Quinnarama: Muppet Batman: Poison Ivy, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze

Friday, June 4, 2010

Muppet Batman: Poison Ivy, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze

One of the best things about Batman is his "rogues gallery"--the villains who call Gotham City their home. You'd think that with the Caped Crusader locking them up after every attempted heist, they'd figure it out and try someplace like, I dunno, Omaha...but they keep coming back to Gotham City. And Batman keeps stopping them.

So when I started turning Palisades Toys' Muppet action figures into Batman and his allies, I knew I'd need to have his enemies too. I didn't dig as deep as Zsasz or Clayface, but I go beyond Joker and Catwoman.

These three villains are associated in my mind--partially because of Batman: The Animated Series, and partially thanks to the Batman & Robin movie that I've otherwise tried to purge from my mind. Mr. Freeze, a brilliant but tragic figure, was in one of the first episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, and completely blew me away. I decided that one brilliant scientist deserves another, so I used Dr. Bunsen Honeydew to create Mr. Freeze. I cut away his lab coat, added some body armor with Sculpey polymer clay, and a capsule from a gumball machine became the dome over his head. Once I painted the figure, I knew I got him right. All I need is a little frozen Beaker, and it'll be done.

The next villain is Two-Face, formerly Gotham's district attorney Harvey Dent. He's another character I grew to love in the Animated Series, then hated on the big screen when played by Tommy Lee Jones. The Dark Knight brought us yet another version of Two-Face, and I liked him there, although I felt like he was underused and probably overwhelmed by what Heath Ledger's Joker was doing in the same movie. In any case, I picked Floyd, the bass guitarist from Electric Mayhem to play Two-Face in my little caper.

I made this several years before The Dark Knight came out, and tried to make his scarred side of his face kind of cartoony but still gross. It's less graphic than what they did to Aaron Eckhart, which is probably a good thing.

The final villain in this trio is Poison Ivy, who uses plants to commit crimes, and feels that plants are more deserving of compassion than people are. I think Janice, the groovy lead guitarist for Electric Mayhem, makes a fine Poison Ivy, even though she'd never hurt anyone...but somehow i think she's got a green thumb herself. Her costume is made of some silk leaves that I cut into many many little pieces, and I think the effect works better than a Sculpey tunic would have.