"If You Want To Save The Remaining Souls On This Planet..."

"...You'll face me -- alone!"

This 43mm tall plastic “Wizkids” model of Darkseid is miniature number 123 from the "DC Comics" Hypertime “Heroclix” range, and depicts "the tyrannical ruler of the planet Apokolips" as his imperious best. Created by Jack "King" Kirby as "one of the most powerful beings in the DC Universe", the New God is "a staple Superman villain" and made his first comic book appearance in the November 1970 issue of "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen".

Omnipotent, and able to fire disintegrating Omega Beams from his hands or eyes, I initially primed the figure with a thinned down layer of "Vallejo" Heavy Blue, in order to 'mask' its clumsy pre-paint without softening the sculpt's underlying detail too much. I then 'picked out his belt with "Citadel" Ironbreaker and layered his legs, arms and head with a coat of "Vallejo" Heavy Bluegrey. Once dry, all of these areas were treated to a wash of "Citadel" Nuln Oil. Ideally, I would have liked to have highlighted some of Boss Dark Side's grey flesh with some dry-brushing, but as the model's detail was already somewhat soft and smooth I decided to leave well enough alone and simply leave the pooling Shade where it settled.

"Heroclix" WIPs - The Black Panther, Superman and the Flash

With the bulk of Darkseid's painting done, I dabbed his eyes with some "Vallejo" Heavy Read and "Citadel" glaze Bloodletter. Whilst his discomforting grimace was tackled using a little "Vallejo" Dead White and a smidgen of "Citadel" Agrax Earthshade. Finally the the immensely powerful villain, who can even break a green lantern's ring with his bare hands, was 'protected' with a covering of "Coat D'arms" Gloss Varnish.

Sticking with "Heroclix" it seemed silly not to also add Lord of Apokolips' greatest adversary, Superman to my painting queue, as well as probably my favourite "DC Comics" super-hero, the Flash. Both of these miniatures have rather embarrassingly been languishing in drawers or boxes for a good eight or so years, so it seemed high time that I finally put brush-tip to model and finished the "Justice League" duo off.

Dire Wraith WIPs - These enemies of the Spaceknights have been primed, layered and washed 

In a similar vein I have additionally plonked some, hopefully straightforward, Dire Wraiths onto my painting table. I was recently reminded by how much I like this villainous extra-terrestrial race by reading the Micronauts/Rom team-up comic book "Micronauts First Strike" by "IDW Publishing". Sadly the publication itself is awful, and not a patch on the "Marvel Worldwide" series which ran from December 1979 until February 1986, yet it did at least remind me that I had previously based and primed four of these shape-changing horrors.

Finally I have made a little more progress on my "Wizkids" Black Panther. I did originally start painting this figure whilst he was crouched atop a big cat's carved stone head, but didn't like the way the vines were sculpted on the statue, so cut T'Challa loose and simply super-glued him to a normal circular base. This move has though made me realise just how (overly) large the King of Wakanda is compared to some of the other "Heroclix" miniatures I've re-painted, so I may well source a second version of him at a later date...