Stormy night

Another one painted last week is a well known ninja who, until reading the recent comics, I'd assumed was always a bad guy. The toys were always Cobra affiliated, as were his cartoon and film equivalents... so it came as a bit of a surprise to find that in about 70% of the comics he is an ally of the Joes; the rest of the time he is midwiped.

I've painted him up without any Cobra symbols so he can be used as either affiliation.

Vipers

So I finished some infantry for the Joe project last week, but never got around to posting them up.

The Vipers always looked a lot better as villainous infantry than the original Cobra Troopers and slowly became the staple grunt as the comics went on.

Silent and very very deadly

If this guy needs an introduction... where have you been?

Scarlett

In ye olde dim and distant past, Scarlett was a Belgian counter intelligence officer in Action Force. With the move away from the Battle comics to Larry Hama's continuity she evolved into an American of Irish descent who had more of a martial arts background and love interest for Snake Eyes.

Jinx

This week's Zombtober entry is a little late as I got sidetracked with house bits and Blade Runner 2049 yesterday. It also isn't the figure I was intending to post as I was also working on some Plague Zombies from the latest 40k starter set... hopefully they can become this week's entries instead. For now we'll have to have another "could-be-a-survivor".

Jinx is another one of the excellent sculpts from the GI Joe commission. In the Marvel comics continuity she is Storm Shadow's cousin and part of the Arashikage clan; training wth the Blind Master and teaching Billy (Cobra Commander's son). Later she became part of Ninja Force with Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow and a number of other Joe ninjas.

This isn't a figure I had when I was a kid; I guess because she was never in any of the comics I owned at the time, so she wasn't of much interest.

Baroness DeCobray

Next in the Action Force painting queue is Baroness DeCobray, or  Anna von Stromberg if you followed the Battle Action Force origins (which doesn't tie into Hama's GI Joe continuity at all).

This is a really characterful figure that almost painted itself. While painting the Baroness I learned a quick, effective way to quickly paint black cloth that actually looks nice in person and seems to work in photos as well. Black undercoat with a Medium grey drybrush and a light grey highlight brush. Then, rather than black washes that I've tried before, which just make the dry brushing look worse, some glazes of thinned black paint over the top, with neat black being added back in for the deep shadows. I was tempted to try a blue glaze over the top to give it that blue highlight that the comics have, but decided not to in the end.

Cobra Commander

One of my favourite toy series when I was younger was Action Force. I know technically it switched to GI Joe eventually, but it will always be Action Force to me... which is probably why, to me, Cobra Commander will always be Baron Ironblood. For the American readers you may have missed out on that incarnation. He went from weirdo with a bucket on his head, to a weirdo with a bag or fishbowl on his head...

At some point I want to add a Baron Ironblood, but for now we'll start with a Cobra Commander as I'm slowly working my way through the original Marvel comics and the proper continuity. there are some surprisingly good stories in there. Having found that image of Cobra Commander above, I wish I'd put a snake staff in his hand. Maybe I'll come back and update that in the future...

Fantasy dead rising

With the Painting Challenge now under way I got the chance to have a crack at some of the Dungeon Saga figures. As I'm trying to work my way through each set in order, the first batch are all undead from the core DS adventures along with the extras from the KS campaign.

The skeletons are nigh on identical in pose to the classic Heroquest skeletons... though they do thankfully have the clown feet and ham-fists missing . You would, theoretically, be able to fit one of these inside the barbarian character. I'll do a side-by-side comparison when the heroes get painted. 

Next to GW's Vampire Counts skellies, these guys are pretty fragile, but they don't look too bad next to each other.

Then we have some classic style zombie peasants. I wasn't too impressed with these ones when they first arrived, but now they are painted they look pretty good. 

And some more feral looking zombies that look far more like Mantic's ghouls... so I can see them changing role once the Zombicide: Black Plague zombies start to be painted up.

Myths and legends

One of the Analogue sub-challenges was entitled Myth. A lot of my other entries have been a bit unimpressive compared to all the others, so I decided to have a dig through the figure box and see what I had that wasn't a greek warrior. I'd almost given up hope until I came across the Forgeworld Skin Wolf that was only available at events a few years ago.

The myth of werewolves goes back to ancient greek literature and covers most cultures across the world, from American tribes to various Asian cultures where the wolf is replaced with tigers or leopards. The actual transformation process can be triggered by many things and can take many forms.

Some myths tell of the slow transformation of man to beast, with bones reforming and skin stretching... painful to be sure. But not as painful as the beast bloodily ripping itself from within the man, leaving ragged tatters of flesh clinging to his fur. You can see why TV programs shy away from this version of the transformation.

One thing I've decided to do, now that I've got my lightbox setup working more effectively, is to provide extra photos in my posts, so it's not just a repeat of the Challenge blog photos.

The police aren't very lucky at the moment. First they were taken by the weeping angels, now they are about to be savaged by the towering monster...