Custom Action Figures of the 1990s...

Well, this is kind of embarrassing, but I'll share it anyway. Because I'm an over-sharer. While going through my files on my computer, I found these pictures from sometime in the late 1990s. There had been a line of action figures that included some members of the Justice League, b
ut not all. Total Justice gave us Batman, Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and then a few bizarrely random characters like Huntress, Black Lightning...and...I forget.

Because that wasn't enough, I decided to buy up some other ation figures and repaint them as I saw fit. Blame some of the amateurishness on the 1990s, some on my developing skills, and some on the pictures...which were taken on my parents' front porch. Wow.

The Teen Titans: Starfire, Arsenal, Troia, Flash, Nightwing, Tempest, and Changeling. Wow. That was one of my favorite superhero teams, and versions of it still are. Love the Titans.

Aztek and Metamorpho. It's best not to ask.

This one is more interesting to me than others, just because I don't remember making most of them. But hey kids, it was the 90's There was CRAZY stuff going on. So that was the Justice Society, and included... Hawkgirl, Hourman, Dr. Fate, Atom Smasher, Black Canary, Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Spectre, Flash (Jay Garrick) and Wildcat.

This is just an assortment of characters. No real rhyme or reason. The Wonder Twins, Captain Atom, Captain Marvel, Supergirl, Firestorm, and...the Ray? I don't remember that at all.

Some New Gods: Lightray, Orion, Big Barda and Mr. Miracle. I actually liked how they turned out, although you really can't tell how awesome they are from the photograph.

And then some ladies...too often overlooked. I mean come on. It's Wonder Woman. She deserves some credit. So in that picture we have Fire, Ice (a favorite team-up from the Justice League International comics) Wonder Woman (that tiara. ouch), Oracle (Barbara Gordon, former Batgirl, now computer genius in a wheelchair...with Agent Scully's head. Great.), and Tomorrow Woman. Who looks to be turning Japanese. I really think so.

Wow. Sorry about that blast from the past. I feel kinda dizzy now. I think we need more Fisher Price Little People to cleanse the palate.

Ahhh. Better.

Muppet Batman Sketchbook

Before the final reveal of Joker and Harley Quinn, I stumbled across these old papers--a kind of sketchbook of part of the "creative process" that I go through when I make these things. It's not just tearing action figures limb from limb and then reassembling them to make new toys. It's mostly that, but not just that. I probably drew these in between calls at a previous job, so be kind. I know they're disproportional and not in scale with each other and everything else--I'm a doodler, not an artist. In any case, it's interesting to see what worked and what didn't--who survived, and who didn't.


The first sketch was Batman and his allies--from the beginning, I wanted Batman and Robin to be Link and Dr. Strangepork from "Pigs in Space." Their allies started out with Kermit as Alfred, and Fozzie Bear as Commissioner Gordon. I still like those ideas--especially Fozzie as Commissioner Gordon. Fozzie didn't end up as any character in the final collection, although I suppose he could have made a creepy Joker. Comedy gone bad. Very, very bad.

Anyone who knows about my love for both Catwoman and Miss Piggy is probably somewhat disturbed by this fusion of the two. Due to the lack of female characters, Catwoman had to either be Piggy, Janice, or Camilla, so my choice was clear. Scooter-as-Riddler survived to the final cut, but the other two here, Gonzo-as-Penguin and sax player Zoot-as-Two-Face did not. I still like the idea of Gonzo as the Penguin, especially since I don't have any Gonzo in my final lineup. And...I just realized how much that little sketch of Gonzo looks like FDR. Awesome.

This sketch is the last one that has rejected versions of characters that didn't make it--my favorite too, Beaker-as-Scarecrow. Tall, lanky, and with the potential to be ubercreepy, I love this version of Scarecrow. But I didn't have a Beaker to spare (he's one of the rarer figures), and I did have a headless Animal. So...still creepy, but wow, that Beaker would have been sweet. Everyone else made it through to the final cut.

Here's the final five after recasting and revising them. I do love Rowlf-as-Alfred, both because it brings my favorite piano-playing dog into the fold, and because I like the idea of man's best friend being a gentleman's gentleman. Kermit became Commissioner Gordon probably for the simple reason that he was already wearing a trenchcoat. Sculpting a Muppet Penguin from scratch to be The Penguin was a stroke of genius that coincided with my burgeoning self-confidence in my sculpting skills (misplaced self-confidence, but it hasn't hurt anyone yet). When Beaker fizzled, Animal stepped in, in that inarticulate way of his...and Floyd became Two-Face when a Zoot became too hard to acquire. In Batman: The Animated Series, Harvey Dent and Pamela Isley have a fling before they become Two-Face and Poison Ivy, respectively; Floyd and Janice have a thing goin' on themselves, so I thought keeping them together would be sweet. I'm mushy like that.

Coming soon: Joker and Harley Quinn!

Muppet Batman: Mad Hatter, Riddler, Ra's Al Ghul, Scarecrow

In this penultimate posting of my Muppet/Batman crossover customs, here are some of the villains who don't always make it into the movies or cartoons, but who are still heavy hitters in Gotham City...and who have been making a more respectable showing in the 21st Century than I'd expected.

First up is Scarecrow, master of fear. He was a pysch professor who went a little nuts, and now uses his expertise to scare the heck out of people and take their money. For Scarecrow, I decided to use an Animal figure. While he's usually a drummer for the Electric Mayhem, I happened to have an Animal figure without a head. This seemed like a good time to use him, since Scarecrow's face is completely covered by a mask. So I sculpted a new noggin for Animal out of Sculpey, added a few details to his body, like a shirt and some patches, and that was pretty much it.


I tried to preserve the shape of Animal's face under the mask, although that nose might not be big enough. Then again, his nose is pretty much foam rubber, so it's malleable. That's right. Malleable.

I don't know that anything prompted me to turn Scooter into the Riddler other than I needed a Riddler and had an extra Scooter to play with. I sculpted his suit from Sculpey, based on the Frank Gorshin Riddler more than anything else, painted it, and gave him some "angry eyes" pupils on his glasses. Not much to him.

Since Dr. Teeth is a hat-wearing cat, and Mad Hatter likes to make cats wear hats, I figured I'd use the good Doctor for the evil Hatter. Based of course on the Alice in Wonderland character, Mad Hatter commits crimes using hats, usually to get more hats. He's a crazy holdover from the days when more men (and women) wore hats, and it doesn't seem like he'd really work as a villain today, but some writers have kept him around. I gave him a new hat and coat via Sculpey, turned a Muppet Labs Robot Rabbit into a White Rabbit, and that's it.

Dr. Teeth has very odd proportions. Far be it from me to judge. But he's a freak.

Ra's Al Ghul has been a Batman villain since the 1970's, and wants to dominate the world so he can destroy it, remaking it in his own image. He's tried to do that in various ways, and runs afoul of Batman every darn time. He was portrayed by Liam Neeson in Batman Begins, and is supposedly immortal, resurrecting himself via "Lazarus Pits" when the need arises. I think Sam Eagle would make a magnificent Ra's Al Ghul--the arrogance, the cluelessness, the hot daughter (it's never come up on The Muppet Show, but I'm sure Sam has one out there somewhere).

In any case, this Ra's is from a Muppet Treasure Island Sam Arrow, and has some sculpted ruffles on front of his chest, a cloth cape, and vicious talons to eviscerate enemies. Brutal.

A cadre of...lesser...Bat-villains, ready to flee from before Robin's might. Possibly even Alfred.

Next up: the Bat-finale, with Joker and Harley Quinn. Stay tuned!

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.

I'm sure they're either hatching their next scheme or looking for directions to Omaha...either way, they're up to no good.

Up next: Scarecrow, Riddler, Mad Hatter, and Ra's Al Ghul. Batman's in trouble.

LEGO Teen Titans

A Marv Wolfman/George Perez New Teen Titans comic book was the first one I read. It was one of those "very special" issues about how the New Teen Titans helped someone stay off of drugs or something like that. Not part of the regular run, but produced to give to kids in the early 1980s to help us stay off the crackpipe. And it worked for me. Of course, then the problem became that I was addicted to comic books, but that's evidently fine with DC Comics.

Maybe it's because of that early contact, or maybe because they're simply good characters, but that family of superhero characters is one of my favorites. I like them more than the X-Men, and often more than the Justice League. So when I was cranking out the superhero LEGO minifigs, I knew the Teen Titans wouldn't be far behind.

The characters I decided to make were a mix of my favorite versions of my favorite Teen Titans characters, so I don't know that this particular team in these particular costumes ever existed; but they do now. Started with the five sidekicks that were the core of the Teen Titans in the late 1960's, I also added in the four most important New Teen Titans, which became part of the team in the early 1980's.

Front Row: Aqualad, Flash, Nightwing, Wonder Girl, Speedy

Back Row: Cyborg, Raven, Starfire, Beast Boy

At some point, because I have obsessive compulsive tendencies, I'll probably make a more accurate Flash (Kid Flash) and a younger version of Dick Grayson as Robin instead of the older Nightwing. But for now, these are the Titans. These are the ones closest to my heart--when I think of the Teen Titans, these are the ones at the core.

And they're (usually) much better than the more recent version, these guys:

Miss Martian, Ravager, Wonder Girl, Robin, Superboy, Kid Devil

Superman Family LEGO

When LEGO started making Batman minifigures, vehicles and playsets a few years ago, I was hoping that it was just the beginning of a broader move into DC Comics' roster of characters. Like they'd start with Batman, move on to Superman, expand to the Justice League and Teen Titans...but alas, it was not to be. Last year marked the end of Batman LEGO sets for the time being, and it looks like they're not adding any other DC Comics characters anytime soon. So I had to do it for them.

I made Superman and about seven other Justice Leaguers all at the same time, and thought I'd be content with a little set of SuperFriends. But for some reason I'm missing the part of the emotion chip in my brain that says "it's okay to stop now," and I decided to keep going.

Not a bird or a plane.

For the record, I am more of a Batman fan than a Superman fan, but once I made the Man of Steel himself, I realized that sometimes he needed a little help from his own Superman Family. It includes his cousin Supergirl, his clone (sort of--that's up in the air right now) Superboy, his friend (please-don't-ever-watch-the-movie-with-Shaq) Steel, and Steel's niece and part-time superhero Natasha Irons. Oh yeah, and Superman's best friend, Krypto the Superdog. You've gotta have the Superdog.

Krypto, Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, Steel, Natasha Irons

In my LEGO dreams (which I do have, from time to time), they would have made things like a Fortress of Solitude playset, a Kent Farm, a Daily Planet Building, Lex Luthor's Lair...but instead, they pulled the plug. When I finish going completely insane, I'll have my revenge. Oh, yes. I'll have my sweet revenge.

Or I'll just make some more toys.

Green Lantern LEGO

Green Lantern has been one of my favorite superheroes since the days of SuperFriends back in the 1970's. The idea of a space cop who has a "magic ring" that can make anything he can conjure up in his imagination was exciting for me then and now. Over the years, the different stories and different versions of Green Lantern have all had their merits, and it seems like no matter what else is going on in the DC Universe, I've liked what was happening with Green Lantern.


Because the Green Lantern Corps isn't a single superhero, but a galactic police force, there have been a lot of Green Lanterns in the comic books and even on various television series. If you ask me who "Green Lantern" is, I'd say Hal Jordan. He was the one on Superfriends, and for several decades was really The Green Lantern. Asking my students at school, they'd say it's John Stewart, the African American GL who wore the ring on the recent Justice League cartoon. Someone a little older might say it's Kyle Rayner, who was GL for most of the 1990s, and if you asked someone who was an arrogant jerk (besides me, I mean) they'd say Guy Gardner. He's a jerk. And yet, he's still a Green Lantern.

Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, and Kyle Rayner

When I took my break from making custom-made Fisher Price Little People, I still managed to move on to a new (and yet old) obsession, and that's making new LEGO Minifigures. Most of them come from DC Comics, and the Green Lantern Corps is no exception. Over recent years, many of these characters have undergone radical changes, so this is sort of a "best of" Green Lantern Corps.


This is my first version, before I added the ladies of the GLC; to Earth's GLs I added Kilowog (far left) a trainer in the Green Lantern Corps and one of my favorite comic book characters, period. Next to him is Tomar Re, one of the first alien Green Lanterns that Hal Jordan worked with. Front and center is Ganthet, a "Guardian" who bosses the Green Lanterns around.

This is my current Green Lantern Corps. With all of the changes in the comic books happening right now, I'll have to add to their ranks. I decided that the ladies of DC Comics needed to be better represented, so I added Arisia, an elf-like GL who's also cute as the day is long; Katma Tui, pink-skinned former lover of John Stewart and completely awesome in her own right; and Jade, daughter of the Golden Age Green Lantern, and very short-lived Green Lantern herself.

Will there be more? You bet. Will I also make the Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Indigo, Violet and Black Lanterns? Uh...I need more LEGO.

Aquaman LEGO

Ever since I was a pup, I've loved Aquaman. Back then, he was part of Saturday morning's SuperFriends cartoon. He was alongside Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin as an equal, and even though that show went through many rosters over the course of a decade, Aquaman was always a team player.











His superpowers are that he breathes underwater (and on land), he's got super-strength developed from living underwater, and he can use his aquatic telepathy to talk to fish and command them to help out from time to time.







Aquaman's biggest problem seems to be that comic book and television writers don't know what to do with him. So even when he does make it onto the page or the screen, he loses some of that coolness that he has from his Atlantean heritage.






His other problem is common to many superheroes--even the Man of Steel. That's his villains. Where some superheroes like Spider-Man or Batman are blessed with Rogues Galleries that go on into the dozens, Aquaman has only ever had one that made it into the big leagues. And that's the Legion of Doom's own resident waterboy, Black Manta. With a voice like Darth Vader combined with a sucking drain, Manta was cool enough on the cartoon, and evil enough in the comic books that he killed Aquaman's son. Yes, Black Manta killed Aquababy. That's pretty low, Manta.

My favorite version of Aquaman is still the way he was on SuperFriends: the orange shirt and green tights, short blond hair and a big golden "A" on his belt. He's cheesy, he's superpowered, and he's happy. DC Comics has done a lot of things to the character, including severing his arm, transforming him into a monster, killing him, and having Mera leave him. It's a messy life, but for me that's just symptomatic of the problems that writers have with the character--not the weakness of the character itself.







I like these characters enough that they were some of the first DC Comics superheroes that I made as LEGO minifigures: Aquaman and Black Manta came first, then I went ahead and made Aquaman's sidekick Aqualad, and then his wife, Queen Mera. The three of them make a happy trio, and even though they're relegated to the sidelines any time Superman or Batman decide to come to the party, I still love 'em. And the seahorses they rode in on.











Like many DC Comics superheroes, Aquaman's base of operations was in a cave for many years; my sons and I made this Aquacave about a year ago, and kept it intact until Black Manta succeeded with his nefarious plot to capture a magical trident. Or maybe it was Dentyne. It didn't have sugar in it, whatever it was. Without the protection of that magical LEGO piece, the Aquacave was no more, but is still preserved in this beautiful photo, and now on the blog.

Long Live Aquaman!