Minimate Customs: Blue Beetle

I've been incredibly prolific, for better or for worse,  with this dorky little Minimate thing I do of late.  No lie, I've finished something like three dozen projects that were in various states production over the last few weeks.  Two factors combined to explain this surge: one, I finally printed off a new, large group of decals; and two, my family was out of town for a few days.  So my dining room turned into my own little Minimate factory over the weekend, with me (in some cases) just putting the finishing touches on a longstanding project, or (in others) built someone from start to finish.  Other men, when their wives and children leave them alone, hit the strip clubs.  I make Minimates.  Judge accordingly.

So, anyway, I'm (understandably, I think) eager to show some of these guys off.  I'm very, very pleased with many of these, and some (like the guy you'll see today) I'd categorize as among my best work.  So you're going to see a lot of Minimate posts in the coming days.  In some cases, I'll do themes; others, those which I think are particularly strong, will be on there own.  Like this guy.

Blue Beetle

Jamie Reyes was introduced a few years ago as the new Blue Beetle, replacing our beloved, deceased Ted Kord during the last time DC Comics attempted to get your attention by rebooting their univese (as opposed to the disaster impending in September).  While the rationale and mechanics for Ted's death are... arguable, I'd say what isn't arguable is that Jamie Reyes is one of the best things to come out of that last round of reboots/retools.  He had his own book for a few years, which was a nice take on the traditional Spider-Man style "teenager gets super powers" deal.

 And I love his costume, as designed by Cully Hamner.  I think it's one of the best, most distictive designs we've seen in years.  We've been fortunate to receive several plastic versions of Jamie since he's debuted- and even this, based on his slightly less detailed "Brave and the Bold" look- but, of course, no Minimate.  Moreover, because of the unique details of the costume, I thought he was pretty much out of league.

 However, while trolling through the 'net one day, I came across a Jamie decal, designed for Legos, that I thought was very impressive.  You can find it here; it's by a guy named Josh, and I give him a lot of props for doing such good work.  I adapted his decal to fit a Minimate's body specs, and suddenly Jamie didn't seem quite so far away.  For those of you playing at home, here's the decal:

 

Please use it for good, not for evil.  His body was (mostly) provided by X-Force Archangel, which had some nice silver-on-black details, which fit pretty well.  The rest of his body's just spare black parts, with Gambit's boots (painted blue) and some claw hands from somewhere to replicate Jamie's funky fingers.  I rounded him out with some shoulder pads from a Halo Minimate, which I painted blue, and ended up slicing up and gluing onto his arms. 

And then there's his scarab backpack, which you can see pretty clearly in the second photo up there.  This piece comes from the Brave and the Bold Action League figure (which came along with another figure I'd bought for another, as yet unseen, project); it doesn't quite capture the look of the comic, but it gets the job done.  I sliced the pack off the back of the Action League figure (which was surprisingly easy), then sanded it down so that it was flat and smooth enough to glue on a Minimate back.  When I tried it out, however, I didn't like the way the scarab sat on his back, so I ended up chopping the pegs off the little piece that holds on Archangel's wings and gluing it to that.  Much better.  And, here in the last photo, I gave Jamie some confiscated Hydra guns to replicate some of the weapons the scarab creates for him.

In short, this is a guy that I really wanted to do, that I didn't think I could ever pull off, but turned out even better then I expected.  He's going to be hard to top as my favorite custom.