Hawkman

Base: DCUC Wave 6 Hawkman

Right hand: DCUC Lightray

This has to be the easiest and yet most fulfilling custom ever. I love that Hawkman can hold his mace in his right/correct hand now! When Hawkgirl came out with an open right hand, I was envious on behalf of Hawkman.

Dr. Fate

Base: DCUC Wave 8 Dr. Fate

Paint: Testors Acrylic gold paint.

Finding this guy at retail was harder than fixing him myself. The half-gold / half-yellow version has found a permanent home in the box with Glow-in-the-dark Spectre, maskless Deathstroke, variant Deadman, yellow Sinestro, first appearance Hal Jordan, maskless Orion, muddy Batman, volcano Doomsday, purple Catwoman, orange Two-Face, six or seven different Supermen...

Penguin

Base: DCUC Wave 1 Penguin

Paint: Tamiya's entire range of glossy acrylics.

These are really really nice paints for detail work, but they ran on me a little when I applied a dullcote varnish. I'm still learning my way. The hardest decision to make here was with the umbrella. There are 9 sections on the Super Powers umbrella, but only 8 on the DCUC umbrella. I decided to leave the yellow for the ribs, and didn't give them 2 or 3 of the sections. The unpainted yellow sections of the Super Powers version bother me a little, so I'm happy to move away from that.

Guardian

Base: DCUC Wave 9 Guardian

Shield: Vinyl, cut to fit. Original shield straps were retained.

I may revisit this shield, but I wasn't up for scuplting a new one. My spare Guardian with the foot that came loose (as in not attached) in the package, served as the base here. His shield was sanded down to the straps, and the new vinyl form was stuck on top. It only looks awful up close, or in the photos, honest!

Guardian's yellow is a little glossy still as I didn't want to risk more running with the dullcote varnish.

Aqualad

Base: DCUC Wave 7 Kid Flash

Head: Star Trek Cadet Chekov

Kid Flash was left over from a more ambitious (but still not complete) custom, and I knew if I wanted to use the body, I pretty much had to make another Teen Titan. On the eve of the contest deadline, I found Cadet Chekov on clearance. What an awful figure... not even worth the $4.98 I spent to get his head. In any case, I dremeled quite a bit of maroon plastic to remove his neck and drill a deep enough hole, but nothing can improve that strange expression. At least he had curly hair! A ton of painting pulled off a near miracle, until I sealed him with the dullcote and my sharp lines ran a little. Note to self: take pictures before varnish, just in case of accidents. I'll clean up his lines eventually, but for now, here he stands. Actually, leans. He has really really weak knee joints.

Kalibak

Base: DCUC Wave 6 BAF Kalibak

Beta Club: DCUC Wave 8 Green Parademon

I confess, I almost painted him flesh-toned. The reddish-brown jumpsuit was looking so good with the metallic blue highlights, though, that I really didn't want to push this any farther. I almost passed on the mustard mid-riff, too, until I found a shade of paint that worked against the yellow. I did paint a spare arm from a previous all-green no-flesh Kalibak custom to see what flesh-toned Kalibak would look like, and it wasn't bad, but wasn't great either. In the end, I'm still really glad I left his face alone. The best part of customs is that you can do what makes you happiest, even if it means buying another green Parademon just to steal his weapon! Army builders rock. And no, you can't have too many Kalibaks.

Thanks so much for looking!