Friday, June 24, 2011

Man In Black

With the excitement of San Diego Comic-Con 2011 coming up in just a few weeks it's a good time to revisit one of last year's SDCC Exclusives, the Man in Black.  There were a few things I wanted to change about Jacob's dark brother. Primarily, I wanted him to be darker!  Both figures had a funky jaundiced skin tone, and for MIB as played by the well tanned Titus Welliver this needed to be tweaked.

Another issue for me was wanting to put MIB in removable sandals. Mego's Friar Tuck came with sandals and they've been extensively reproduced, I think CTVT, Dr Mego and Castaway all carry them. I didn't like the sandals molded to the figure's foot and painted. It's a logical enough choice for a toy manufacturer, but it's not Mego enough for me. Problem is, if I take his head and put him on a spare Dr. Mego body the difference in skin tones will be remarkable. So, off to the tanning salon with him.

When I tanned John Locke I tried it first with MIB. He got too dark. I touched up the contrast on his paint, and that helped, but then I dunked him in some RIT color remover and he lightened up enough to match the body nicely. 



The last piece fell into place recently when long-time Mego and 1:6 scale weapons customizer Wes Wood returned to the Mego Museum after many years. Wes has always been great at making amazing metallic weapons for knights and pirate Megos. He was the perfect candidate to make Man In Black's sinister Roman "pugio" dagger as seen here in the Lost Auction catalog. I've been playing with sculpting one myself for awhile, but I asked Wes to give it a try. 


He sent me this handcrafted knife with a metal blade and a brass handle. It comes in a metallic scabbard with brass rings and a leather carrying strap. It's completely Bad-Ass. Did I mention it's made of metal? And thus sticks to magnets? Mmmm-hmmm.


Up next for MIB would be a game of Senet.  I can also see getting an extra outfit and another skeleton to make an "Adam" corpse. As far as Mother goes, I can't help but wonder if one of the Bible figures from the 80s would be good fodder. If so, I certainly have the perfect knife to kill her with.





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