Greetings, fellow figure fans! I have yet another marvelous Metroid model for you to enjoy! Last time, I posted just one custom, the first playset of my series, Mother Brain. Today, I again display a single custom, this one the first vehicle of the set. May I humbly present . . . Samus Aran's Hunter-Class Gunship!

First introduced in the second game of the series, Samus' gunship has become almost as much of an icon as the huntress herself. Although this particular model isn't the only ship at her disposal, it is easily the most recognized, appearing in at least five games before meeting its tragic end during the prologue of Metroid Fusion.

One of the major disappointments of the Marvel Legends and DC Universe Classics lines is the distinct lack of vehicles and accessories. Sure, you get the occasional motorcycle or glider packed with a figure, and Spider-Man still gets any number of gimmicky Spider-Cars and Spider-Copters for the kids to play with, but most are simply repaints of older 5" scale figures, and almost none are actually relevant to the characters and the universe. Where's Punisher's van? Where's my 1/12 scale Batmobile? Yes, I understand it's impractical for the sheer size of things, but it matters. As usual, I'm correcting these perceived oversights in my own Metroid toyline.

I started with a ToyBiz X-Men Mini Blackbird Jet. Technically, this too is a 5" scale vehicle, but since Samus is somewhat under scale, she ended up fitting fairly well. The design was ideal due to the green windshield and the pod-like shape of the ship itself. I cut off the front fins, and then took a heavy duty paper plate, cut it in half, and glued each half upside down onto either side of the jet. I filled in the underside of the plates with Crayola Model Magic paper clay. Using epoxy putty for the whole sculpt would have been horrifically expensive ($4 for a 4 inch tube of the stuff) and very heavy. Model Magic gave me the weight and volume I needed, while maintaining most of the durability of the epoxy putty.

The fuel tanks, engine pods, and stabilizer fins were all sculpted by hand from Model Magic. The engine jets themselves came off of a Star Wars Jedi Starfighter. I used a scoop design (as seen in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes) for the engine pods, rather than the closed design seen in the reference pics here. I spread a thin layer of Loctite Epoxy Putty over the entire surface of the ship to give it a more rigid body, then used my Dremel tool to carve the armor plate lines into the surface. The landing pods are GI Joe tires stacked together and sculpted slightly. Finally, as with most of my toys, the ship has an action feature in the form of firing blasters, which came from a pair of The Dark Knight Scarecrow figures (the same figures I used to make Old Bird's cloak). The secondary guns came from some random GI Joe truck.

Building this ship was a complicated process, and it's the first time I seriously doubted my ability to produce the final product that I envisioned in my head. For some months, the ship sat half-finished on my work table, as I was unable to bring myself to complete what I figured would be a total failure. But after putting in the time, I honestly think it's better than I imagined. I still hate building figure vehicles, but now at least I know I can. Here's hoping I can get some Space Pirate ships done some time!

See you next mission!