So, Moondragon unsurprisingly got VERY little attention (she is a rather boring figure, in my opinion, second only to Major Victory as the simplest figure in the set), so let's see how today's entry fares. We're done with the complete Guardians of the Galaxy, now it's time to add the supplemental Marvel NOW! members to the roster. And who shall we add first? How about an import from another species, another realm, another history, another entire comicbook company no less! She's a slayer of demons, an Angel of the Tenth Realm of Heven, a native of Asgard, a daughter of Odin and sister of Thor, a warrior babe unparalleled, and Neil Gaiman's personal F-U to Todd McFarlane, it's none other than Angela!

From the moment the Guardians of the Galaxy were . . . "reformatted" following the advent of the Marvel NOW! imprint, I've been rather skeptical of the direction the series has taken. Do we really NEED Iron Man on YET ANOTHER superhero team? What business does Agent Venom have in a cosmic adventure book? Are we seriously just going to dump and ignore half the cast of the original Guardians?

However, the one addition I was all in favor of was Angela. Of course, this was less my approval of the story and character (let's face it, she's identical to Gamora in ability, power, attitude, upbringing, and dress code, to call her redundant is a magnificent understatement), and more my amusement by the inherent irony of the character's presence.

Why? Because here we have Venom (created by Todd McFarlane), a shape-shifting symbiotic alien suit with violent urges, ambiguous morality, and frequent psychotic breaks, who has been passed on to Flash Thompson, a severely injured (lost legs) heavily armed military special forces operative, making him Agent Venom, who is basically just an industry clone of Spawn (created by Todd McFarlane), who is Al Simmons, a severely injured (burned to death) heavily armed military special forces operative with violent urges, ambiguous morality, and frequent psychotic breaks, wearing a shape-shifting symbiotic demon suit, and along comes Angela (STOLEN by Todd McFarlane), Spawn's old nemesis, and now she's going to be working side-by-side with Agent Venom . . . I just find the whole situation hilariously meta.

Needless say, when I found out she was joining the Marvel Universe, I HAD to make a figure of her. And what better starting place than . . . an old McFarlane Toys Angela figure!

Honestly, if I had thought this through a little more, I probably would have taken a different approach. The Marvel Angela costume, though reminiscent of the classic design, is actually quite different from the Image costume. I bought the old Angela figure on a whim, and ultimately discovered I was going to have to discard far more than I had thought. But hindsight and all that.

The base body was much easier to figure out. I had a DC Universe Classics Star Sapphire Wonder Woman in my parts collection, and she proved to be perfect as a real starting point for the project. The body only required minor resculpting to get the bikini look. I replaced the arms entirely with Angela's arms, and the legs were swapped with a pair from a Marvel Legend's Lady Deathstrike, to get that ridged, armor plated effect. A few of Angela's costume elements were swapped over (bra, shoulder pad, scabbard, belt), and while they're not all strictly Marvel accurate, with some minor sculpting, strategic repositioning of some armor, and a full paint job, she looks pretty close, and I like the result.

For finishing touches, I added a rear loin cloth from a ML Elektra, and I sculpted Angela's head wings into Wonder Woman's hair. I'm REALLY pleased with how the head detailing turned out, although the finer intricacies of the hair sculpt don't really come out in the photos. And of course, I sculpted the hilt of Angela's sword to match her current weapon, and turned the head of her spear into one of her funky hand axe weapon . . . things. The whole project was finished off with a thing, gold, wired ribbon wrapped all around her body.

Purists will likely not be all that impressed with my Angela here. She doesn't slavishly adhere to her comic appearance, and several of my build choices resulted in somewhat limited articulation in the head, torso, and arms. Be that as it may, I'm really fond of this creation, and I'm happy to have her on my Guardians of the Galaxy shelf.

Only two more posts to go!

Excelsior!