AZRAEL Batman Armor from Batman: Curse of the White Knight #8

This is the second time in my life I've been interested in an Azrael action figure and it's a mighty fine example of Todd McFarlane's incredible trademark sculpting. While not much in the articulation department, as sort of expected, it's still very much fun to pose.

A couple of amazing things happened this year (otherwise filled to the brim with bullshit). 1) I finally have a decent camera to shoot with. And 2) J.G. An awesome friend and co-worker surprised me with two amazing gifts, this being only one of them.

Meet Cable from the 1:12 Collectible line by Mezco, this bad boy comes with a butt-load of accessories and exchangeable hands and that oh-so-sweet light up feature. This isn't a review cause I ain't any good at those so...

 

More than 10 years ago I found a lot of online resources with concept art, storyboards and cut scenes for Batman (1989) and Batman Returns. I was baffled by the fact a lot of AMAZING things were left on the cutting room floor, which brings me to the unused poster below. I have yet to see an official restoration so  having already dabbled in upscaling/restoring with the Nintendo Power NES Batman Video Game, I tried my hand at this.

I had no idea this thing even existed and a decent scan online is pretty non-existent. This amazing piece of art was a four-page poster found in the eight volume of the now defunct Nintendo Power magazine. Archive.org has a full magazine scan but unfortunately no poster is included. Found within a Michael Keaton / Batman 1989 Facebook fan page, and thanks to Devan Gladden I was able to upscale and fix several aspects of the poster, including but not limited to: 

 

• • Re-doing the logos for Batman, Nintendo Power and its copyright signature 
• • Colorization as close as possible to other pictures of the poster itself found online 
• • Removal of creases and distortions 
• • Smoothing (tried to keep the original details as intact as possible) 
• • Upscaling for printing

Click for Full-size image. Dimensions: 5128x6000 px, File size: 3.3 MB

This was one of my holy grails, but I still hold on and hope someday we'll get an ultimate version of this iconic character.

 For more info on the repainted Vanishing Vault from the original Kenner toy line, click here.

So in my seemingly never-ending quest of finding a Tim Burton Batmobile big enough to house a 1/12 scale figure, the closest I've come to as of yet has been this 1/16 scale bootleg. It's a bootleg because, well...

 

Everyone knows the best way to be a bad-ass vigilante is to advertise "New", "Fashion" and "Super Bat Car" decals.

 

In case it wasn't obvious, the decals, the orange-colored front windows, chrome side gadgets and rear lights, the turbine is white (and oddly shapen), there's a red artifact smack dab in the middle like some sort of siren, missiles are not only where machine guns are supposed to be but they're also white(!) AND the entire thing is lifted from the front. Now this last part has nothing to do with it being a bootleg, but it is a pretty shitty decision in toy design.

This toy's entire shtick was to go round and round while flailing missiles around and trying to be entertaining until its batteries ran out. I saw potential in making it a little bit better. Truth be told, I only had an slight idea of what to do, but much like many custom things I've worked on I didn't have an idea how or where to start. In my ignorance I made the mistake of heating it up too much and ended up warping it some, which would eventually end up giving me issues to no end.

 

Even at the most basic level, I had to at least paint it since removing the decals actually removed the top layer of paint. The fact there was a missing rear light erm... set, pushed me to try my hand at redoing them to be more movie accurate. You can see I filled up various hollow areas.

Since there was already a working light-up mechanism, I decided to use it for the headlights instead.

And here are some shots of the end product, eventually it'll have a sealer but since I've never used a spray one, I'd rather try on something that hasn't been so troublesome in fear of ruining it.

One of my many projects at the moment. If it gains any attention this one could be one I use for commisions. I'm getting ahead of myself of course, first it has to work! (and look good) This is good start, however, so I'm confident I'll be able to complete it in a timely manner.

My Jada 1/24 Batman1989 Batmobile always seemed lonely and I've always wanted to accompany it with another vehicle, preferably the Batwing. Although if I have to be honest with myself, my budget is not that great so my ambitions had to be scaled back and instead go with the Joker Goon car, seen in the movie's car chase scene after Batman rescued Vicki Vale at the museum and made off with her in the Batmobile. I had looked into a Kit available but I've never done those and I don't know what level of success (or failure) I'd get when it comes to really fine detail, especially gluing parts. Another option was to buy a similar-looking model and repaint it but that would be a costly experiment, $25+ in fact. So I left it at that.

Although my Batman collection is growing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one cannot be too far off, especially since the idea is that I always have all four turtles of a specific set and a Shredder to go with it.

At this time I am not sure when I'll be able to buy a more professional camera, and I don't want to post entire marathons of bad quality photos so I will be posting some Work-in-Progress (WIP) photos and we're gonna start off with Selina Kyle/Catwoman!

As I am not in the business of completing any one collection in particular, just certain characters here or there, I set out to get the main cast from the Tim Burton movies, Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992). To my surprise, besides the NECA 7 inch Batman figure I already had, there was an Alfred (Michael Gough) and The Penguin (Danny DeVito) already available by DC Multiverse. This was great news as that meant I was only missing Joker and Catwoman. Figuring that Joker being the one I would have the most trouble with (which will be documented in a future post) I decided to work on that one first and learn the ropes but it turned out that Catwoman would be a lot more troublesome and for the stupidest of reasons.

So I like to scour the Internet for either the actual figure, or customized versions and/or any head sculpts that may be available. Although I found a figure painter that recently posted a smiling Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman 1:12 scale painted head sculpt, I've not received any information where the sculpt can be found. This sculpt could be a scaled-down version of the NECA 1:4 scale version but she is not smiling in any of those head sculpts, but she is smiling candidly in the Catwoman 1:6 scale figure by ACPLAY.

The 1:6 scale by ACPLAY.

1:12 scale painted by Christina Cruz (https://twitter.com/christinaconan/status/1241848248324763650)

I could only focus on what looks similar and the DC Designer Series Catwoman body was good enough as well as the head from DC Essentials Knightfall Catwoman being a good candidate.

I began by reshaping the ears and doing a mock black paint to get a feel for it, and I figured I would just paint the rest of the details but this was far more intricate because of the eye makeup and not so much matching a skin tone but make it where you can't see the brush strokes. The original outfit was made to look like a makeshift costume with a corset covering the torso. I had some wire that I shaped and after a lot of trial and error I finally got it glued to the figure, gave it a quick paint and it looked perfect.

But THEN I had the wonderful idea of "hmm, wouldn't it be better to sand down the mask so that instead of painting over any crevices by the openings of the mask, I could just make it all even?!"

Spoiler alert: I completely fucked up the head sculpt. I had two choices, either buy another Knightfall figure just for the head or buy another, cheaper, alternative. So pro-tip to anyone without sculpting skills looking for alternate Catwoman head sculpts, try Batgirl's. So my next victim was the DC Essentials Batgirl ONLY for this:

The only thing I had to do was remove the hair and refill the space, sanded it down and did the same for the ears so that it's one seamless black cowl.

Several coats of glossy black paint have given a sufficiently shiny "latex" look to the suit, eventually I will work on the stitching details and some other details to try and make it as best looking as possible with my tools and limited knowledge.