"The Girl Belongs To Zzzax!"

"Caught in my grip of nuclear fire, even steel can melt!"

This 58mm tall plastic model of Zzzax is produced by “Wizkids” and is miniature number 025 from their Marvel “Heroclix” Mutations & Monsters range. "Formed from electricity by an act of sabotage at a Con Ed nuclear power plant in New York City", the humanoid creature was created by Steve Englehart and artist Herb Trimpe, and made his first appearance in the August 1973 issue of "The Incredible Hulk" by "Marvel Comics".

Brought to life by absorbing "the minds of the terrorists and several engineers", the translucent orange figure was initially primed using a couple of coats of "Vallejo" Heavy Ochre, and later soaked with "Citadel" Carroburg Crimson. I then began an hour long process of slowly dry-brushing the electrical super-villain's nicely-detailed body with an increasingly lighter combination of "Vallejo" Heavy Ochre and White using a professional cosmetic kit's makeup brush by "Abody".

Metal Men WIPs - Lead, Tin and Iron have all been re-based and primed

This really proved something of a patient process, and I made sure not to clean my brush every time I concocted a new mix, so as to help blend the different layers together. After finally applying a 'pure' "Vallejo" White dry-brush, I decided to apply a layer of Yellow Fluorescent as something of an experiment. This seemed to work reasonably well, but in the end I decided to somewhat dampen the luminosity with a final dry-brush of (more) "Vallejo" White.

As a penultimate step I noticed in some of the comic book drawings of Zzzax that the monster has a noticeable pair of eyes, and even visible teeth in his mouth. I therefore 'picked out' these areas of the figure with a little "Citadel" Abaddon Black, before applying a couple of brush-tips full of "Vallejo" White. I then applied a couple (more) lines of "Citadel" Abaddon Black to the eye sockets to help give the always-angry behemoth a grimacing scowl.

"Heroclix" WIPs - The Bi-Beast, the Bat Sentry and Proteus

I actually painted up a number of "Heroclix" Metal Men figures approximately four years ago, so was rather intrigued recently when I discovered that "Wizkids" had gone and had the "DC Comics" super-group re-sculpted for their World's Finest expansion set. Obviously, I wasn't in any urgent need of a replacement Tin, Iron or Lead figure, but having been gifted some spares I did think the new look Silver Age of Comics heroes would make some rather splendid objective markers.

In addition I've made some slow progress on a couple of my larger "Heroclix" models, as well as re-primed my Bi-Beast a far stronger shade of orange after I found his original undercoat turned out a little too dark for my liking. The Bat Sentry has had a spanking new 'lick' of "Citadel" Abaddon Black all over it, having gained some significant dust whilst lurking on one of my many shelves, whilst Proteus is slowly being 'sponged' with various shades of green prior to being washed with "Citadel" Biel-Tan Green...