A Custom A Day.... 365 days of custom figures Day 19 - Marvel Legends First Appearance Psylocke by Face Customs

1/20/2015

Today is the figure that started my Marvel Legends collection, 1st appearance Psylocke. As I've mentioned before, I skipped Marvel Legends because I had a pretty vast representation of the Marvel Universe thanks to Toy Biz's 5 inch line. I wasn't looking to begin a new collection from scratch when the Legends line began in the late 90's. I DID however purchase most of the females Toy Biz did in the Legends line throughtout the years, I'm a sucker for a female figure. That and the random make hero that I liked but there was no focus to the purchases, just whims.

Toy Biz didn't do a very good job of representing the Outback team in plastic. Storm and the boys were done in the 5 inch line but Dazzler, Psylocke and Rogue were left out. I made a Dazzler but the sculpting necessary to get Psylocke and Rogue done is something I couldn't pull off so the team remained unfinished on my shelf. Since I had a pretty good chunk taken out of Pérez's Titans, I wanted to focus on having the X-Men of the 80's made. I just wasn't sure of what scale to have them made in. This figure decided the direction my 80's X-Men would take.

Two years ago I stumbled on this Psylocke figure on eBay at a very reasonable Buy It Now price. I jumped on it. She is my favorite Marvel hero and I always wanted her in this costume. After finding the artist's work on the FigureRealm, I contacted him to about other customs he had made from this era in the X-Men's history. Face Customs had made the entire Outback team and has a gift for crafting fantastic female figures. The Outback X-Men were my favorite Marvel team during the 80's. Although the Byrne era are arguably the best X-Men stories of their history, I started reading the X-Men comics with the Fall of the Mutants storyline so they are special to me. I have since had him create customs of Psylocke in most of her early looks. His work is solid, clean and quick. I used the hot glue psionic butterfly from the Shinobitron custom to help finish her look for this photo.

This week I'll be sharing the rest of the Psylocke customs that Face Customs has created for me and the beginnings of my Marvel Legends collection.

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A Custom A Day....

Since I began toy collecting as a hobby back in 1990 I have always had a need for custom figures. Toy companies begin action figure lines, begin to release individual characters to create teams and, more often than not leave them incomplete. Many collectors find that custom figures pollute their collection's authenticity by not being mass produced creations from the toy companies that created the preexisting toy lines. I disagree. I feel a quality custom action figure enhances a collection and help create a complete picture.

When characters are chosen for a toy line several factors come in to play. The character's current media relevance (if any), their most iconic look (they may have had multiple costumes through their sometimes vast histories) and gender. Female action figures tend to not sell to parents of the boys who are playing with them so a great many of the female characters are never rendered in plastic in the way the male characters are leaving holes in the collections.

I am a fan of the female heroes primarily so I have purchased and made quite a few "customs" throughout my years as a collector. I find it challenging (ok impossible) to get a smooth, quality finish to my sculpt work, downgrading the quality of my figure's appearance that I create so my custom work tend to be of a Frankenstein type nature where I use different parts such as a torso and arms from one figure attached to the hips and legs of another, and a different head with a full cost of paint to create my pieces. I also struggle with painting facial details on figures. The small areas, the eyes in particular give me the biggest issues. I prefer to reuse another head from a different character that will allow me to not have to paint the facial details since I am heavy handed and tend to paint in clumps rather than smooth, factory produced finishes that many of the customizers I work with can achieve.

Most of the figures that I have in my collection that have intricate sculpting and paint details have been created by other artists from around the world. The UK, The Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada and from several states throughout the US through personal communication or via eBay, which can be an outstanding resource for quality custom work. I've had the pleasure of meeting some incredibly talented artists through websites & social media. Over the past two years seeking out quality custom figures has become the main focus of my collection. Which is at over 5,000 loose pieces. As you will see over the course of this year this does not just affect super hero toy lines. I collect different toy lines spanning the 1960's through today covering cartoons, movies and television in addition to comic books. Some of the custom pieces I have had done wouldn't have been made as toys because of lack of consumer interest or based on licensing issues simply cannot be made in to toys. I haven't let that stop me from using several different toy lines to amass a complete plastic collection of all of the media I have enjoyed throughout my life.

I have decided to begin a project called A Custom A Day.... to showcase my custom pieces one a day, every day throughout 2015. If you follow me on social media or on this site you may have seen many of them before but with this project I will give a little background of each figure and its relevance to my collection. So check back daily!!!

A CUSTOM A DAY.... 365 Days of custom figures

A Custom A Day.... 365 days of custom figures Day 19 - Marvel Legends First Appearance Psylocke by Face Customs

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A Custom A Day....

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