Raving Toy Maniac Presents Mat Planet's Customs   Mat can be contacted at [email protected]

The Flash   The modern Flash was made from a new Spider-man Daredevil and a DCDirect JLA Flash. Daredevil’s upperchest was sawed off and the upper chest of the JLA Flash was attached, so this one has the Flash’s head and chest and Daredevil’s torso joint. The Flash had a real nice neck joint so I got to keep that as well as the symbol on his chest. Daredevil’s arms were pulled out of the lat. joints and stuck into the DCD body. The pins fit into the new slot almost perfectly. The Flash’s boots were also removed and attached to the pegs on the Daredevil, and the Daredevil’s ankles were attached to the middle of Flash’s boots. Complicated process but worth it. His feet have articulation better than the Daredevil because I removed some of the sides of the boots so they’ll pivot better, and they have that cool tread on the bottom like the Flash should have. Also the Flash’s hands were attached to the Daredevil wrist joints. The Daredevil right leg had to have the billyclub holster removed and repainted to match the rest, but most of the red showing is right from the original parts used.

Wolverine A simple use of the XMC Tiger Stripe Wolverine, but with the head and hands swapped with the old Evolution of X Wolverine I still had. I had previously installed metal claws into that one that I made from grinding down a few nails. Oh, and that head had that half-snarl that just begs to stick a smoke in there. It keeps all the articulation in the neck and wrists. This one is now in scale with the rest of my figs, especially the X-Men.

Psylocke I held off doing this until I saw ToyBiz wouldn’t be making a new female bodytype for a while. I never liked Electra much, but I thought I could use the body for something that would be more to my liking. First thing I did was shorten the forearms and lower legs. Those just always looked too long on Electra. It helps her proportions. Also her hips, ass and belly were sanded down quite a bit. Several people have done this custom, and many are very good. The only real different choice between them is the choice of head to use. Mine is from a McFarlane Danger Girl, Natalia. She had a good face but a huge forehead and generally huge head. I took a lot off the top and resculpted the hair on top, and kept that little piece that hangs off the side. I like the look for her and it matches my other action figures in scale and style. Her belt/sash is cut from a piece of fabric that was coated in Superglue to keep it from fraying and to make it positionable. I was going to give her new hands but Electra's can make that cool kung-fu  pose. The scabbard on her back is made from the Electra accessory and is removable.

Marvel Legends Rhino The head, chest, abdomen, upper legs, toes and shoulder pads are all from the early Rhino figure, untouched except it was all cracked apart into pieces and the upper legs were painted along with the rest of the legs. The arms and lower legs come from a Hulk movie figure - Twist and Slam Hulk. The hip joints of the Rhino toy were good, so I kept those and the legs down to the thigh swivel joint. Beyond that the old Rhino had no articulation, but the Hulk was good in the lower legs, having knees and 2 joints in the ankles. I sawed Hulk's legs off at the middle of the thigh and attached them to the Rhino's. This was a bit difficult because the Rhino is hollow. Then I had to match the texture on the upper legs. That was done with building up some Sculpy and carving into it. Then Hulk's toes were cut off and Rhino's attached, again with me adding texture. I also had to texture the arms, and that was done by carving directly into Hulk's arms. The arms themselves fit pretty well into the Rhino's chest. That provided him some nice ball-jointed shoulders, bicep swivels, and elbows, and I added the swivel wrists. The open hand is from the Rhino and the closed fist of from the Hulk. Believe it or not, the old Rhino's armbands are under there. I try to keep as much as I can, but they ended up being too small, and I built new ones over them with Sculpy. I built up the ones on the ankles too. This toy ends up being a bit bigger than the old Rhino figure, but crouches well to look smaller if he needs to. He needs to fit in with my Spidey, look good next to the Hulk, and go with my Spidey villians, (now I need that Scorpion figure bad!) including The Marvel Select Green goblin, who is a little big, and the Rhino has been drawn at various sizes so I tried to strike a compromise as far as scale goes.

1 2 3 4

Back to Custom Central

[FAQs and Articles] [Custom Site Links]

[Custom Central Galleries] [Custom Talk] 

[Home] [News] [Forum] [Features] [Columns] [Archives] [Custom] [Newsletter]
[Shop Center] [Chat] [Resources] [Contact] [Sitemap] [Privacy] [Toy Shows] [Links]