When I built my last Soranik Natu figure, it was one of the first seriously involved customs I'd built, and I was still pretty green. Although I thought it came out well, I knew I could do much better. So after months of watching Ebay in order to find another Catwoman figure that didn't cost an arm and a leg, here is my second built-from-the-ground-up Soranik Natu.

Certain parts of the last build I thought really worked, so I used the same parts when building Soranik again this time. These were the Aliens Ripley head, the Young Justice Black Canary legs, and the The Batman Catwoman upper torso. The Catwoman torso I handled exactly the same as last time, sanding off the "baggy shirt" details, creating the open collar, and redrilling the right arm hole to make the torso look right when holding non-Catwoman arms. This time around I merely shortened the length of the Ripley neck, rather than trying to change the angle, and I built a neck joint. I also had to slightly sand down the Black Canary legs this time around, as I wasn't using the Black Canary lower torso, and they're designed to seamlessly blend into it... which makes them blend poorly with other lower torsos.

The new parts this time around were the lower torso (or crotch piece) and the arms. This time I used Katma Tui's lower torso, as I had a disassembled Katma Tui torso that was already pretty badly damaged up top, and the separation between the upper and lower torso of the female Justice League figures is considerably much more pronounced, making it much easier to cut (and know where to cut). I also found out, much to my surprise, that this lower torso fit the Catwoman torso a lot better than the Black Canary lower torso had, meaning considerably less sanding, and no sculpting required to make the parts fit. Furthermore, not having to add any Magic Sculpt, I was able to fully utilize the waist joint I built into the Katma Tui lower torso this time around, gaining another point of articulation. The upper torso also sat at a more natural angle this time around, so the shoulders didn't seem hunched, the body is more curvy, and by luck, the figure naturally has a pretty standard superhero pose.

The arms were what I felt hurt my Soranik figure the most last time, so I went out of my way to not use female Justice League arms this time around. There is a shortage of good female arms, however, so my options were limited. I was initially going to use a pair of sanded-down Congo Karen Ross arms, but I realized through arm-swapping that a pair of heavily sanded-down Black Canary arms had a far superior pose which far better complemented the body, turned out just enough to not interfere with the unusual shape of the torso, and further creating the standard superhero pose: legs in a wide stance, torso arched back, arms thrust forward. You saw this pose a lot during the Crisis On Infinite Earths.

This time when I created the figure, I painted the individual body parts first... sometimes loosely assembled, sometimes not... then I sealed in the paint with Dullcote, then acrylic sealant, THEN I glued the body back together. I normally don't build figures in quite that order, but I wanted maximum detail in the face, and where the face and body met, (plus a working neck joint) so that was the only way to do it. Usually I glue and reassemble the body prior to most painting on the torso, in order to minimize the risk of damaging the paint while I'm firmly squeezing the two halves of the torso together, in order to get a tight seal.

I'm very pleased with the way my second Soranik Natu figure came out. The paint is far smoother and better detailed this time around, the pose, by sheer luck, is a comic book standard, far superior to the last figure's pose; I gained two points of articulation in this figure, in the neck and the waist, making this a 6 points of articulation figure to the last one's 4; and I was able to slightly shorten this Soranik Natu figure- while the previous figure was probably closer in approximate scale to the Super Powers Hal Jordan, Mattel's under-scaling of the Justice League Katma Tui figure (and other female figures in general) make this figure fit in a lot better with the other female figures I've built from mostly Mattel parts.

My only real complaint was that Mattel didn't bother to sculpt a normal butt on their female Justice League figures like they did for their Young Justice figures, going for some sort of strange bubble-look instead, so this version of Soranik sacrifices a well-defined bum. But it's a small issue, barely noticeable, and the pros far outweigh the cons as a result of switching crotchpieces, so I really don't mind much at all.