“I Hate Monkeys.”

If you’ve come here expecting to see 28mm Masters of the Universe conversions, whilst you’re in the right place, you’re on the wrong post…try any of the previous posts for this month.

However, if you’re a first time visitor or have visited to see what my itchy fingers and feverish imagination can come up. read on…

As was pointed out to me by my co-conspirator for “He-Month 2”, the talented Mr Roger Webb, (whose far superior sculpting skills can be found over at Ranting from Under the Wargames Table) the modest target I’d set for myself for September was likely to be completed well before the month was out. Not being one to sit on my laurels, and having already planned what I was going to concentrate on for October, I needed something to occupy my hobby brain for the remainder of the month.

A random conversation with Simon on his blog Fantorical, which is well worth a visit if your interested in superheroes, Dr Who, Battlestar Galactica, zombies, etc. led to the discussion of a certain relatively obscure Marvel character and his appearance in a Warren Ellis penned title back in 2006…

The comic series was titled Nextwave and featured four second-string Marvel characters, namely Monica Rambeau (Captain Marvel), Tabitha Smith (Boom Boom), Aaron Stack (Machine Man) and Elsa Bloodstone, with the addition of a new character called “The Captain”, who couldn’t remember his real name. These characters formed the Nextwave squad, who were formed to combat Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction unleashed by the Beyond Corporation. The series was violent, irreverent and whilst appeared to be set in the mainstream Marvel Universe, had flashbacks featuring characters acting wildly out of their established character, and may not have actually happened.

It was also, for a long-term Marvel fan such as myself, very, very funny.

Anyway, in the final issue of the series, it was revealed that the criminal mastermind behind every scheme the Nextwave squad had face was none other than…

***SPOILER WARNING***

That’s right…Devil Dinosaur. But not as you’ve ever seen him before. And this image explains the title of this post.

My conversation with Simon ended up with me stating that I wanted a figure to represent this character, as he appears above. So, having some spare time during He-Month, I decided to have a go…

Obviously, the first thing I needed was a suitable figure to convert. As there was a good chance I was going to cock it up, I decided my base figure needed to be cheap. Also, as Devil Dinosaur was supposed to be a ‘small’ Tyrannosaurus Rex (25 feet tall, apparently), it didn’t need to be very large. A trip to my local Wilkinsons store, who I noted had increased the size of their toy department in readiness for Christmas, led me to their hard plastic figures, which included dinosaurs. As with all inexpensively produced toy dinosaurs, they were all roughly the same size, so no chance of being in scale with one another and were of varying accuracy and quality. However, sometimes you do find one or two gems amongst them and, after spending a whole £1, I was the proud owner of this chap;

According to the writing on its belly, this model is a Dilophosaurus, which those of you who have seen Jurassic Park will know, is the crested, poison-spitting dinosaur that killed the computer programmer. Which is looks nothing like, or the scientific reconstructions of said dinosaur. However, having said that, it is a particularly nice model, that actually looks like a dinosaur. As with all injection molded figures, there are obvious mold lines, the main one being the one around it’s ‘waist’, which would have to be filled prior to gaming with it. But surface detail is good and I can imagine if you were gaming with dinosaurs, this would make a good (and cheap) addition to your collection.

However, for my purposes, as I’m going to be converting it into Devil Dinosaur, I need to remove the ridge above the eyes, reposition the arms, find a suitably scaled revolver, try to work out how to make a suitably scaled champagne flute, and sculpt on a cravat and smoking jacket, before I can even start applying paint.

And you thought that the Masters of the Universe project was crazy…

So, He-Month 2 and the Devil Dinosaur will run alongside one another for September, and will hopefully all be finished by the end of the month.

Thanks for visiting. Comments and feedback appreciated, as always (even if it’s to question my sanity…)