Wolverine: This may be my most intricate custom ever. Though I can't take credit for many of the ideas. I got the inspiration for this one when I saw Charlee Flatt's in the most recent issue of Toyfare. The hing I like best about his Wolverine was that it was in scale with the other heroes. Looking at his, I figured out a way I could make mine, which I'll recount for you here.

1) I knew he would have to go on a 7" Teen Titan's body, but I still wanted him to have Muscular Arms. So then I got my hands on an LJN SWAT body and swapped arms.

2) yet when I did this, the rest of the body was horribly out of proportion. I intended Wolverine to be a shorter version of the 8-inch heroes, not a miniature adult (like the Lion Rock Soldiers). So I got out my Plumber's epoxy putty (Miliput for you brand-namers out there) and started out by building up the thighs first to the desired fullness. Once I had them where I wanted them, I had to adjust the build of the torso to match.

3) But after I did that, I had to beef up the calves. And while I was at it, I added putty to the feet so that it would look like a boot when the fabric was stretched over it (see my animated Superman). Yet after all of this, the forearms still looked wrong. So I got normal Mego body type II forearms and swapped them in place of the LJN forearms.

4) The head is part original sculpt, part plastic model. I got one of those Marvel Superheroes models at TR'U and took the face plate of Wolverine and made a mold of it. I produced a copy and then added the crown of the head and the neck using Epoxy Putty. I made the neck base rounded and attached it to the body using elastic that was looped around an eye-hook which I threaded to the inside of his pelvis (the 7" Lion Rock bodies don't have the pelvic post that the 8"ers do).

5) Then I sewed this costume using new patterns. I got the tiger stripe pattern on the suit using fabric markers and masked the area of the fabric to be colored with masking tape. The boot tops and shoulder pads are black and blue leather that were glued on with fabric glue. Finally, the clwas came from the model kit and I glued them to the back of the (LJN) hands using contact cement. Now I can toss that crappy Famous Covers version of Wolvie out the window!