Minimate Customs: Miracleman and Miraclewoman

Fallen a bit behind in my big custom showcase, but here's two more....
Miracleman

Now here's a guy with an interesting history.  Miracleman (aka Marvelman) began life as a stand in for the original Captain Marvel (aka Shazam) when the World's Mightiest Mortal's publisher, Fawcett, decided to pull the plug on their comics line (longstanding legal action by DC Comics as to the similarities of Captain Marvel and Superman didn't hurt).  This left the British publisher of CM's adventures in a bit of a lurch, as the strip was still quite popular over there, but suddenly they had no new material to print, or even the rights to the old material (due to the DC settlement).  So they thought fast and had artist Mick Angelo whip up a thinly-veiled replacement named Marvelman.  Though the strip really wasn't very good (sorry, but it's true), Marvelman proved quite popular, and was fondly remembered as the first British super hero into the '80s.

That's when a publisher named Dez Skinn decided to revive the character for his new anthology Warrior, and he hired Alan Moore to give it a go.  You might have heard of him.  Anyway, the rest of the story is faaaaaaaaaaaar to involved for me to get into, but needless to say Moore did three brilliant volumes of the renamed Miracleman before turning him over to Neil Gaiman (of whom you might also be familiar), who got one full volume and began a second before American publisher Eclipse imploded.  And then began the astonishing battle over Miracleman's rights between Gaiman and Todd McFarlane, which actually did end when it was somehow realized that, oops, Skinn never had the rights to the character in the first place, Mick Angelo still did.  And now he's owned by Marvel, which is the one place that would go back to the Marvelman name.  Of course.  But he'll always be Miracleman to me.

Look, just read the Wikipedia page.

Anyway, I do own all the Miracleman comics, and yes, they're pretty great.  Not Moore's best, or Gaiman's, but pretty great.  So making a Miracleman Minimate was of course a priority for me, and here he is.  Body's blue, the hands are red, the accents are yellow.  His hair's from a C3 Superman, and his head's from Ultimate Captain America.  The decal was surprisingly easy to put together, as I found the Miracleman logo here, and then used this great Mark Buckingham cover for the neck part.  Easily my favorite decal, and it was killing me to have to wait to print it.  But you, my friends, are under no such restrictions:

Miraclewoman

She was put together almost as a lark; I'd already prepped the logo to put on Luke's male chest template, so it was a snap to shrink it and put it around the midriff of a female template.  Of course, that should be a "MW" instead of a "MM", but at that size, you can barely see it anyway.  I put her together with similar speed, grabbing a head (I think from Caprica Six) and hair (which came in the Captain America Through the Ages box set) from my parts bin.  I painted a First Appearance Dr. Doom collar, stuck the decal on a blue chest, and there you go.  Bob's yer uncle, or something.  Anyway, here's here decal:

And a shot of the happy couple:

Not registered at Target

I realize now I really wish I'd made the rest of the Miraclefamily.  Ah well.