Collosus is one of the first three figures in a long line of custom pieces that I purchased from Face Customs over in the UK. Armored & Poofy Psylocke were in the same batch and started my Marvel Legends collection. Face had done the entire Outback team. He had even done customs of Wolverine, Longshot & Havok; characters that Toy Biz had already tackled in plastic. They were all perfect. I already had a Longshot because he was an Art Adams creation and Art is my favorite comic artist, ok I had a handful of Legends figures in my collection, some females and a few random others that I liked throughtout the years (like Jim Lee Rogue) but I was far from a completist let alone a focused collector. I don't tend to buy customs of characters that already have figures made so I picked up brown costume Wolverine & a Havok on the cheap off of eBay once I had Piotr & Betsy on their way across the pond.

Face was working on revising Storm's head sculpt so she wouldn't come until later on and his versions of Dazzler and Rogue, although superbly crafted they weren't quite the looks that matched Art Adams' style so I filled those slots elsewhere.

Today is a custom I did last week based on MDStimcell's easy recipe. Boil a clearance Ms. Marvel and a Jean Grey for 2 minutes, rip their hair off and switch, add a little white paint and done. Granted his included a full facial repaint which improved her greatly but since I'm not that skilled (or patient) to try, this is good enough.

Rogue helps to fill in the ranks of the Outback X-men. I'd LOVE to do this figure again in a armored form to emulate her using Colossus' powers to fight Master Mold but it's far from a priority. This does the trick for now.

Donna was another random piece that I commissioned from Psyguy five years ago in an attempt to build a set of New Teen Titans minimates. I was still trying figure how to best utilize his craftsmanship to boost my collection. He had already worked on several Marvel minimates characters for me so Donna seemed logical to bolster the Titans roster. I had her made based on the recipe Luke Porter's used for his original Titans custom made 4 pack.

Donna Troy is the one character that always gets left out. She was omitted from the Teen Titans Go cartoon and never made it on screen for Young Justice and from DC's line of minimates. Although her history has been destroyed over the years, she is one of my favorite Titans. I still need a Changelling & Kid Flash to finish the team but at least I got the ladies out of the way first.

Today is another member of the Outsiders, Looker made by Raybot's Customs. Raybot's work is genius, it is appropriately priced for the quality he provides. His pieces are a little higher priced than the average custom but his paint work is smooth and clean, his stuff looks like it was factory produced. (HAVE YOU SEEN THE MS. MARVEL HE SOLD ON EBAY??!?!?! perfection) The average price for a good quality custom figure is $75. Artists like Raybot, Raynir and LooseCollector will set you back more but they are masters in the craft and are, in my opinion worth the investment.

Based on the work in progress photo that Raybot sent I would say that he spray paints the base coat and paints over that base with acrylic. She has a factory produced look and retains all of her articulation without the paint chipping, flaking or rubbing off. The facial details and highlights in her hair are spot on. Her bow is well sculpted and is flexible which is nice so that it is less likely to break if and when she shelf dives on to the floor. (It's happened).

The base figure is a DC Direct Brightest Day Dove figure. The first base figure he used cracked while he was working on her so he needed to replace her therefore I got two sets of hands out of the deal. They are interchangeable fists and opened "flight" hands. The cape is from a DC Universe Classics Mary Marvel, the hair was blond initially however I don't know who it belongs to.

It was my suggestion for her to use a DC Direct base to give her a little bit of height over Halo & Katana and also tie in to the taller men of the team. She adds a nice variety to my Batman & the Outsiders shelf and completes the 80's team.

Today we go back to the DC Universe with Halo. I wanted to complete the Batman & the Outsiders team to complement my New Teen Titans collection. DC Direct did a great with the men on the team but, as usual dropped the ball when it came to the ladies.

Halo was one of the easier customs that I've done. She uses a DC Universe Classics Black Canary head, a Dove body and her hands are from the DC Direct Wonder Woman &Wonder Girl box set. The head was the perfect choice since I wouldn't need to paint her facial details, I can't paint that small of an area, I don't know how other customizers do it!

I plan to make a short haired variant once I get my hands on the Marvel Legends Captain Marvel Carol Danvers figure. Hopefully that version will be part of this project by the summer.

Today we're looking at the most perfect Marvel Legends Dazzler figure both you & I have ever seen. I attempted to bid on her on eBay but the quality, sculpting and number of interchangeable parts that she came with in addition to the accessories made her sell for a pretty penny.

Having missed out on the auction I reached to the artist to have him recreate her for me, fortunately he agreed. She has interchangeable feet which allow her to switch from shoes to roller skates!!! How cool is THAT??!?! No detail is missed. The paint details are perfect. I love this figure. I like that she uses the Moonstone/Ms. Marvel body so that she is curvy, Hasbro has finally gotten the comic female form right with this body type. Her hair is perfectly sculpted and painted to give it texture and highlights.

For the longest time I wanted a custom Disco Dazzler for my collection. I've seen her rendered many times, this is the best one I've seen, hands down. She looks like she fell out of a comic book. This version of Allison was a must have and definitely in the top five of custom pieces I purchased last year.

Today's custom figure is a Betsy Braddock Minimate in her first costume made by the very talented Psyguy from the UK. I figured since we were focusing on Betsy all week, we may as well end with her too. This minimate is the first in a long line of custom work that Psyguy has done for me. Based on his name you can assume that he too is a big Psylocke fan and he is.

I do a pretty good job of having customs made of characters that I'm certain toy companies will not produce. I was extremely surprised when Diamond announced they would be doing Betsy in this costume. I thought I was lucky just to have her in Minimate form in her Outback costume as both looks are rather obscure. Since she is my favorite character I didn't mind the duplicated effort, besides Psyguy's piece is the perfect rendition whereas the version Diamond mass produced has its flaws.

This figure and my relationship with Psyguy opened the door to one of my most treasured collections but more about that later.

Revanche is the last custom Psylocke figure that Face Customs did for me. She was a figure that had been done by several different artists but I wanted Face to do her so that the look of all of the Betsy customs would look uniform and this one does not disappoint. She comes with her psionic katana. Although she's not technically Psylocke she is part of her history as it's her British body from after she went through the Seige Perilous at the end of the Outback storyline and was a necessary piece of the X-Men Marvel Legends puzzle. I display Revanche with my Jim Lee team to help round out the ranks of the Blue Team.

Today's figure is the third custom that I purchased from Face Customs; Psylocke as Lady Mandarin. I have yet to see another custom of Betsy in this costume. I added the psiblade from the Marvel Universe Psylocke figure to complete her look. I am attempting to collect custom figures of the X-Men from the Byrne era through the Jim Lee era so Lady Mandarin was a must. She was already completed by Face Customs, I found her on Figure Realm and asked if she was still available for purchase. He wanted to update her since his sculpting abilities had improved since he first completed the piece. I was happy with the look of the original figure however this version blows the first out of the water. Another perfect Marvel Legends figure from Face Customs!