it?? Anyway, in the story telling various characters hanging out around the Gulag are pictured and the Goblin Lord was one of those. I really liked the look of the character and decided to try to make him. I used the head from a Silent Screamers Nosferatu and the body from a McFarlane Icobod Crane from the movie Sleepy Hollow and did a little repainting. Presented here as an early Halloween offering for your enjoyment. I may present some more of my Kingdom Come figures in the future.

Future British Carriers

The Royal Navy hasn't had a decent aircraft carrier since Ark Royal was decommissioned in 1978. They had designed what was called CVA-01 in the early 1960s, a large decked carrier of around 63,000 tons full load, but the budget people axed it. So they built three of the so-called through-deck cruisers of the Invincible class, which were really only intended for ASW, but which carried Harrier jets that acquitted themselves well in the Falklands War. Now the Brits are building two new carriers, the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, which are to be about 65,000 tons, making them smaller than a circa 92,000 ton U.S. Nimitz class and larger than a circa 40,000 ton French Charles de Gaul and about the same size as a 67,000 ton Russian Kuznetsov. OK, sounds good on the face of it. But then I hear that the boys at the x-checker think they're going to cost too much so they want to commission both carriers and then either mothball one of them or sell it off. And they've already delayed them from 2016 tp 2020. Apparently it would have cost too much just the cancel it. Say what!!!??? Are they nuts??!! Apprently they are. The Brits have been suffering from this syndrone since World War II, letting the money men decide what ships they can afford rather than what ships are going to insure the security of the nation. We have gone through something similar and it always sucks. At least that's what I think. Nice looking carriers, though.

Knight Watchman & Kid Galahad

Knight Watchman is the Batman of the Big Bang universe, with his young partner Kid Galahad by his side (Kid Galahad - wasn't that an old Elvis Presley movie?). Anyway, Knight Watchman and his partner are, in reality, Reid Randall and his nephew Jerry. When Reid's brother and wife (Jerry's parents) are killed by the mob, Reid (of course) decides to take matters into his own hands and assumes a secret identity as the Knight Watchman to avenge their deaths and bring the culprits to justice. Jerry eventually comes on board as Kid Galahad as the Twilight Paladin and Kid Whiz wage war on the forces of evil in Midway City. Instead of a Batcave they have the Watchtower, which is located in a water tower above their house, and instead of the Batmobile they have a Watchwagon. Later on Knight Watchman gets grittier, ala the Dark Knight. Knight Watchman was made from a Toy Biz Daredevil while Kid Galahad was made using a Toy Biz Robin with the legs from a Secret Wars Captain America. In different stories there were differences in how the emblem on his chest was depicted - I rather preferred the one outlined in yellow, making it stand out more.

Ultiman - or Ultimen

Ultiman, the ultimate human - gosh, sounds a lot like Superman, doesn't it - started his career in one of two different ways, depending on which earth you happen to be from. On Earth B in the 1940s Christopher Kelly (on the right in the picture) was driving home from the draft board where he was rejected for military service when a fiery meteor slammed into his car. Rather than being crushed like a bug under a heel Chris becomes the superpowered man ultimately called - well - Ultiman. Then about 20 years later on Earth A an astronaut named Chris Kelly was on a Gemini mission with a companion when their space capsule was hit by a meteor that killed the other man but turned Kelly into - well, Ultiman, the ultimate human - of Earth A. They are later fated to meet and team up. The action figures each started life as a Super Powers Collection Superman, with the one with the gauntlets having arms from a Dr. Fate. The heads were both from a Jurassic Park Muldoon. The capes were both from Robin, the Boy Wonder figures.

Big Bang Comics

I don't usually blog about a publisher but this one was nice enough to run an ad for me back in the days when I was selling custom action figures. Big Bang started as a self-published series of comics by Gary Carlson and Chris Ecker featuring characters based mostly on Golden and Silver Age superheroes and story lines. It's a little like the characters I featured from the Supreme universe. Later they were published under the Image logo. I really liked some of the characters and set out to do custom figures of them. I sent them a photo of some of the figures (at the bottom of the picture) which they ran in Image Big Bang #2 and later they ran my full page ad for free on the inside back cover of issue #5. By the way, before you think of it, I no longer live at that address so don't send in any orders - I just do them for myself these days. For those who like the Golden and Silver Ages I recommend picking these comics up on ebay or in the old comic bin at your local comic book store. They have a sense of fun to them that contemporary comics lack. Issue #0 even has a cover by Alex Ross! Next time I'll start working my way through the Big Bang Universe.

Champions-Villain-Pulsar

Where would the world of comic book superheroes have been without villains like Pulsar. They're angry. They have a lot of angst. They're big, muscle-bound morons that we just love to see get the crap beat out of them month after month by the heroes. Pulsar started life as Frank Costen and it was apparently all down hill after that. He was former army, down on his luck, blamed the rest of the world for all of his misfortunes, yada, yada, yada, as Seinfeld would say. Then an organization known as Viper came along and gave him enhanced powers to shoots blasts of power from his arms and hands and he was ready to take on the world. Of course he ran afoul of the Champions and all his plans for bloody vengeance on the world got him was a spell in the slammer. Oh well, maybe he liked the discipline and routine. He couldn't even get respect from his teammates - Foxbat insisted on calling him Francis, which really torked him off. But I'm sure he'll break out jail and go on another rampage soon. Either that, or more humiliatingly, he might be released early as not posing a significant risk to society. Now wouldn't that be a kick in the pants. The action figure was a repainted Toy Biz Daredevil - with guys like this I try to keep 'em simple.