IF ADVENTURE HAS A NAME...

For as long as I've been aware of the character-- which is pretty much as far back as I can remember-- I've wanted the "perfect" Indiana Jones figure. One of my greatest childhood memories is the day I finally tracked down a 3.75" Indy from Kenner's now-vintage line, and being completely obsessed, until I "lost" him in a random box of toys for about 10 years… since I didn't have an Indiana Jones anymore, I had to make one, but better than the one I had. It started with an "LBC", super-poseable Indy I made as a kid with my old A Real American Hero GI Joes: Tunnel Rat's legs with Grunt (mk 3)'s torso, Blizzard's head, a terrible fedora, but a very-cool, poseable whip made from copper wire. With varying toy lines, parts, and materials, I've been improving upon the recipe ever since. 

Completed in March 2013, this untold numbered attempt at the character started with the upper body of an Indy from Hasbro's awesome Indiana Jone's line, bashed onto the lower body of a movie Storm Shadow legs, for super-poseability. Hasbro's sculpt is amazing, but was ruined by their cheap paint job-- I just went in and cleaned up the excellent work that was already there.

I had been planning this piece literally for years, and every year the available pieces got better and better. Before this incarnation, I bought parts to make a more heroically-built Indy, using the body from a Logan figure from the Wolverine: Origins line. It was way too stylized for my more realistic take, however, but who knows… I could always use it to make a piece based on Jim Steranko's bad-ass concept art. I'm a HUGE fan of unproduced designs.

In addition to the super-articulated Joe version I made as a kid, past attempts at Indy have included some based on Hasbro's Han Solo POTF2 figures (to various degrees of success), and an awesome one from high school with swappable heads. With this piece, however, I really wanted to knock it out of the park-- go above and beyond anything I'd made in the past, and make my definitive statement on Lucas & Spielberg's brilliant creation. With this one, I'm 99.9999% there.

Recently I flipped through a coffee table book of the Lucasfilm archives and rediscovered some wicked pre-production art for the Indiana Jones films, but primarily for Raiders. I'm very intrigued by the Nazi villain with the robot arm and cybernetic eye implant-- he could be a lot of fun to work on and would fit in with my super villains perfectly. 

Just like the official version, my take on Indy is that he's a globe-trotting adventurer who has dealt with everything you can imagine in the field, from the wrath of God to dimension-hopping Aliens, double-crossing agents, and armies of the undead. In his travels, he's met everyone from fellow classmate Professor Broom (BPRD) and Hellboy, to Captain America and the Avengers, and even The Batman. Axis forces are always on the hunt for paranormal artifacts, which Dr. Jones seems to specialize in...

While I'm very confident that I won't be making an Indy better than this one for quite some time, there are a couple things I'd change to be fully, 100% happy: Indy being able to put his arms completely down to his sides (they sorta stick out slightly), and his jacket is sticky from the paint (which I'm going to actually fix).  Apart from that, though, I couldn't be happier with how Dr. Jones turned out. If I can find a "battle damaged" Indy from Temple of Doom for a decent price, I may have to attempt a jacket less version...

CAIRO '39

NAZI BASE '42

U.S. GOVERNMENT INSTALLATION  '41

NEPAL '38

COMING UP: THE GHOST WHO WALKS, WHY SO SERIOUS?

“You flee to no avail! ARNIM ZOLA has the resources to meet any emergency! You haven’t a chance, do you hear !? You can’t escape !”

Seeing pictures of Dr. Arnim Zola (or just "Arnim Zola") always confused me growing up. I didn't realize his "head" was a camera and that his "face" was actually a screen broadcasting his likeness and not actually some giant, freaky-ass head-in-a-stomach. No offense to The King, but Jack Kirby's art didn't help, so I combined the creepy visual with the bizarre name and wrote him off as some sort of Marvel cosmic villain, which I really wasn't into at the time... curiously, though, Zola wasn't too far off from Krang (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), whom I loved and thought was awesome. I think the difference was that I knew Krang's body was a robot.

Later I learned I how cool Dr. Zola actually is-- I'm always a sucker for a mad scientist, especially when they're bat-shit crazy, German, and possibly evil, evil Nazi scum. They make the best villains. Completed today, April 1st, 2013, Arnim Zola is basically an LBC (lazy bastard custom), based primarily off a GI Joe 25th Anniversary Battle Android Trooper (my favorite GI Joe figure/character). The camera head was kitbashed together from greebles on my workbench. 

Finding the right face for Zola took forever, with at least four different images and numerous false starts. Since the good doctor here is from the late 30s-early 40s, the picture is in black & white. At first I went with the Zola from Captain America: The First Avenger... then the one from the video game based on the movie, then I toyed with a bunch of pictures of Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark... then inspiration struck and I knew precisely who would work. My lips are sealed. 

One of the main reasons I wanted to use the B.A.T. as the base body (aside from the perfect spot on the chest for the screen) was because of its interchangeable arms. I see this robot minion as a virtually-indestructible avatar for Zola that is highly versatile, armed with a claw hand and particle beam weapon based on energy from the Tesseract (Cosmic Cube). He wears basic khaki coveralls to protect his components, but Zola designed his robot soldiers to be nearly unstoppable. 

COMING UP: IF ADVENTURE HAS A NAME..., THE GHOST WHO WALKS, GOTHAM'S MOST WANTED