Forgotten Heroes - Captain UK - Part 4

I have made more progress on my Captain UK conversion for Forgotten Heroes.

Her left arm hardened enough that I was able to smooth it down and shape it a little better. I then added the cuffs of her gloves by glueing thin strips of paper around her wrists. I then made a paper mask and, after cutting off the top of her head (WHAT??) fixed it into place and coated it with glue to give it some solidity. When it's dry I will poke out some eyeholes.

And, yes, I really did cut off the top of her head. It struck me that her hair would be easier to apply as a blob of milliput rather than a thin layer over the top of Catwoman's rather rounded dome.

I thought I might redo the mask as I didn't think the angle of the point was quite right, but I decided to wait until I'd done the hair.

And here she is with hair:

Possibly the hair is slightly bigger than it needs to be, but to my mind it's the most distinctive feature of her look, so I want it to stand out just a little.

Once the hair has set she's ready for her undercoat. Then I can start the tricky job of painting.

Forgotten Heroes - Captain UK - Part 3

We're into Day Two of a raging storm here in Wollongong, so it's definitely an indoors kind of weekend. We spent some of yesterday at our friends' place, and managed to fit in three games of 'Marrying Mr Darcy', with four, five and six players. It is very luck dependent, but the way the game captures the style of the book means that it's still tremendously entertaining. I won two of the games, one of them in a double tie-break with my wife; we scored the same points for our characters and marriage, tied on Dowry and it went down to Cunning.

Anyway, I fired up some Tangerine Dream this morning, and set to work on making Captain UK's left arm. And here it is:

My milliput has basically dried up and given up the ghost (it is fourteen years old), but rummaging through the drawers of my painting desk I found some plumbers resin, and that worked just fine (although it smells a bit). The arm is probably a bit thicker than her other one, but if it looks too wrong when it's fully hardened I'll try and shave it down a little. I'm quite pleased with it, as I've never made an arm before, although having the other one as a guide helped.

Once the arm is fully dried, the next step will be the mask and then the hair.

Xv4

A glowing green meteorite has fallen to earth somewhere on the outskirts of the city. The Fantastic Four rush to the site, hoping that an analysis of the fragments will provide clues in helping them foil Doctor Doom's latest devious scheme.

Professor X is dying of space plague! The X-Men believe that clues to the cure can be found in those fragments of glowing, green meteorite, so Cyclops, Marvel Girl, the Beast and Colossus are sent to investigate them.

And so the scene is set for a classic Marvel Comics hero team vs hero team misunderstanding. Both teams must investigate the five meteorite fragments scattered across the board, whilst also trying to knock out the other team. The winner will be the team which has the highest total of investigated fragments plus downed opponents.

OK, as storylines go it's a bit pants, but I just wanted to play a game of Clobberin' Time on a wet Sunday afternoon, using a couple of new figures - my Marvel Girl conversion, and a Human Torch I made by repainting a model of DC's Red Star which I acquired earlier this week. Now I have a complete Fantastic Four, I couldn't not use it.

The Fantastic Four arrived on site, and Mr Fantastic quickly moved to analyse the nearest fragment. The Torch scouted ahead, whilst the Invisible Woman turned invisible. The Thing rushed towards ...

... the X-Men. Cyclops covered the Beast as the blue-furred mutant moved towards a fragment, keen to analyse it with his finely-honed mind.

Cyclops fired an optic blast at The Thing, but to no effect.

The two teams began to spread out. Mr Fantastic had already analysed one fragment and was out of shot to the right heading towards another. The Torch was looking at a third. meanwhile the Beast was making heavy weather of his fragment and the fifth was still unclaimed.

The Beast decided that this wasn't a day for scientific analysis, and moved to attack The Thing, trusting that his agility would allow him to avoid any damage.

Cyclops fired at the Human Torch, and missed, whilst the Invisible Woman used her force-fields to slow Colossus.

The Invisible Woman then moved to investigate the final meteorite fragment, but was hurled back by Marvel Girl's telekinesis.

The Torch flew to the fragment, and used his flame-blast on Marvel Girl. She blocked most, but not all, of it.

Cyclops used his blasts to hammer away at the Invisible Woman's force-fields, scoring a hit on her.

Colossus and The Torch had words. And exchanged some attacks.

Having investigated his fragment, Mr Fantastic entered the fray. A hastily improvised gadget reflected Cyclops' beams back at him, and the X-Men's leader was down!

Seeing an opening, the Beast dodged under The Things' blows, and bounded over to attack the Invisible Woman.

Surprised she didn't get a force-field up in time, and was down.

Both teams were now down one member, but the Fantastic Four had three fragments analysed to the X-Men's one. The X-Men needed to even things up a little. Marvel Girl used her powers to push the Torch of the fragment he was looking at, then Colossus moved to analyse it instead. Mr Fantastic tried to use a psi-jammer to take down Marvel Girl, but she resisted it.

The Beast returned to tying down Ben Grimm.

The final fragment analysed, Colossus turned his attentions to the Human Torch, and in a whirlwind attack pounded him into the ground.

The Beast had miscalculated how dangerous The Thing actually was, and had taken a serious hit. Breaking free he moved to engage Mr Fantastic instead, whilst Marvel Girl used her telekinesis to push The Thing away from the action.

The Thing pushed forward ..

... and the feedback was too much for Marvel Girl who fell unconscious.

The Thing and Colossus finally met!

However slowed by his injuries the Beast miscalculated what a slippery opponent Mr Fantastic was, and was taken out.

This left the Fantastic Four with three fragments, plus three opponents neutralised for six points. With only two fragments and two opponents downed, the X-Men couldn't win*. At this point the teams talked and sorted out their misunderstanding. Like they always do.

The stats for the teams were as follows (all characters were Level 3):

Marvel Girl - Telepathy, Telekinesis (M), Ranged (M)
Cyclops - Power Blast (L), Accuracy OR Rapid Fire
Beast - Agility, Charge, Science!
Colossus - Super Strength, Invulnerability

Mr Fantastic - Ranged (M), Gadgets, Science, Superleap
Invisible Girl - Invisibility, Ranged (M), Block
Human Torch - Flight +3”, Power Blast (M), Rage (Power Blast)
The Thing - Superstrength, Invulnerability

Cyclops was given both Accuracy and Rapid Fire, but could only apply one of them in a turn. I tried a new version of Telepathy in this game, which allows the player to see some of their opponents activation cards. I'm working on a few new abilities which work with the cards rather than the on-table action. I shall attempt to write them up in the near future when I release another draft of the rules.

The fragments were treated as Level 2 puzzles, and could be solved by an opposed roll against them. One 'hit' reduced it to Level 1, whereas two 'hits' solved it immediately. A character with Science! rolled an extra dice. In other games the markers could be clues, solved by a Detective! ability. Batman, this is for you.

Finally I included the Jokers in this game. If you are dealt one then you place it face-up in front of you, and draw a card to replace it. During your turn you can play the Joker to give a character that has just acted a second turn, consisting of either a movement or an action (but not both).

*Actually they could if Colossus defeated both Mr Fantastic and The Thing, but I decided that the game had run its course.

Forgotten Heroes - Captain UK - Part 2

I did the initial knife-work on my Catwoman to Captain UK conversion this morning. There's some tidying up to do, but it's mostly there.

The cuffs around the boots came off more easily than I thought, but there does seem to be a strange undercut at the back of the left leg which I will have to fill with milliput when I make the missing arm. I'm not sure it was already there as part of the figure, or was caused by a slip of the blade.

The arms on this Heroclix figure are both separate pieces (hence the one getting lost), so I took the opportunity to removed the right arm, and then resposition it, bending the hand into a better pose as well.

The next step is to make her a new arm, followed by the mask, hair and cuffs around the gloves.

Forgotten Heroes - Captain UK - Part 1

My wife likes 'Spaced'.
She thought that first speech-bubble was hilarious

I'm a bit of a fan of Marvel's Captain Britain. About the time I bought and collected comics, he was going through a UK-based run of stories (initially scripted by Alan Moore) which were as epic as anything that Marvel in the US were producing, but with the proper, British, feel the character deserved. It was a big influence on the kind of things I enjoyed in my superhero comics. I've kind of lost track of the character now that he's part of the mainstream Marvel Universe, but I still go back to those early stories from time to time in order to remind myself how good comics used to be.

Captain Britain is, of course, only one of a vast number of similar protectors of the UK across a series of parallel Earths. On Earth-238 his equivalent was Linda McQuillan, known as Captain UK. She crossed paths with Captain Britain when she fled her own world after every other super-being on it was slain by Sir James Jaspers and his cybernetic/organic killing machine, The Fury. One of my favourite moments in comic history was the moment she faced The Fury for the final time in that particular story-arc and, in a berserk rage, tore it to pieces. The art and the writing of those few pages really inspired me. And when I signed up to do the Forgotten Heroes project, I found that Captain UK seems to have never been blessed with a figure, official or otherwise. I intend to rectify that.

The basis for my conversion will be this figure of Catwoman.

When I acquired her, she was missing her left arm. I inserted a piece of wire in the shoulder at some stage with the intent of replacing the limb but hadn't progressed any further. I also cut away her whip; I have a complete version of this figure, so had obviously decided that she was ripe for conversion into someone else.

At the moment I'm not totally sure which Captain UK costume I will attempt. Whilst I believe that her costume has changed at least once since the last time I bought a comic featuring her (back in 1985) I was intending to stick to either her original costume (pictured above), or the one she acquired when she partnered Betsy Braddock during her brief stint as Captain Britain (Captain Britain Monthly # 12-13), and which I think she wore for a while after.

Captain UK on the right. Betsy Braddock (the X-Men's Psylocke) as Captain Britain on the left.

The original costume is probably the easiest to do as a straight conversion, but it's very close to that worn by Captain Britain, so for variety I'm tempted to go for the second option, with the exposed hair. The hair will have to be modelled onto the figure.

What will I have to do?

Firstly I will need to create a left arm for the figure. Otherwise the bulk of the work will involve trimming away various accessories from the Catwoman costume in order to create the smoother lines of the Captain UK outfit. The trickiest bit will be the 'cuffs' around Catwoman's ankle-boots. Oddly enough Captain UK's second costume has similar cuffs at the end of the sleeves, or around her gloves, so I will have to look at how I can create these as well. The mask will pretty much work as it, although I will have to trim back Catwoman's goggles. Then I will need to create Captain UK's distinctive hairstyle.

Actually the hair is interesting. In the lower panel above is the first picture of Captain UK in her new costume. She has blonde hair. In the panel above she has reddish hair. In another panel in the same story she is shown with blonde hair, but his holding her mask and it looks like there's a reddish wig attached to it. It seems that a wig is part of the cover for her secret identity.

I'm hoping all of this will be possible even with my limited talents. Let's see.

And here's her finest moment, courtesy of the wonderful Alan Davis: