Marvel Legends Nick Fury and Agents of SHIELD

With CustomCon 24 going on at TheFwoosh.com, this is a horrible time for me to be posting custom action figures of my own, especially when they aren’t quite customs and just some simple modifications on some already pretty good figures.  As you can see, I’ve been buying up Marvel Legends 2-packs with SHIELD agents like the line were being canceled (it’s not!) – and as good as these figures are straight out of the package, I couldn’t resist doing some touch-ups.

Nick Fury

I started old saint Nick with some paint touch-ups, adding some gray to his temples and giving him a thicker eyebrow over his right eye and adding the top of an eyebrow over the patch.  If you thought the expression on his mouth was strange, it was sculpted to hold a cigar – but since Marvel won’t let any of its characters smoke, Hasbro didn’t include a cigar with him.

So I rolled tobacco leaf between my supple thighs until it was tight, but still allowed a smooth draw.  Well, ok, I rolled a bit of paper between my fingers until I had a vague cigar shape and trimmed it for size.  I then painted it brown, with some white, orange, and yellow at the burning end.  I made it sturdy and glued it in using Mod Podge.

On his body, I wanted to give him the uniform seams that befit him as the Director of SHIELD.  I first tried with fishing line, but I really hate trying to glue that down.  So I abandoned that and sculpted the seams, with the benefit that Apoxie Sculpt dries white, so no paint was needed.  If I weren’t so lazy, I’d have painted some flesh tone above the collar.  When the seams were done, I glued his belt and holster straps down, as the most annoying thing about the accessories is how the straps just slide around.

Dum Dum Dugan

This was actually Hagop’s idea, but because he’s been busy with CustomCon (check out his Green Lantern Corps CustomCon entry) I got to finish it first, proving that when you work hard on one thing, someone else can steal one of your other ideas.  So, one day I had this awesome idea that Dum Dum ought to have a more heavyset, less defined body.  And it was my idea alone.

All I did here was thicken up his torso, mostly below the ab hinge, but with some work to match it up on the sides of the torso above the ab hinge as well.  Matching the paint was painful, but I got it close enough, with the key areas covered by his chest straps (also glued down), it works for me.  I’d have liked the change to be a little more dramatic, but didn’t think I could go any bigger.

Easy SHIELD Head Swaps

The great thing about these army builders is that you can give your SHIELD Agents a lot of variety with extra heads you’ve probably already got.  In the front row, I’ve got Tony Stark, who has also  been the Director of SHIELD.  I don’t think I saw him ever wear a firearm on his chest during his tenure, but I’ll change it to a walkie talkie in Photoshop 20 years from now.  Next to Tony is a Jessica Drew Agent of SHIELD, using the extra Elektra head.

In the back row are some unnamed SHIELD agents, using the Forge, Steve Rogers, and Hank Pym heads.

Finally, I included some closeups of the female SHIELD personnel.  The Maria Hill and Sharon Carter heads given an extra paint app in the package with Stealth Iron Man, which I like much better than the flesh colored plastic on the heads included with the regular Iron Man.

The new heads are on the left, if you couldn’t tell. 😀