Man, reptiles are a popular subject with the sculpting crowd here on the Realm! I enter two of my nicest pieces into the contest, and end up competing with the likes of Parraw, NeCrollector, and fastfreddie. Seriously, LOOK at that Leonardo by Customfig, or that Leatherhead by Jarred706 . . . how was I ever gonna beat that? :D In any case, congrats to the winners, totally deserved it! Meanwhile, Dragon Man here will just languish down in ninth place.

Anyone familiar with this character? In the Marvel Universe, Professor Gilbert of New York State University wanted to build a robot to beat the Fantastic Four . . . only as a research tool, of course (uh . . . wut? This was apparently a purely hypothetical beating). He eventually developed an incredibly powerful android . . . and made it look like an anthropomorphic dragon. Why? Because he's a mad scientist, so @#$% YOU, that's why!! No, he was really a good guy (with an extremely fantastical imagination, I guess) who never intended to actually USE his creation, but the evil alchemist Diablo had other plans, and altered the robot with some magic potions and a space rock (I can't make this crap up, people), turning him into one of the FFs most dangerous foes!

. . . Rrrriiiiiiiight.

So we were supposed to get this figure back in, like, 2006 or so, but the premature cancellation of the ToyBiz FF Classics toyline meant he barely saw the light of day stateside (if he even released at all, not sure about that), making the figure ASTRONOMICALLY expensive, prohibitively so for most folks. Fortunately, Chinese factories are a collector's best friend, and for a time, you could get him fairly cheap on import . . . provided you didn't mind that he was missing his wings (and sometimes, his tail).

This is a simple custom you've likely seen before, but a very effective one. Take a loose Chinese factory surplus wingless FF Classics Dragon Man, give him ML BAF Annihilus wings and a full repaint, and you're done. The hardest part is getting your hands on the base figure (which is MUCH harder than it used to be . . . in fact, good luck finding this guy for less than $300). Easy custom, but regardless, here it is.

Excelsior!