Here is another member of The Super Diabolics team produced by Airgam in 1985: Spector!
When I initially started this project I thought it was going to be easy. I was envisioning a simple head swap of a DC Direct Deadman onto the two pack Lex Luthor that was packaged with Skeletor, a quick one color re-paint and, "Wham bam, thank you Ma'am!"
Well, this custom turned into a nightmare for me, and I'm glad it did, because I learned a lot while wrestling it to the ground and finally pinning it down! The nightmare started when I was using super glue to try to seal the paint on his leg hinge and the glue got into the joint, which led to me accidentally ripping his leg off while frantically trying to work the articulation! At first I tried to fix the leg using Dr. Nightmare's screw method (thanks for the tutorial Doc!), and got it back to working like a cut joint, but I lost the hinge articulation, which haunted me. So I decided to swap the upper legs and waist out with a DCUC Vigilante. Finding inspiration from DarthThomas81's amazing Faker custom, I also decided to crack the figure and prep the joints from the inside out using his tutorials as a guide (thanks DT81!!). I managed to mangle his left thigh pretty badly while trying to crack it, but it gave me a chance to work on my sculpting and overall I'm extremely pleased with the results. I will be using this method of completely dismantling figures from here on out on all future customs.
The head is from a DC Direct Deadman. I dremeled off most of the collar of the Lex figure and sanded it down. The helmet is from Classic TV Toys. The "glass" of the visor is from a quarter gumball machine, amazingly it fit inside the helmet perfectly. I used a strap from ML Mister Sinister's cape and glued it down inside of the collar to give the helmet a snug fit. I tweaked the design of the original figure a little bit here to satisfy my imagination. The gun was scratch built from the fodder bin but it has a peg that attaches to a hole I carved into his belt. Finally, I used a blend of matte and gloss finishes to make the "metallic" parts of his costume pop and to break up the monotony of a one color paint job.
Thanks for looking and Happy Thanksgiving everybody!